dumplings, new years and absenteeism

Some of you may know that I am a big fan of dumplings. Rather than have one of my parent's write in and remind all of us how far back this love goes, I'll just fess up now. When I was a little guy, I used to just eat the skins of the fried dumplings from the Flower Dragon, this American-Chinese restaurant not too far from our house. I was afraid, I think, of the onions and chives in the (pork) filling. Later, I grew to love even the onions and would eat the entire thing.

I discovered (at some point) that there are many categories of dumplings, the filled and the solid, the poached and the fried, the potato and the pasta, the list goes on and on. I love them all. My favorites are the matzoh ball, and the fried American style Chinese dumpling (whose resemblance to traditional dim-sum is passable at best), filled with chicken, beef or vegetables please as I am off the pork.

קובה [Kube] are a very popular dumpling here in Israel. Like a great many of Israel's culinary delights, Kube are borrowed from neighboring traditions. Kube, are Kurdish in origin, but are popular in many middle eastern cultures. Kube are a remarkable combination of the boiled dumpling and the filled dumpling. A semolina and bulgar dough is stuffed with spiced beef or lamb. The dough cooks up like any good gnocchi, matzoh ball, or southern american dumpling. The meat inside is just delicious. Kube can be fried or served in soup. There are probably other ways too that I haven't encountered yet.

The most uniquely Isreali (read middle eastern) restaurants I've been to are humus restaurants (מסעדות חומוס). They sell humus, topped with cooked vegetables or meat, red or green Kube soup, (red is a tomato and pepper base, green is delicious, but as yet unidentified), shakshuka (an egg and tomato stew that merits and will have it's own blog entry soon) and other things as well. Whatever you get at a humus restaurant, it comes with a plate of pickles, probably a small cucumber-tomato salad, and pita. It's delicious. Down the street from my house is a little restaurant called מאזא לברלין (It's at the corner of Azza [Gaza in Hebrew] and Berlin Streets, hence it's name From Azza to Berlin. They have wonderful humus, usually freshly pureed. This is the most recent meal I had there, sitting outside enjoying the views of passing traffic (Israeli drivers actually do provide interesting entertainment in that edge of your seat horror movie kind of way). Instead of the kube soup, I had a fried kube with my humus.

A little more than a week ago was Rosh Hashanah, for which Ilana and I cooked a large celebratory lunch on the second day. I made kube soup. Or rather I should say I made a fusion version of kube soup. I made kube, and put them in an Ashkenazi (Eatern European Jewish) chicken soup instead of the traditional green or red variety. Something like matzoh balls only filled with beef and no unleavened bread in sight. I have to work out some kinks in the recipe. The kube were a little dense, not as fluffy as they should have been. Once I work on the recipe I'll post it here. I'll try and do a vegetarian version as well.

To make them, you roll little balls of dough, essentially make a pinch-pot, fill it with the meat and close it up. They were a pretty big hit at our lunch.

Rosh Hashanah itself was very nice. With the minor exception of my ability to sit still, which does fine for the standard two and half or three hour Shabbat service. Past four hours, I get antsy. Past five hours, I get positively squirmy. But the services themselves were very beautiful, with lots of good singing and even some dancing at the small Shlomo Carlebach (a twentieth century Rabbi who sang a lot) inspired shule we went to on the second day...But really, do they have to last almost seven hours?

Yom Kippur starts tonight. Well really Yom Kippur starts this afternoon. We've studied Yom Kippur in all of my classes, from quite a few perspectives. It will be interesting I think to experience it tomorrow with all these things in mind, I'll try to post more about it after the fact.

On one final note. My absentee ballot is on it's way back to the lovely state of Maine. I'm not going to say who I voted for, but let's just say that neither the candidate nor the running mate is a moose hunter of any renown. Can you imagine if Dick Cheney had been using a moose rifle instead of a vintage bird gun?