the peppers in the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil and season them with salt and pepper. Place the peppers on a baking sheet and roast them in the oven until they are soft and collapsed, 8 to 10 minutes. Set them aside but keep them warm.
6. In a small mixing bowl, combine the cumin with the oregano and Aleppo chilies and sprinkle the skirt steaks evenly on both sides with the spice mixture.
7. Grill the steaks over charcoal (see Grilling Tips, page 100), or sear them as follows. In a large, heavy skillet or cast-iron pan over medium-high heat, mix ½ tablespoon of the canola oil and ½ tablespoon of the remaining butter. When the butter turns brown, add the steaks and sear them on the first side, allowing them to brown for about 5 minutes. Lower the heat if the pan becomes too smoky or if the spices begin to burn. Turn the steaks over and brown the other side. Cook for another 5 minutes if you want them more well done. Put them on a platter to rest and wipe the pan out. Brown the remaining steaks with the remaining ½ tablespoon of butter and oil.
8. Arrange the pita halves on 4 plates. Remove the steaks from the pan and rest them on the pita. As the meat rests, the juices will soak into the bread. Top with tomato sauce, yogurt, and the peppers and serve with the extra caramelized butter to drizzle over all.
COFFEE
Arabic coffee is ground as fine as powdered sugar and flavored with cardamom. It’s brewed slowly and carefully on a stovetop in a small, long-handled copper or stainless steel urn. The cardamom is either ground and brewed with the coffee, or the cardamom pod is smashed and you will find it floating in the coffee, where you sip around it.
Turkish coffee is ground ultrafine like Arabic coffee and prepared on the stovetop, but the Turks do not use cardamom to flavor their brew. I have seen many different preparations of Turkish coffee. Some people add lots of sugar. Some add very little sugar. Some let the coffee rise only once while swirling the pot from time to time. When I saw the coffee boiled on hot sand at Kokkari, a Greek restaurant in San Francisco, it turned out thick as custard sauce. The ultimate goal, however, is to achieve the crema (foam).
The Turkish coffee recipe included in this book (page 32) was taught to me by Mark Mooridian of MEM Tea, who is Armenian and sells beautiful wild herbal teas from his home country. Mark blends our Turkish coffee and grinds it fresh every week. One commercially available blend I recommend is called Kurukahveci Mehmet Effendi, and you can find it at www.tulumba.com.
You drink Arabic or Turkish coffee until you reach the silt at the bottom of the cup, and then you turn the cup over onto its saucer and leave it to rest for a minute. The silt forms patterns that predict your future. The ritual is to sit around and tell stories, predicting the future by reading the patterns of the grounds.
I once spent almost 2 weeks with a woman named Ayfer Unsal who lives in Gaziantep in southeast Turkey. Ayfer is a journalist and food writer who now lives in Istanbul and is one of the most charismatic people I have ever met. She had organized a gastronomic tour for me that kept me busy every minute from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Gaziantep, or Antep, is 1 hour from the Syrian border and is famous for its kebobs and pistachios, and considered to be the gastronomic capital of Turkey.
When I first arrived, Ayfer had organized a potluck luncheon in a park, and twenty of her female friends were there to greet me. They all brought a family dish to demonstrate that the best food in Gaziantep is cooked by women at home. We feasted on salads of purslane with tangy pomegranate molasses; seven different kinds of köfte ; lamb, beef, and nutty pilafs. At the end of this unforgettable lunch, we drank Turkish coffee. Ayfer told me that when I finished my coffee, I should turn the cup upside down and let it rest on its saucer for about five minutes. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching Ayfer make
6. In a small mixing bowl, combine the cumin with the oregano and Aleppo chilies and sprinkle the skirt steaks evenly on both sides with the spice mixture.
7. Grill the steaks over charcoal (see Grilling Tips, page 100), or sear them as follows. In a large, heavy skillet or cast-iron pan over medium-high heat, mix ½ tablespoon of the canola oil and ½ tablespoon of the remaining butter. When the butter turns brown, add the steaks and sear them on the first side, allowing them to brown for about 5 minutes. Lower the heat if the pan becomes too smoky or if the spices begin to burn. Turn the steaks over and brown the other side. Cook for another 5 minutes if you want them more well done. Put them on a platter to rest and wipe the pan out. Brown the remaining steaks with the remaining ½ tablespoon of butter and oil.
8. Arrange the pita halves on 4 plates. Remove the steaks from the pan and rest them on the pita. As the meat rests, the juices will soak into the bread. Top with tomato sauce, yogurt, and the peppers and serve with the extra caramelized butter to drizzle over all.
COFFEE
Arabic coffee is ground as fine as powdered sugar and flavored with cardamom. It’s brewed slowly and carefully on a stovetop in a small, long-handled copper or stainless steel urn. The cardamom is either ground and brewed with the coffee, or the cardamom pod is smashed and you will find it floating in the coffee, where you sip around it.
Turkish coffee is ground ultrafine like Arabic coffee and prepared on the stovetop, but the Turks do not use cardamom to flavor their brew. I have seen many different preparations of Turkish coffee. Some people add lots of sugar. Some add very little sugar. Some let the coffee rise only once while swirling the pot from time to time. When I saw the coffee boiled on hot sand at Kokkari, a Greek restaurant in San Francisco, it turned out thick as custard sauce. The ultimate goal, however, is to achieve the crema (foam).
The Turkish coffee recipe included in this book (page 32) was taught to me by Mark Mooridian of MEM Tea, who is Armenian and sells beautiful wild herbal teas from his home country. Mark blends our Turkish coffee and grinds it fresh every week. One commercially available blend I recommend is called Kurukahveci Mehmet Effendi, and you can find it at www.tulumba.com.
You drink Arabic or Turkish coffee until you reach the silt at the bottom of the cup, and then you turn the cup over onto its saucer and leave it to rest for a minute. The silt forms patterns that predict your future. The ritual is to sit around and tell stories, predicting the future by reading the patterns of the grounds.
I once spent almost 2 weeks with a woman named Ayfer Unsal who lives in Gaziantep in southeast Turkey. Ayfer is a journalist and food writer who now lives in Istanbul and is one of the most charismatic people I have ever met. She had organized a gastronomic tour for me that kept me busy every minute from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Gaziantep, or Antep, is 1 hour from the Syrian border and is famous for its kebobs and pistachios, and considered to be the gastronomic capital of Turkey.
When I first arrived, Ayfer had organized a potluck luncheon in a park, and twenty of her female friends were there to greet me. They all brought a family dish to demonstrate that the best food in Gaziantep is cooked by women at home. We feasted on salads of purslane with tangy pomegranate molasses; seven different kinds of köfte ; lamb, beef, and nutty pilafs. At the end of this unforgettable lunch, we drank Turkish coffee. Ayfer told me that when I finished my coffee, I should turn the cup upside down and let it rest on its saucer for about five minutes. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching Ayfer make
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