Oct 27

Oct 27 Ori Menashe’s Grandmother Left a Legacy of Cooks

Shared by Ori Menashe

Recipe Roots: Lake Urmia, Iran > Tbilisi, Georgia > Istanbul > Jaffa > Tel Aviv > Los Angeles > Ramat Hasharon, Israel > Los Angeles

In chef and restaurant owner Ori Menashe’s family, everyone cooks. His brother owns a pair of restaurants in Tel Aviv, Ori co-owns the celebrated Bestia and Bavel in Los Angeles, a sister cooks for private events, and after a career in fashion and business, his father Gideon opened a bakery. It’s fitting for a family where food is at the center of everything, a tradition that, in many ways, stems from Ori’s paternal grandmother Rachel.

“[She] was the kind of person whom you couldn’t help but notice the minute she walked into a room. She was a strong personality but also fiercely maternal and one of my first role models as a cook,” writes Ori in his new cookbook “Bavel: M odern Re cipes Inspired by the Middle East.” He would stay with her as often as he could as a child, enjoying her cooking and taking trips to Tel Aviv with her. “She could have opened a restaurant,” he says.

Instead, she cooked for large family gatherings at her home. As she did, relatives would gather in the dining room to dance and listen to music like Talking Heads, Sting, The Police, or Arabic music, DJ’d by Ori’s father and brother. Rachel’s culinary repertoire was broad, stretching from recipes she picked up from Ashkenazi neighbors like gefilte fish to Persian dishes her husband, whose family walked from Iran to Israel, grew up with. “She cooked outside of the box,” Ori says.

She also drew on her own roots. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia and raised on the eastern side of Istanbul, Rachel’s family is Nash Didan, a community from around Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, near the border with Iraq and Turkey that’s connected through a dialect of Aramaic.

Her family, like Jewish cooks the world-over, absorbed the recipes of the larger population around them including peppery meat-filled dumplings called hingali (or khinkali) from Georgia, which Rachel would make in batches of a few hundred. When they were little, Ori and his brother would compete to see who could eat more of them. “And by the end of it, both of us would fall asleep on the sofa,” Ori says. She also made chatachtuma, a Nash Didan pasta with garlic-laced yogurt sauce, a soup called chefte, stuffed vegetables with beef and dill, and beef cured in salt and fat for Passover.

Meals cooked by Rachel weren’t limited to her home. When Ori’s parents were out of town, she would wrap pots in towels and carry stacks of them with her on the bus. When Ori was sick; she would prepare a pot of peshalo, a little-known soup with fresh cut noodles, cabbage, chickpeas, and a broth tinged with turmeric, and bring it over. “Most families have their own version of the cure-all soup for when someone’s sick and this was ours,” Ori writes.

In Los Angeles, Ori’s made the soup for his wife and his staff at the restaurants — and one day he will for his daughter who is little enough that she still prefers alphabet soup. As we head into the winter, it’s a soup we’ll crave. “It’s one of those,” says Ori, “a soup that cures you for sure.”

Beef Cheek Tagine

Recipe Roots: Mogador (present-day Essaouira), Morocco (in book) > Beer Sheva, Israel > Los Angeles > Ramat Hasharon, Israel > Los Angeles

Born in Mogador (present-day Essaouira) on the Moroccan coast, Ori’s maternal grandmother Ida moved to Israel in 1967. The mother of 11 children, she was often in the kitchen or at the market and “she would make massive braises and stews,” says Ori. On special occasions, she would make slow-cooked dishes in a Moroccan clay pot called a tagine. She didn’t share her recipes with Ori’s mother Mirelle, but instinct and memory helped her recreate many of them.

Serves 2 to 4

Ingredients:
2 ¼ pounds beef cheek, cleaned and cubed into 1 ¼ inch pieces (may substitute beef short rib)
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 ¼ teaspoons granulated sugar
1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
2 garlic cloves
1 quart Super Stock (see separate recipe below); may substitute high-quality store-bought vegetable stock infused with the aromatics from the super stock recipe
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 cups diced yellow onion (3 onions)
1 fresh bay leaf or 1 dry bay leaf
3 tablespoons Ras el Hanout
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 serrano chile, sliced
1 prune, quartered
4 dried apricots, quartered
Cilantro leaves and stems for garnish
Rice, couscous, or mashed potatoes for serving

Directions:
1. Season the beef cheek with salt, black pepper, and granulated sugar. Let rest for 10 minutes. In a blender, puree the vinegar, ginger, and garlic.

2. Place the seasoned beef cheeks in a bowl, pour the liquid over the meat, and mix to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the refrigerator overnight or for up to 24 hours.

3. Remove the beef cheeks from the refrigerator. Drain, reserving the liquid, and bring to room temperature. Transfer the reserved marinade to a small saucepan and cook over low heat until reduced by half. Set aside.

4. In a separate small saucepan, bring the stock to a boil. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil and ½ tablespoon of the butter to a sauté pan and place over high heat. Add one-quarter of the meat and sear on both sides until golden, about 4 minutes, then transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon and set aside. Repeat this process, adding another 1 tablespoon of the oil and ½ tablespoon of the butter to the pan before adding another one-quarter of the meat, until all the meat has been seared.

5. Wipe the pan clean, then return to the stove over high heat and add the remaining 3 tablespoons of oil. Add the onion and bay leaf and cook for 4 to 5 minutes, until the onion is translucent, stirring to avoid browning. Remove the pan from the heat and add the ras el hanout. Stir to coat the onions and bloom the spices for about 1 minute. Add the brown sugar and the reduced marinade liquid and stir to combine.

6. Transfer the onion mixture to a 6-quart baking dish and top with the seared beef cheeks. Pour the hot stock over the beef cheeks. Then cover the dish with aluminum foil. Bake for 2 ½ hours, until the meat is fork-tender and has fully broken down. Remove the cheeks from the oven and uncover. Add the sliced serrano chile and let rest, uncovered, for 1 hour.

7. To serve, transfer the cheeks to a large serving bowl or tagine and top with the prune and apricots. Garnish with cilantro leaves. Serve with a side of rice, couscous, or mashed potatoes.

Note: The cheeks can be prepared up to 1 day ahead and stored, covered, in the refrigerator overnight.To reheat, preheat the oven to 325°F. Remove the beef cheeks from the refrigerator and skim the fat off the top. Cook for about 30 minutes, until the dish reaches your desired temperature.

Super Stock

Makes about 2 quarts
Ingredients:
2 quarts Vegetable Stock
3 ½-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and julienned
8 makrut lime leaves, julienned
15 cilantro stems
2 fresh bay leaves, julienned, or 1 dry bay leaf, crumbled
5 garlic cloves, smashed
1 Fresno chile, halved lengthwise
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons fish sauce

Directions:
1. In a large stockpot, bring the vegetable stock to a boil. Add the ginger, lime leaves, cilantro, bay leaves, garlic, chile, and fish sauce, then remove from the heat and let steep, uncovered, for 30 minutes.

2. Using an extra-fine-mesh strainer or chinois, strain the stock into an airtight container or containers.

3. Discard the solids. Use immediately or let the stock cool to room temperature, cover tightly, and refrigerate for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 3 months.

Reprinted with permission from Bavel: Modern Recipes Inspired by the Middle East by Ori Menashe, Genevieve Gergis and Lesley Suter, copyright © 2021. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Peshalo

Serves: 4

Ingredients:
For the noodles:
1 ½ cups plus ⅓ cup all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons water
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon kosher salt

For the soup:
1 cup dried garbanzo beans
6 cups water, plus more for soaking
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 quarts turmeric-chicken stock recipe
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 pound savoy cabbage, cut into 1-inch dice
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced into ½-inch cubes
1 pound spinach
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Special equipment:
Pasta sheeter
*Ori uses an Imperia pasta sheeter, turning the dial settings as follows: 10, 8, 6, 4, 3.

Directions:

1.Place the beans in a large bowl or other container, cover with water, and let soak overnight. Drain the beans and rinse thoroughly.

2. Make the noodles: Place the flour, water, egg, egg yolk, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment. Mix on the lowest speed for 4 to 6 minutes, until the dough forms a single mass that begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. (If your mixer can’t handle the density of the dough, slowly add a little more water to increase the hydration.) Turn the dough out onto a counter dusted with flour and knead by hand, rotating the dough 90 degrees with each knead, for an additional 4 to 6 minutes, for a total of 10 minutes.

3. Form the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap or store in an airtight plastic bag. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 3 days.

4. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and cut into four equal pieces. Wrap up the other three pieces to keep them from drying out while working. Lightly flour the dough and flatten a little with your fingers. Using a pasta sheeter, pass each dough portion through the sheeter one time on the widest setting. Fold the edges of the dough inward to form a rectangle, then flip the dough over and pass through the sheeter on the widest setting one more time. Keep passing the dough through the sheeter, progressively narrowing the settings, until you have a long, very thin strip of dough about 1/16-inch thick. If at any point the dough gets sticky, lightly flour each side. Alternatively, roll out the dough on a smooth, lightly floured surface with a rolling pin until 1⁄16 inch thick.

5. Lay the sheet of dough out on a floured flat surface. Using a pizza cutter or sharp knife, cut the dough into ½-inch-wide strips. The shape should be rustic, so they don’t need to be perfectly even. Repeat the entire process with the remaining three portions of dough. The noodles can be rolled and cut up to 2 days in advance. Lightly coat them with flour and store in small, loosely packed bundles inside of an airtight container in the refrigerator.

6. Make the soup: Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a large bowl, add the beans and baking soda and toss to coat. Evenly spread the beans on a sheet pan and bake for 8 minutes.

7. In a large pot over high heat, add the water and the baked beans. Bring the water to a boil, then decrease the heat to a simmer. Simmer uncovered, skimming off any foam that builds up on the surface with a spoon, for about 30 minutes, until the beans are tender but not falling apart. Remove from the heat and let the beans rest in the liquid for 5 minutes.

8. In a large stockpot over high heat, add the stock and salt and bring to a boil, then decrease the heat to a simmer. Drain the cooked garbanzo beans and add them to the pot along with the cabbage and carrots and cook for 10 minutes. Add the spinach and wilt for 1 to 2 minutes, then add the noodles, turmeric, and pepper. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes, until the noodles are cooked through. Serve immediately in individual bowls.

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