Maybe it’s the fact that we’ve just finished eating a week’s worth of Thanksgiving leftovers, coupled with the fact that we’re gearing up for Christmas dinner with it’s requisite ham and the cheesey goodness of broccoli-rice casserole, but my kids and I are finding that American fare is holding little appeal for us these days.

My kids are fairly adventurous eaters. Okay, so Ethan gags if he doesn’t like a certain texture, Ramie “just isn’t a bread person,” Mason’s diet consists of maily beige and white, and Riley goes vegetarian a couple of times a year. But I’ve introduced them to a wide variety of cuisines from all over the world with surprisingly favorable results.

Last week, as we were staring at a freezer bag filled with the last of the turkey chowder, Riley, Ethan, and I looked at eachother and, as if the thought emanated from the freezer along with the cold air and wafted into our ears and then our brains, we declared in unison, “Kefta!”

Kefta are mediterranean meatballs that can be found from Morocco to Persia (okay, not actually found, as in–oh, looky there! Kefta, right behind that rock! You know what I meant). And they happen to be one of our favorite meals. In fact, Ethan has declared on more than one occasion that kefta is definitely his favorite meal, most recently about 2 hours ago, as we were scarfing down on a delicious lunch of kefta, couscous, flatbread, and tabouleh.

I always believed my version was Moroccan–I gleaned the basics from an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, which was perfect for me because there was no technical “recipe”: he basically just narrated as the cameraguy filmed an old man in Marakesh making it.  Then I met a young man from Morocco at the Moroccan pavillion at EPCOT and talk quickly turned to–you guessed it—kefta. He chided me for not using egg in my recipe. “The old Moroccan guy on tv didn’t use egg,” I told him. He shook his head at me. “You must use egg. After you let the meat sit, before you roll it, then you mix it in.” So I do…sometimes.  Truth is, I’m not crazy about the feeling of raw dead cow between my fingers—it’s a necessary evil if I want kefta—and then to add raw egg on top of it, GACK! 

Last year I met another Moroccan chef who told me that if I put mint in my kefta, then it’s not Moroccan–it’s Persian. Hold the phone—the old guy on tv used mint. The Moroccan guy at EPCOT was cool with the mint. I like mint—dare I say, I LOVE mint. So I’m not sure how authentic my recipe is, but it works for us.

So here, for your culinary delight, is my UNrecipe for kefta.  Consider it my Christmas gift to you!

KEFTA

2 lbs. ground meat—beef, lamb, or some combination of the two (I use beef. Riley once raised a lamb for an ag project. In case you’re not familiar with Ag projects, they culminate at auction, or ‘market.’ When the nursery rhyme says, “This little piggy went to market,” I don’t think she went shopping for a new pair of shoes. Riley knew from the outset that “auction” meant “pass the mint jelly,” and she insisted that she was totally okay with that…until the word “SOLD!” exited the auctioneer’s lips, at which point she commenced with the wailing. She wailed for weeks. And to this day, when we go eat mediterranean food she makes me verify with the server that there is no lamb in whatever she orders).

Oh—don’t use pork. Just don’t. I mean, it’s your kitchen and all, but if you use pork you are definitely not making Kefta. And if you DO ignore my imploration and use pork anyway, don’t invite your Moroccan (or Persian) friends to come sample the Kefta you just made (which is not really Kefta). Seriously, it would be a really, really bad idea.

Okay….meat. Check. Next:

Herbs: 1 bunch parsley, 2 bunches cilantro, 2 of the small herb clamshells of fresh mint. Chop them all up finely. If you use the food processor, you can just add the seasonings in as well.

Seasonings: garlic, cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne pepper. That question that’s on your mind right now—the answer is, “Heck, I dunno. How much do you want to use?” I go really light on the cayenne, because E & Ra can’t handle too much spice.

Oh–salt. Don’t forget salt. Use your best judgement.

Mix it all together with the meat. Refrigerate for about an hour, a couple of hours if you have time. At this point, you have to decide whether you’re going to go with my buddy from EPCOT, or with the old guy on Anthony Bourdain. Today, I didn’t do the egg. It worked out fine. Maybe if you’re using really lean meat, you should listen to my Disney buddy and go for the egg.

SAUCE: 

2 large cans crushed tomatoes

garlic powder

coriander

cumin

salt

paprika (I like a lot. I’m not sure why, it just seems right)

cinnamon (just a sprinkle. Maybe….1/8 tsp?)

Mix sauce ingredients in a big cookpot on the stove and heat. Oh–I forgot, this is a really big batch, so you might need to divide the sauce between 1 pots, & put half the meatballs in each. Or you can just stack them. Either way.

Make meatballs, add to the pot, and simmer covered. I dunno…30ish minutes? 45? You’re probably a better judge of that than I am—I have no concept of time.

If you were a real Moroccan making these in Morocco, you’d use a Tagine, which is a conical clay thing that kind of steams stuff. I don’t have one. I really want one. If you ever happen to be in Morocco and you’re trying to decide what to bring me as a souvenir, there’s an idea for you. Just give me a heads up so I can have all the ingredients on hand when you bring it by, so I can whip up a fresh batch to thank you.

Serve with couscous. I don’t have a teriffic couscous recipe. I make the kind that comes in the box. I don’t love it. I love real couscous, the kind with raisins and some savory sweet spice that I as yet have been unable to identify. If you have a stellar couscous recipe and feel like sharing, I would totally love that.

Oh–and flatbread. You have to have flatbread to sop up all the glorious sauce. Toufan makes a decent flatbread that you can probably find near the pitabread in your store. Technically, it is pita—not the dried out “pocket bread” pita that you stuff with tuna and sprouts. If your grocery store doesn’t carry it, find a Greek restaurant (or mediterranean if you’re so lucky as to have one nearby) and ask them if they’ll sell you a couple of packages. My local Greek restaurant sells them to me for about $4 a package.

Merry Christmas! Enjoy your Kefta!

Okay, I’m going to come right out and cop to the fact that I really don’t know what the word “zen” means. I think I have some vague concept, but my grasp is tenuous at best. I just really wanted to use it as a post title.

I’ve been wallowing in self-pity the last couple of days. I have officially cleared the first hurdle to being an actual novelist: my first rejection letter. Actually, it was an e-mail, one of what I’ve been told are the scores–possibly even hundreds–that await every novelist. And it would probably be more accurate to call it the second hurdle, because I’m fairly certain the first hurdle was actually writing the novel.

While I’ve been wallowing, a big ol’ Texas sized brisket has been sitting in the bottom of my fridge, waiting to fullfill its destiny of becoming a mouth-watering thing of beauty on a dinner platter. I just haven’t been in the mood. I’m in a “fix yourself a bowl of cereal and call it dinner, kids” kind of mood.  I’ve made grilled cheese sandwiches twice this week–only the second time I added ham and pretended it was a whole different thing. I haven’t had the energy to think about the brisket.

For one thing, if you do a brisket right, it’s a little time consuming. First, you have to rub it all down with your own special uber-secret recipe brisket rub. If you’re out of uber-secret brisket rub, first you have to concoct more, THEN rub it down. Then you have to sear it all over. If it’s a whole brisket—which this one is—you really need to cut it in half or even thirds first. Or second—after concocting and prior to rubbing. See, I told you it’s complicated.

And the only pan I own that’s big enough to sear a whole brisket–even one that’s cut up into several pieces–has these big handles that come up on each side, and at least once during the brisket-searing process, I will forget about those hot, metal handles and the whole exercise will suddenly become a forearm-searing process, after which my children will go around calling me “Emo” for several days.

Then there’s the matter of the gravy. That’s right, you heard me. Gravy. Don’t get me wrong–I love me some bbq sauce. But for my brisket, I use the drippings—savory sweet chipotle drippings—and whip up a batch of sweet chipotle brisket gravy. My family would look at me like I’d served unfrosted cake if I gave them brisket without gravy. But it is, like the brisket itself, a labor of love: one which involves the same pan and more forearm searing.

But it’s not just the time commitment. There’s also the matter of the spirit of the brisket. To me, brisket is a celebration. It can be as mundane as celebrating that we’ve survived another week without a trip to the ER, but there’s gotta be some celebrating. I don’t feel like celebrating right this minute.

One of my wallowing rituals–which is a direct result of the fact that evidently Fall released a sneak preview, which has been playing all over North Texas since Saturday— has become sitting on the front porch swing with my mug o’tea several times a day to reflect. It’s one of the veryfine things about living in the country–lots of quiet, punctuated only by crickets and birds.

But this morning when I sat down—-which I did only after thouroughly checking the swing for black widows, which is one of the notveryfine things about living in the country—-there was a whole lot of something going on at the neighbors. Lots of cars–I’d say close to twenty. That many cars at 8:30am is never a good thing.

Turns out, the grandfather is really sick. Really, really sick. As in might-not-make-it sick. Mesothelioma. He has surgery scheduled in a couple of weeks. The doctors hope that it will give him a few more months to a year, but there’s a big chance he won’t survive the surgery.

Dang.

Not only that, but these kids just lost their other grandfather a few weeks ago.

Dang again.

Amazing how our troubles shrink like shadows when exposed to the light of someone else’s. I’m reminded of the words of Psalm 118, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Life is a celebration, each and every day of it. We exist day-to-day along a continuum between grief and elation. Hopefully, we’ll spend more time toward the latter. But in all our circumstances, there is cause for rejoicing: the love of friends and family, the providence of the Creator. Sunsets and singing birds. In good times, we inhale joy through our experiences; in bad, we exhale it in the form of the memories that sustain us. But in all things, let us find our way to the celebration.

Okay, I guess I’m done wallowing, or reflecting, or whatever I want to call my little pity party.

Because there’s a family next door that needs a brisket.

When I first commited to undertaking this blog undertaking, my friend Joy suggested I include some of my recipes.

Recipes? I don’t have any recipes. I mean, I cook stuff. Good stuff, too. But recipes are lists, playbooks from which others can derive some scant hope of being able to recreate a dish in their own kitchen. Recipes are for people who think in complete sentences, linearly–from beginning to end, point A to point B. My claim to fame is getting all the way to point Q before I realize that I skipped point B altogether.

To tell the absolute truth, I can’t even follow recipes. I have to read the whole thing through a few times, figure out what the heck it is I’m trying to make, and then go for it. In the course of preparing a dish I might refer back to the recipe 12 or 13 times to make sure I have the measurements right or the order of steps in the correct order. More often than not, I just kind of wing it.

No, I told Joy, I don’t do recipes.

And then a few days later I posted about what I was making for dinner–I think it was Kefta (Morrocan meatballs). That post ended up with over 20 comments when it was all said and done. So I started thinking, maybe Joy was right. Maybe I could post recipes….

Who am I kidding?

Again, after my anniversary dinner with The Hubby out on our patio, my menu seemed to garner some favorable comments and curiosity. So I’m throwing caution to the wind. Here, for your consideration, is the first of what might be more than a few “un-recipes.”

19th Anniversary Menu: Bleu steaks w/ white wine reduction, served with asparagus and balsamic roasted tomatoes.

Balsamic roasted tomatoes:

okay, here’s the part where you realize that I really wasn’t joking about not being good at this whole “recipe” thing.
I used campari tomatoes, because they’re really sweet and juicy. But you could use Romas.
Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise. Kinda poke holes in the flesh (don’t go all the way through) so that the balsamic vinegar can penetrate.

Drizzle some balsamic vinegar over tomatoes. “Some” is as specific as I can get, because I didn’t measure or anything. But I will tell you that whatever spills onto the cookie sheet (oh yeah–you should be doing this on a cookie sheet) is going to carmelize, which is a yummy-sounding word for “burn,” so you should probably line the cookie sheet with foil or else you’ll never get it clean.

Put the foil-lined cookie sheet with the drizzled tomatoes in the oven on….okay, here’s the deal. I had a busy day when I did this–in and out of the house. So I set the oven to maybe 300, cooked them for half an hour, then I had to turn off the oven (with the tomatoes in it) because I had to run to the store. I did that a few times, actually, and they turned out perfectly. That’s probably not very practical in terms of recreating it, though. But if you want them to be soft and squishy, you might want to cook them for half an hour. If you want them a little more firm, like sundried tomatoes, maybe an hour and a half. Either way, it’ll still be good.
Remove from oven and sprinkle with sea salt. Like a pinch, don’t get all crazy.

Asparagus:

Steam it. If you don’t know how to steam asparagus, then you’re probably already in way over your head. But don’t let that discourage you–I’m generally in over my head, and I’m okay with that.

Bleu steaks

beef tenderloin steaks (most people consider all tenderloin steaks to be filet mignon, but technically it’s only filet if it is the itty-bitty cut at the very end of the tenderloin. Just ask your butcher for tenderloin steaks, they’ll be perfect. They’re not cheap–about $15/ pound, or about $5/steak. Still, it’s a whole heckuva lot less than you’d pay at a restaurant, and this way you get all the accolades).
bleu cheese
salt
pepper (if you like the stuff. Me, I can’t stand it. It makes everything taste burned. But to each his own).
dried thyme
butter (how much? I dunno…have you had a cholesterol screening lately? I’d use that info to make this decision.)
olive oil
dry white wine (you could use sherry. I didn’t have sherry. I used to, but the bottle got all suicidal and leapt off the pantry shelf onto the stained concrete floor. I used Barefoot Pino Grigio.)
heavy cream
beef consomme (consomme is like broth, only it has gelatin added. Sounds gross to me too, but I guess it helps the consistency of the sauce. If you have broth, I’d say it’s probably fine)

My best real-chef tip: with a paper towel, blot the meat all over to dry. Seriously. If you cook wet meat, it steams. Eeeww. Steamed meat. This is steak, not potstickers.

Rub the meat with the salt (I used sea), pepper (if that’s the way you roll) and dried thyme. Place it in the pan in which you have melted (oh yeah–melt the butter) the butter and olive oil together.

Cook the steak a few minutes–1 or 2 minutes on each side will give you rare. 4 minutes gives you oh-crap-this-is-almost-not-medium-rare-anymore.

I read that you can tell how cooked your steak is by comparing it to your face. I mean by touch, not sight. If it feels like your chin, it’s rare; like the tip of your nose, it’s medium; like your forehead, it’s ruined because who the heck wants to spend $15 a pound on tenderloin and eat it well done? Anyway, you’re going to have a bottle of wine out to use for making the sauce, and if you’re standing over the stove touching your chin while you poke the steak, people are going to assume you’re drunk, so just cook it a couple of minutes on each side and call it good.

Take the steaks out of the pan and set them aside to let the juices redistribute. If you want, you can stick an oven-proof dish in the hot oven for a few minutes while the steaks are cooking (which requires a bit of advanced planning–if you’re actually reading as you go, it’s too late now) and set the steaks in the hot dish. I didn’t, because the idea didn’t hit me until I was finished.

Add wine, cream, and consomme. I dunno, maybe 1/2 cup each for 3 steaks? Scrape up all the little bits in the pan, simmer and stir the sauce until it’s reduced to the point where it looks like sauce and not juice. You’ll be able to tell, trust me.

Okay, here’s where it all comes together:
Pour some sauce on the bottom of the plate, set the steak on top of it. Crumble some bleu cheese on top of the steak, artfully arrange a couple of asparagus stalks on top (and serve the rest on the side), and drizzle a little more sauce over the top. Serve the tomatoes on the side (unless you couldn’t wait and you ate them all while you were cooking the steak).

I would post a photo of the steak, but the lighting was bad (that’s the thing about dining by candelight), and so the photos aren’t nearly as appetizing as the actual food was. But it’s all easy stuff…steak, tomatoes, asparagus–you already know what all that stuff looks like.

Dessert: Cheesecake w/ dark chocolate ganache

Okay, so I’m going to admit to cheating on this one. My kitchen was a wreck before I even started dinner, and there was no way I was going to pull off making a cheesecake from scratch if I wanted The Hubby to come home to a clean-ish kitchen. So I bought a frozen cheesecake. So sue me. If you want to make a homemade cheesecake, you can: a few bricks of cream cheese, 3 eggs, some sugar (I dunno–a cup?), vanilla, ooh–you could melt a cup of dark chocolate chips and throw them in, but if you do, make sure you let the melted chocolate cool first so it doesn’t scramble your eggs. Oh–beforehand you’ll need to make that crust with the crushed up cookies and butter. You’ve done that one before, right? Okay, good. Then pour the filling over the crust and bake it. I guess everything bakes at 350, so I think that’s what I use. I’d probably check on it after about 40 minutes and just see how it’s doing, and go from there. It’ll taste way yummier than storebought–the consistency will be infinitely better. But chances are, your Hubby won’t notice.

Anyway, what makes this cheesecake stellar is the ganache topping. And it is so simple. Honest. You’ll need (I am actually going to give you actual honest-to-goodness measurements this time. Since that is so out of character for me, I’m assuming you’ve figured out that I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t really, really important. Crucial even.) 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream and 8 oz. (1 cup) dark chocolate chips, OR semi-sweet baker’s chocolate, chopped. DO NOT use that bark crap. You’ll be sorry.

Put the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Heat the cream in a saucepan on the stove until it’s bubbling. Get a whisk–once you pour the cream over the chocolate it’s too late to go searching for your whisk, because it’ll cool off. Pour the cream over the chocolate and whisk until melted. If you want, you can add a couple of tablespoons of liqueur or flavored coffee syrup. Hazelnut is divine, as I remember (I’m going on long-ago memories of the days before we had a nut-allergy in our family).

Spread the ganache on top of the cheesecake. You’ll need to do this before you take it out of either the pan (if homemade) or the paper edging (if you bought frozen). Put it in the fridge so the ganache can set. Serve w/ fresh berries.

There you have it–simple, elegant, and oh-so-delicious. The Hubby said it was better than any restaurant meal he’s ever had. I’m guessing he might have exaggerated a little. But not much….
Bon apetit!