recipes from tomorrow there will be apricots by jessica soffer

7/29/2019 Recipes from TOMORROW THERE WILL BE APRICOTS by Jessica Soffer

1/3

From the Kitchen of Jessica Soffer

MASGOUF

Ingredients:

Whole carp (or other white sh, such as red snapper, sea bass or sole)

Equal parts turmeric, tamarind, black pepper

Olive oil

Lemons

Rock salt

Optional condiments: pickled onions, ambah (mango cured in salt, turmeric, lemon and salt) or

diced tomatoes with garlic

Directions:

Ask your shmonger to buttery sh and leave the skin on. Otherwise, clean and scale sh, and

slice all the way down the back so it can lie at.Brush both sides of sh with plenty of olive oil.

Cover the esh with a thin layer of the spice mixture.

Season both sides generously with salt.

Indoors:

Place the sh skin side up in a shallow baking dish thats been covered with tin foil. Cook under a

preheated broiler for 7-10 minutes, or until the skin is crispy. Flip the sh and cook just until esh

is opaque, about 2 minutes.

Outdoors:

Impale sh vertically on wooden stakes and put directly into re pit or place the opened sh in

a well-oiled wire grill basket, tail down, head up and cook until done, turning now and again for

even heat dispersal. Cooking will take anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple of hours, depending

on size of sh and intensity of re.

Jessica on this dishMasgoufis the national dish of Iraq and was prepared

on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The carpwas whisked from the river and cooked for hours over

an open re as people strolled and drank and listened

to music. Thefatwah declared on the sh in those riv-

ers speaks to a more general sense of a bygone era:

the Jewish life in Baghdad is no longer.Masgoufwill

never be prepared as it once was again.

Read about the dishRead about masgoufin Tomorrow

There Will Be Apricots: Whileeavesdropping on her mother and

aunt, Lorca learns about masgouffor

the rst time (19-20).


2/3


SHAKRLAMA

Ingredients:

cup of butter 1 teaspoon rosewater

cup confectioners sugar teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup and 1 teaspoon sifted our A pinch of salt

teaspoon ground cardamom Handful of pistachio halves or almonds for decoration

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine butter, sugar, our, cardamom, rosewater, vanilla and salt.

Knead well.

Form into cakes about 2 inches in diameter.Space them one inch apart on baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

Decorate with nuts.

Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Make for 8-10 minutes, or until cookies are a pale golden brown but cooked through.

Jessica on this dishMy fathers sister, Auntie Violette, is the best cook

I know. For Passover we would go to her house on

Long Island where shed been cooking for days and

days. The air was always thick with Arabic perfume

and the orangey smells of cumin, paprika, cinnamon.

Auntie would make heaps of desserts, stacking them

high on a platter and as the cooking continued, and the

day went on, people noshed: a nut and honey turnover

here, a date and almond ball there. One day I caught

Violettes husband, my Uncle Jack, unearthing a shoe-

box from below the kitchen table. He stuffed a differ-

ent kind of dessert into his mouth. He grinned at me

guiltily when I caught him. In the years that followed,he never said anything about the missing shakrlama

from his stash, which I thoroughly enjoyed and which

was smart because I never ratted him out. Ive since

discovered that Auntie dunked the cookies into her af-

ternoon tea, but felt them too humdrum to include in

her holiday bounty. Or so she says.

Read about the dishRead aboutshakrlama in Tomorrow

There Will Be Apricots: Lorca wantsto make something for her mother,

who has come down with a cold. Vic-

toria hits upon shakrlama, and they

bake the cookies together (pages 142-

156).


3/3


BAMIA

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 chopped onion

3 teaspoons grated garlic

2 cups stewed tomatoes

teaspoon of each: cardamom, curry powder, ground ginger

teaspoon of each: paprika, red pepper akes, celery seeds

Lemon juice, salt and black pepper (to taste)

1 pounds fresh okra, washed and chopped into inch-long pieces

Directions:

Heat oil in large stockpot.Saute onions until translucent.

Add garlic and saut until fragrant.

Add tomatoes and spices and cook on medium heat for ve minutes, stirring consistently.

Jessica on this dishBamia is as traditional Iraqi Jewish as it gets, and

is often eaten with kubbeh, or meat dumplings. Myparents raised me vegetarian, however, so at fam-

ily dinners, I should have just skipped the bamia,

but Auntie Violettes was too goodand just trying

telling her that you had no interest in herkubbeh.

Forget it. I found subtle ways to peel the dough from

the dumplings, put the meat into a ball beneath my

napkin, and add the dough back into the stew.Bamia

on its own, meat-free, dough-free, is delicious and

hearty. The rst time I had okra prepared in a differ-

ent way, I didnt recognize itand I couldnt stand

it. The bamia denies the okra its sliminess. It makes

okra well worth eating, and dumplings well worth

dissecting on your lap, if it comes to that.

Read about the dishRead about bamia in Tomorrow

There Will Be Apricots: When Vic-toria rst meets Lorca, she teaches

her to make bamia (pages 128-131).

recipes from tomorrow there will be apricots by jessica soffer

Documents