'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Cooking therapy--it works!

Happy New Year everyone!!!

I was feeling a bit in turmoil about something yesterday. So, since my daughter Lorna gave me a great Lebanese cookbook for Christmas, I checked out the recipe for "Fatayer bi-sabanekh" (Spinach pastries) and set to work.

I'd never made 'em before. But the work was just what I needed! It takes a yeast-leavened dough. Thwack, thwack, thwack, as I knead it down onto the kitchen counter. Then you have to chop the spinach, parsley and onions fine. Shir, shir, shir, as I rock the mezzaluna from side to side across the chopping board.... Oh, then the fun of assembly began.

Fun, well, yes; but it's also incredibly fiddly. The dough's risen already. You thwack it down again, then roll it out to 1/8-inch thick. (That's thin.) You cut out 4-inch rounds. Then you put a small pat of the spinach-with-lemon-etc mix into the middle of each round, and crimp the edges up into a sealed triangular little dumpling. (Actually, in addition to the taste--one which I've savored for 33 years now, ever since my first visit to Lebanon--I really love the elegant geometry of these pastries. Picture below-- I hope.)

You assemble each one one at a time then put a tray-full into a hot oven for 20 minutes. When they come out--this is a trick I never knew about before--you quickly paint each one with melted butter. [Margarine, in my case.] That gives it a little bit of a glazed look.

I took some to our friends Ann and Brantly's place for the New Year's party last night. Those were the 5-inch-circle model: tasty but big and clunky compared with the delicate little 4-inch-circle models that I turned out today. No sooner were they out of the oven than in walks the vegetarian Lorna and starts scarfing them off the cooling rack.

Okay, well we all did. They were particularly good dipped into the remnants of Helena's Home-made Hummus that were left in the 'fridge.

Later, I was wondering what platter to put them on, and I remembered the great triangular platter that Lorna (again-- funny, I didn't mean this post to be all about her) gave me last year. She'd painted it herself.

I think it looks really good with the Fatayer on it. Sort of King Tut-ish. View image

If I can save that dish-full from being devoured by Lorna, her college friend Meredith who's staying here for a couple of days, and Bill (the spouse--also, for this post, the much appreciated photographer), then I'll be taking it to our friends Robert and Pamela Mertz's place where we'll be going Saturday.

Yay, Lorna! Thanks again for the cookbook. (And everybody else, don't ask me about what happened last week when I tried out the falafel-from-scratch recipe from the book.)