Forgive me, reader, for I have sinned. It's been more than a month since my last post. And still no pictures from my trip to Lebanon and Greece! It's not exactly mea culpa. My husband's laptop died on the way home and it's taken several weeks to recover the data, including all the photo files downloaded during our travels. (But kudos to the geeks of Tekserve for recovering everything!) So, images of the Aegean are forthcoming. And as penance for my long absence, I am considering not taking the month of August off as I usually do. To further placate you, I come bearing the definitive recipe for hummus, one that is so light, fluffy and creamy, you will feel instantly transported to the Middle East, where, wearing rustic leather sandals and a smock of gauzy linen, you will recline in the shade of an ancient olive grove and be soothed by balmy breezes.

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Certain foods just have a universal appeal. Consider the dumpling, for instance. It's found in so many cultures, this rose by any other name: knedlíky (Czech), kreplach (Jewish), pantrucas (Chile), manti (Armenia), ravioli (Italy), buuz (Mongolia), pangsit (Indonesia), dim sum (China), gyoza (Japan), mandu (Korea)...the list goes on and on. Yogurt—and soured milk of all kinds—may not be quite as common, especially given that many African and Asian countries don't do dairy, but among those that do it's a deeply-held tradition. From straight-up yogurt to crème fraîche to quark to ricotta to paneer to Mexico's indigenous Nahuatl jocoque árabe, people have long been introducing bacteria or acid to milk with delectable results. Greek yogurt has become hugely popular in this country over the last few years, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous Fage (pronounced "fa-yeh") brand and now Chobani, too. It's simply yogurt which has been strained to remove the whey, giving it a much denser, creamier texture. Sometimes this style of yogurt is even enriched with extra butterfat or powdered milk.
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The birthday is past, but the celebration continues! The lovely Miriam treated me to luncheon at The John Dory yesterday, both of us braving snowdrifts and delayed trains, serendipitously arriving on the very day Sam Sifton’s rave review appeared in the Times. (Just missed scooping him by one day!) Like The Breslin, the restaurant is adjacent to—and part of the same building as—the Ace Hotel; upon inquiring, we were informed that the frigid indoor temperature was a result of the entire shebang losing its heat. I ate with gloves on and the cold endowed the whole venture with a sort of pioneer quality. Things began shaping up from the moment our hot toddies arrived. Cocktails, you gasp, in the middle of a workday?! Yes, I must say, it was rather Mad Men of us, and ushered in a mood of general excess.

This week, a friend asked me to post a recipe for hummus. This is a somewhat controversial issue: just ask someone from Jerusalem or Beirut. People in the Middle East are totally obsessed with this creamy stuff, as you can see by the gigantic vat above (weighing 23,520 pounds) prepared by Lebanese chefs who set the latest Guinness world record—beating Israel, which had previously beat Lebanon. So there’s the Galilee hummus or the Jerusalem kind, with or without fava beans, topped with warm chickpeas or served without. I suppose it’s like masala or gumbo, with every good chef developing his own version. Mine was inspired by a horseradish-laced hummus I once bought at Whole Foods. I was never able to find it again and, after hankering for it for months, I finally concocted the version which I humbly offer you here.
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G has been away for 5 days now and some serious cooking lethargy has set in. I find it frightfully dull to cook for one. I might throw a yam in the oven. Or have some avocado on crackers. It's been mostly salads otherwise. Lots of green juice. A desperate mix of chopped crystallized ginger, chocolate chips and dried coconut—I had banished all treats from the house! (Other things I do when the cat's away: Never make the bed. Burn scented candles constantly. Watch back-to-back episodes of The L Word. Keep the heat up too high. Pine.) Last night I really wanted something a bit more cozy. Nothing too demanding, but more of a real meal. The larder, however, didn't provide a great deal to work with. But I had picked up some lovely fresh eggs from the farm on Saturday and suddenly inspiration struck: Shakshuka! (No, that's not a Lebanese version of Eureka!) Shakshuka is an Israeli dish of eggs in spicy tomato sauce that has recently reached some sort of tipping point, appearing in Saveur magazine and everywhere in the blogosphere (my friend Shayma posted a very similar Pakistani dish here). I googled a few recipes and came up with my own version using vadouvan, a spice mix that's also had a flurry of coverage recently.
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