So far he has: hidden all my toilet paper (found many hours later in my underwear drawer), put tampons in the bathtub drain, changed all my Sirius presets to the gay station and the Christian station, put what I can only hope to be mouthwash into the toilet (the water was pink), changed my desktop to a rather...colorful...picture, and festooned my desk with scotch tape loaded with every office item he could find (mouse, stapler, pens, etc.). Not to mention the messages he routinely sends out informing people that I'm a racist pederast. Or something like that.
I retaliate by eating while I brainstorm, using too many vowels in my instant messages, and making my dog jump on him and hurt his already quite bad back. You do what you can.
I imagine that most people would kill him within about 10 minutes, but it appears that the hearty teasing I was treated to by my dad as a kid has primed me to find it amusing (thanks dad). And we actually get work done, so let's just call it our 'process' and move on.
Anyhow, all the writing/brainstorming/patrolling takes quite a lot of time and energy, so there hasn't been much cooking this week. There was, however, some cooking last weekend. Specifically, baking. Of a weird Sephardic recipe called Konafa bi Jibn that was given by my mom's cousin Leila and her husband Alan.
As my family is Ashkenazi, this is the first Jewish recipe we've gotten that is Sephardic. (Crib notes for the non-Jews: what I just said is my family is European and this recipe is Middle Eastern.) What this means on a practical level is that most of the Jewish food the Recipe Book has gotten is of the chicken-schmaltz-filled, heart-attack-inducing, liver and deli bagels variety rather than the honey/figs/nuts/goat legs variety. Or something.
I have been daunted by this recipe from the first time I laid eyes on it. First of all, it's called Konafa bi Jibn; there is nothing I can recognize in that, let alone pronounce. Second, it has a lot of weird ingredients that you can theoretically only get at specialty Middle Eastern groceries.
As a result, I have been basically avoiding this one as long as possible. But the witching hour is nearly here, so it's time to suck it up. Also, Josh's parents were here last weekend, and as Josh's dad was in Turkey in the Peace Corps and his mom was in Pakistan, I figured they would be prime candidates for a Middle Eastern style dessert. That, and they were planning on doing a ton of work helping us with DIY home projects, so I wanted to show them some gratitude.
Los Angeles has a sizable Middle Eastern population, so you would figure it would be easy enough to find the specialty ingredients (namely the rose water, the orange blossom water, and the pastry dough). You would figure wrong.
That is to say, I imagine there are a bunch of Middle Eastern groceries over on the west side in Westwood at the heart of the Persian population, but Westwood is a pain in the ass for me to get to. And given that I live in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is all about the traffic, I try to avoid it. I googled 'Middle Eastern Grocery Los Angeles' and I Yelped it, in every permutation I could find. Still, I was only getting random, small looking places in Westwood--if that.
I tried a place that was supposed to be near me, on Santa Monica in Los Feliz. I went there, and found what amounted to an empty storefront with no signs. Josh and I tried a place in Burbank when we were out doing errands one day and basically wound up driving around in a vacant area by train tracks. Heroin or crack we might have found there. Konafa--not so much.
As Leila claimed the pastry can be found at 'Greek or Oriental' stores, I thought about going to Papa Cristos, this pretty great Greek restaurant & grocery down by USC (and therefore much nearer to me), or going to hunt around Chinatown. Or even sucking it up and going to fight traffic and the tight parking lot by Mashti Malone's Persian ice cream parlor in Hollywood. They have rose water ice cream; it only stands to reason they might sell some rose water, too, along with a couple of the other non-ice cream type things they sell.
But still, the traffic. I just didn't want to spend hours upon hours going to place after place only to strike out again. Finally, I got brilliant. I changed my search to something like 'Persian grocery' instead of Middle Eastern and voila, I found a couple of places close to my house. This makes sense - I live very close to Glendale, the epicenter of LA Armenian culture. But surprise! There was another one, a closer one, a bigger one, in Glassell Park. I've hit the motherload!
Except I put the address wrong into the GPS and wound up driving to Burbank in rush hour traffic and having to turn around again. But I eventually made it to Glendale. Huzzah!
Side note: I just tried this Google search again so I could say what the name of the store was. You will not be surprised to discover it is not showing up in the results. I think it must have been called Brigadoon.
Anyhow, I get there, to Brigadoon, and it looks from the outside like a tiny hole in the wall gas station type market, kind of like the LA equivalent of a NYC bodega, except only frequented by scary people since here everyone drives their cars to the Trader Joe's with the biggest parking lots. Inside, it had surprisingly a lot of space though. I found the rose water and the orange blossom water very quickly. The pastry, though, was another story.
Between Leila's and the internet's description of konafa pastry, it sounded like it was sort of in the same realm as filo dough. So I headed to the freezer case, where I know filo is kept, and looked for it there. I found filo, and some other weird things, but no konafa. Great. I looked around the entire store. Maybe it isn't frozen, maybe it's a pastry they keep with the breads? No. With the baking things? No. With the crackers? No. I went back. It has to be in this damn freezer. I find something called kataifi, which, given that it is the only dough other than the filo and that it appears might fit Leila's description of konafa (i.e., 'vermicelli-like'), I deduce may be konafa. Or close enough to substitute after all the goddamn trouble I've gone to to get here.
I grab a box and head up to the charming, gas-station-like checkout counter, where I further push myself past my normal service industry person stoicism, point to the kataifi and say, 'Is this konafa?' The guy looks at me like I just spoke Hindi. 'Huh?' I repeat: 'This stuff. Is it like konafa?' He responds by fixing me with a look like I'm the world's biggest moron: 'It's the exact same thing.'
Okay, maybe his look wasn't that severe, but still. Note to Mr. Brigadoon: Don't expect the confused looking white girl to know that konafa and kataifi are the same thing. Although maybe he assumed that since I was buying konafa--an odd purchase for a consumer such as myself--that all bets were off?
Who knows. The point is I made it home, pleased as punch, pastry in tow. Oh, and I MADE THE RIGHT DECISION! I FIGURED IT OUT! FOR ONCE! I USED MY NOODLE AND THOUGHT, THIS HAS TO BE IT! INSTEAD OF LEAVING AND LEARNING LATER IT WAS IT! YEESSSS!!!!!
Never mind the fact that upon re-reading Leila's recipe she refers to it as kataifi in some places, a fact which I'd evidently missed before. Or that when I got home, I realized the pastry was going to have to thaw for an extended period of time, so it was going to have to be at least another day before I made it. We will not let either of these things overshadow the triumph of our narrative.
Making the actually Konafa bi Jibn was much easier than finding it--and I hadn't a clue what it was supposed to look like when it was done. The konafa pastry is, as Leila said, rather like spaghetti in appearance. It's nowhere near as delicate as filo, so you don't have to stress so much with it. And it basically just gets divided up into two buttery nest-like masses that you use for the top and the bottom.
Because I saw pastry and syrup and pistachio and filling in the recipe, I was busy billing Konafa bi Jibn as sort of a baklava meets cannoli type of dessert. I don't know if Ginny, Stu, Josh, and eventually Mike, who I gave some in between pranks, would necessarily agree with that description, but I'm not really sure what else to call it. Basically, it's like a ricotta pie. The weird pastry makes the crust, and then you shellac the top with the syrup and garnish with pistachios.
None of this made it sound like something I'd like. Although I do love Middle Eastern and Greek food, I do not generally love cannoli, baklava, or especially anything involving rose flavoring, which always tricks me (it smells so good, tastes so not). It turns out, however, I was pleasantly wrong; it was pretty nice. It's light, the pastry is crisp, the ricotta isn't too heavy. It isn't about to usurp cheesecake in my personal dessert hall of fame, but it was decent.
Namely the rose water wasn't too heavy, which is amazing, and that if you use a really light hand with it I don't mind it. While this recipe doesn't call for a light hand, the pie or whatever it was was overflowing with syrup after I poured only half of it on, so I had to stop. Lucky me. Josh and his parents clearly enjoyed it, as evidenced by the fact that they kept going back for more. Konafa bi Jibn. Indeed.
Konafa bi Jibn: It tastes all right. Just don't ask me to pronounce it.
Konafa bi Jibn, which is so hard to say I shouldn't add anything funny to the title
1 lb konafa pastry (aka Kataifi aka good God Damn luck finding it)
1/2 lb unsalted butter
2 lb ricotta
2 oz chopped pistachios
Syrup
1 lb sugar (which, if you are wondering, is a buttload of sugar)
1/2 pint water
squeeze of lemon juice (or a little more. you love your lemon juice.)
1 tbsp rose water
1 tbsp orange blossom water
Drive all over kingdom come looking for ingredients (see above). When you finally have them, ask someone to remind you to put the konafa into the refrigerator to defrost, because like filo, it comes frozen and needs to have about a day defrosting in the fridge before you can use it. Forget to then put it onto the counter for a final two hours of defrosting. Decide, 'God damn it, I am not stopping now,' and throw the damn stuff into the microwave for some final thawing. Bastard pastry.
Prepare the syrup by simmering the sugar water and lemon juice in a saucepan for 15 minutes until it is thick enough to coat a spoon. After 15 minutes, notice it does not appear much thicker, but at least you can taste some residue on the spoon. Good enough.
Add the flower waters towards the end and simmer for 30 seconds. Let it cool and then chill. In the fridge? In the freezer? Who knows? Put it into the fridge. When serving time comes around, you will learn you probably should have gone for the freezer as it is still warm. Readers: take note.
Melt the butter and let it cool a little before you pour it onto the pastry in a bowl. Or don't let it cool and burn your hands. Pull the pastry out (of the microwave--haha) and turn it until all the strands are well coated with butter.
Put half in a large round non-stick pan, or, in my case, a Pyrex bowl because why not? You have no idea what's going on anyhow. Spread the ricotta filling over it evenly and cover with the rest of the pastry. Flatten with the palm of your hand. Check.
Bake in a moderate 350-375 degree F oven for 45 minutes, then increase the heat to 450 degrees F for about 15 minutes until it is golden. Or discover it is mostly golden after the original 45 minutes (I used the 375 degree oven, and it shared with a pizza), so only put it in at 450 for a few and then shut off the oven and left it in to keep it warm while we ate said pizza.
Turn out on a round serving dish. Does this mean tip it over? This sounds like a very bad idea. Or does this mean just put our lovely oven-safe round baker onto a serving dish? This sounds much better. Do it this way.
Pour the cold syrup all over, discovering that you have WAY more than you need and the pastry can't suck it up fast enough. Not sure what this is all about. Decide to keep pouring anyhow, but it starts to overflow the dish and syrup the counter. Well, that will be enough then. Perhaps this is why you should put the pie plate on the serving dish? Perhaps this is why you are supposed to turn it out onto the dish? The dish has more room to accommodate the syrup? Ah, whatevs.
Chop up your cutely named 'pistachio nutmeats' (which makes me imagine a pirate parrot chanting, 'Nutmeat! Nutmeat!') procured from TJ's into what surely is way more than 2 ozs, but screw that, you get the point and can use what you want. Sprinkle with pistachios. Serve hot. So this is what Konafa bi Jibn looks like. Huh.
Leila note: This crisp vermicelli-like pastry with a cheese filling eaten hot with a fragrant syrup poured over was an important party dish in Egypt and Syria. The pastry called kataifi is sold in oriental stores or Greek stores.
Heather note: Or Persian stores. Or Iranian stores. Or Armenian stores. Or Middle Eastern stores. Or something, whatever Google can give you to a place that actually exists and isn't a thousand miles away. God be with you on your attempt to find one.
You have the weirdest friends.
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