De Afghanan Kabob House

Bolani, a flat bread stuffed with potatoes or leeks.

Lamb kebab plate.

Afghan bread and a salad of tomatoes, red onions and cilantro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t exactly the most beautiful of places.  The street is empty and parking easy to find (and free). The displays in the shop windows are faded and I wonder whether they really do show movies in the dilapidated theater and who would go see them? But it’s not the movie theater we’ve come to visit, it’s the shop next door where we hear the man rattling off something to a customer in a language I can’t understand and the smell of spices from the kebabs cooking washes over us. We’ve come to De Afghanan Kebab House in Fremont.

With only three or four small round tables (covered in glass, business cards and event advertisements slid underneath), a seat inside can be hard to come by. Most guests prefer to take their orders home with them. We decide to eat in, though, and it proves to be a feast for our senses: heat emanates throughout the matchbox-sized restaurant from the open flame where the kebabs cooks, nice on a cool October day. The photographs covering the wall–all of Afghan people or places–pull me past the Afghanistan of the news and make me wonder how many people in Afghanistan were eating kebabs at this very moment and did their mothers and grandmothers hand down coveted recipes for seasoning the kebabs?  I am certain there must be some secret recipe behind the kebabs in this restaurant. I’d had them once before and they were the best kebabs I had ever had. Craning my head around the counter, I peek at the owner grilling the beef, lamb and chicken kebabs over the flame. An elbow away, a woman prepares massive bolani for the griddle. The thin pan bread is stuffed with seasoned mixtures of potatoes or leeks and then fried on the griddle.

Twenty minutes after we order our food, the owner brings us a bowl heaping with yogurt and squeeze-bottles of mint-cilantro chutney and red chile chutney. Then he proudly presents us with a large platter with of bolani fresh from the griddle and sliced into manageable pieces.  The bolani is huge — easily the size of a large pizza! And it is  only our appetizer. We tear off pieces of the hot bolani and dip it in the yogurt and chutneys. Between sips of Coke (you need soda with spicy food!) and blowing on the hot bolani, I savor the crisp exterior of the bread and the steaming mashed-potato filling flecked with chili flakes.

A few minutes after our bolani arrived, we scoot our Cokes and bottles of chutney to the side of the table to make room for our kebab plates. We ordered two kebab plates for three people, but we will still go home with leftovers. Generous portions of rice, Afghan bread, a potato-and-chickpea salad and a salad of tomatoes, red onions and cilantro accompany the kebabs. Once again, I am amazed by the incredible tenderness of the meat and delicious seasoning on the kebabs. Could such a small, grungy restaurant really make such wonderful kebabs? As we pay for our meal and shuffle past the other customers standing in the doorway, waiting to order their meals or pick up an order to take home to their families, I know the answer. De Afghanan Kabaob House makes the best kebabs I’ve ever had, and judging by the flock of people waiting patiently for their kebabs, I know I’m not the only one simulataneously marveling at the apparent squalor of the restaurant and the utter deliciousness of the hot bolani and tender kebabs. But the grunge isn’t enough to keep these people away, and it’s not going to keep me from coming back for another kebab either.

Still curious? Check out De Afghanan Kabob House’s website or read what other people are saying about De Afghanan on Yelp.

 

 

Pumpkin Bread Pudding

Bread pudding has to be the ultimate comfort food dessert . Add pumpkin and this dessert will melt your worries away (not that I am encouraging emotional eating;).

So instead of saving that loaf of day-old bread to feed to the ducks (which you know you’ll never actually do), put that bread to good use and make pumpkin bread pudding.

The method is simple: toss bread cubes with some melted butter; pour over a mixture of milk, eggs, pumpkin and spices; and bake.

The recipe I used is from the blog Smitten Kitchen. I even followed Deb’s modifications for an even simpler recipe because, you know, comfort food should be simple.

The recipe.

I think this recipe would also make excellent pumpkin French toast — any takers?

How to Poach an Egg

They say the third time is the charm, and I’d agree: it took three encounters with poached eggs to compel me to take a break from my usual scrambled eggs and try my hand at the somewhat slippery but oh-so-rewarding poached egg.

Instance #1: While watching Julie poach eggs on “Julie & Julia,” I, along with everyone else in the audience, thought,  I can do that! Instance #2: Last week at The Sideboard Cafe in Danville I ordered their lovely poached eggs: the yellow yolk seeping into the holes in the crisp toast, topped with fresh herbs and a bit of Parmesan–splendid! Instance #3: Last night I was reading Sam’s and my new Bride and Groom Cookbook (it’s written by the chefs of Foreign Cinema!) and saw a recipe for poached eggs on frisee, an alluring alternative to the scrambled eggs on romaine I had eaten for lunch that day. Thus when I went to bed last night,  I knew that in the morning it would be poached eggs or nothing.

How to Poach an Egg:

(1) Fill a large, shallow pan with about 2 inches of water. The diameter of the pan you choose will depend on how many eggs you are poaching. Each egg needs room to expand while cooking.

(2) Add a little bit of vinegar to the cooking water, as this makes the whites set faster. I added Sherry Vinegar, but next time I’ll dig deeper into the cupboard to find the white vinegar.

(3) Bring the water barely to a simmer.

(4) Crack each egg into a ramekin or small bowl. Then gently slide the eggs one-by-one into the water. Do not worry when the egg sinks to the bottom! It will be fine. As Ruth Reichel writes in The Gourmet Cookbook, “a poaching egg is pretty good at taking care of itself.” Just keep an eye on it.

(5) When the white looks firm but the yolk is still runny (it’s a guessing game at first!), use a slotted spoon to lift the egg out of the water. Blot the underside of the egg with a paper towel to remove any excess water.

(6) Slide the egg onto your toast, sprinkle with fresh thyme and a few shavings of Dubliner cheddar and voila! You have a delicious, warm and satisfying poached egg.

An Unlikely Milkshake

Chocolate. Strawberry. Vanilla. Those are the usual flavors. Maybe you could get a mint Oreo milkshake or chocolate peanut butter milkshake at one of the more sophisticated ice cream parlors.

Today I am going to tell you about an unlikely milkshake.

A month ago I went to L.A. to visit my good friends Laura and Ben. The stars had aligned for the blending of the milkshake we were about to make: one of Laura’s roommates had brought home a blender and Ben had scooped up several very ripe avocados from a sale at the grocery store. Yes, dear readers, we were about to experience the creamy, velvety, elusive avocado milkshake. Now, I’ve made a few milkshakes before and somehow they always involved lots of chocolate or vanilla ice cream and some flavoring. Not so the avocado milkshake. I had failed to realize that the essence of the milkshake lies in milk, not ice cream. If its essence was founded in ice cream, it would be called an ice cream shake. We were not about to mix ice cream and avocados, but milk and avocados. And ice and sugar. A bit unorthodox, huh?

Not to worry, though, because Ben is actually an avocado milkshake sommelier, if you will. He has honed the avocado milkshake recipe to the essence of avocado milkshake perfection, ice cube by ice cube, glop of milk by glop of milk. Not only is Ben a stellar avocado milkshake maker, he is also a very gracious person and is kindly sharing his coveted recipe with us. In the words of Ben, it’s:

“simple:
1 avocado
2-3 tbsp sugar
1 cup milk
5 ice cubes
blend til creamy
savor”

Smooth, retro-green and utterly refreshing, an avocado milkshake may be an unlikely milkshake, but it certainly is likable.

P.S. Apt pairings for the avocado milkshake include salted hard pretzels and dark chocolate (or chocolate covered pretzels, I suppose).

Pom-wonderfulness

This afternoon I walked into the kitchen and lo and behold! there on the counter, in all its late-afternoon-autumn-light splendor,  lounged one of the biggest pomegranates I had ever seen.

“Okay, you pompous  pomegranate you,” I said, giving it the once-over. “Let’s see what you have to show for your 1 pound 3 1/4 ounces (I weighed it) of pom-wonderfulness.”

First, I took that paramount pomegranate outside for a photo session — every pom has its day. The pom’s fame flashed by in an instant, though, as reality hit: it was time to mine the sweet treasures from beneath the leathery pink skin. With a couple wiggles  of the knife, the lifeblood of the pomegranate began leaking onto the bread board.  Success! Breaking apart the pomegranate, the jewel-like arils fought back by staining my hands purple. Tucked tightly together in rows, the arils were stubborn to release from their  home. A deft flick of my finger showed them I was not to be stopped; Pom-wonderfulness would be had.

I tossed a few of the precious gems into my mouth and savored the pop of the tender flesh and the tart liquid dribbling through my mouth. Then I suddenly began to realize how extraordinarily noisy eating a pomegranate can actually be. Eating an apple is unquestionably noisy–they’re crunchy–but pomegranates? Yes, those sly seeds encased within the arils were the guilty culprits. Normally, noisy eating habits top my pet peeves list (yes! even the inevitable apple-crunching…), but today the pomegranate seed crunch struck me as a wonderful  sound dimension enhancing the pomegranate eating experience.

And by experience, it really is quite an ordeal, as anyone who has ever eaten a pomegranate from scratch can attest. Would I trade the arduous task for store-bought pomegranate juice, devoid of the satisfying experience of breaking apart the scarlet gems and pulling them from their case one-by-one? No. Would I trade it for the prepackaged arils available at Costco at Christmastime? Well, maybe if I was really short on time. But here lies the moral: obtain a pomegranate (beheamoth or not), slice open, appreciate the intricacy of design and relish all that pom-wonderfulness.

CHOW How: 10 Ways to Spice Up Pumpkin Seeds

I couldn’t very well write a post about Epicurious.com and leave the über-hip CHOW.com in the dust. First, a confession: I’ve never actually used any of the recipes on CHOW, but I think their website is really cool. If you ever wanted to know How to Pair Wine and Halloween Candy or how to make Glow-in-the-dark Gin and Tonic Jelly, CHOW is the place to go.

Enough with the goofy links. Here’s the real link love: CHOW’s most recent photo gallery addition,  “10 Ways to Spice Up Pumpkin Seeds.” From wasabi and coriander pumpkin seeds to pumpkin-pie spiced pumpkin seeds, CHOW takes pumpkin seeds to a whole new level. Here’s some good news for you: you don’t have to wait until you carve your pumpkin on October 31 to try all 10 variations nor do you have to  deal with the muck and guck of cleaning pumpkin seeds , you can use raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas) to make your spicy seeds (don’t worry, I won’t tell). When you view the photo gallery, just click on the photo for the recipe.

Which variation are you going try first?

2 Reasons I Like Epicurious.com

I like Epicurious.com. And here are two reasons it is my go-to site for all things cooking:

(1) Recipes & Reviews.

While I turn a blind eye toward the clunky and crowded pages, I find the recipes (mostly from Gourmet and Bon Appetit magazines) more credible than other websites like AllRecipes.com. If by chance an Epicurious recipe has gone too far to left field, you can be sure to read about it in the reviews section where recipe-testers recommend their own variations or emendations. My advice: read the recipe, read the reviews, cook accordingly.

(2) Epi-log.

Yesterday I was delighted to see an Epicurious blog called “Granola: The Easiest Thing Since Sliced Toast” by Regina Schambling. This reminded of my own discovery (and blog post) that homemade granola is deceptively easy to make an considerably cheaper than ready-made granola. Read my post here, Ms. Schambling’s here.

But the topper on the cake for Epicurious blog would have to be filling me in on the lastest buzz: Twitter is releasing it’s own wine label. What?!! Yes. Don’t worry quite yet, the Twitter Empire isn’t looking to only expand their own territory but is partnering with the non-profit Room to Read to promote literacy. Twitter will donate $5 from every $20-bottle of wine to support the organization. SF’s Crushpad completes the Triumvirate behind Twitter’s wine push: the diy wine press is where Twitter will be crushing and fermenting its grapes for its first wines, a Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir. How’s that for news?

Thank you, pumpkin.

Pumpkins are everywhere.

There is a pumpkin on my doorstep. There is a pumpkin on my neighbor’s doorstep. There is pumpkin in my latte, pumpkin in my pancakes and pumpkin in the pumpkin butter I put on my pancakes. Pureed pumpkin even sneaked into my vanilla pudding  two days ago (ok, I folded it in with complete knowledge).

With pumpkin everywhere, you’d expect one to tire of pumpkins. But instead I say, “Thank you, pumpkin” because you’ve made me want to put pumpkin in more things: curried pumpkin soup, apple pumpkin bread, pumpkin-seed crusted trout. Your golden, glowing sweet flesh has helped me carve time from work, classes, wedding planning and the general busyness of life to blog again.

Thank you, pumpkin.