A largely unknown sandwich. Sabich / Sabikh

Southwest 5 to 7, becoming variable 3 or 4.

Slight or moderate.

Showers.

Moderate or good.

Sometimes you come across food and think: “Why did no one tell me earlier about it”. I had to turn 52 to learn about Sabich. I was queuing in Golders Green for a Falafel Shawarma and saw the word Sabikh. I turned around and asked the person behind me what that is. He looked me up and down and said: “Israel`s best loved sandwich”. “Oh”, I said, “I did not know that”.

The reaction around me was...interesting. Interesting as in standing in front of a bakery in Paris and telling the people around you: “I did not know the French ate croissants”. But they were all nice and told me how it is prepared here and there and where to get the best in town and if I ever go to Tel Aviv where to eat it. They also told me straight-faced that it is an old Iraqi-Jewish breakfast, to be eaten traditionally on the Shabbat because everything is prepared in advance. I swallowed everything. Even the Sabich, which is insanely good.

Apart from it being utterly delicious, the rest is bullshit. To be fair I don’t think they were trying to pull my leg, the same myths can be found on the internet.

Yes, it is a popular street food. And yes it has some elements of an Iraqi breakfast. But ultimately it is “hipster food”, which became famous in the 1970s; probably invented by some hungry Jewish teenagers in the 1950s, who threw everything they found in the fridge together and it worked like a dream. It is a (everything but the) “kitchen sink” sandwich. Even the name has a dodgy history. Some claim it has something to do with mornings, others with salad and yet a third group says Sabich was the name of the man who set up the first Sabich stall. He was probably one of the teenagers who invented it.

Just to give you an example what kind of insane stories are made up about the Sabich: One ingredient which is often used (but not mandatory) is “Amba”, a mango sauce.

It tastes very similar to the Indian mango pickle, in fact you can use every pickle you have at home. Trust me on this one, I have tried Amba and used today a Mini Gherkin (tindori) pickle.  

Now, I read several times that “this important ingredient symbolizes the spice route and it commonly known as Mango chutney...” blablabla. First of all it is not a chutney but a pickle (relish), and second the whole Middle East uses pickles, and if you happen to have mangos, you pickle them. Long before the spice route passed through.  And not everyone uses Amba, some use Zhoug, or both together; other jalapenos and others pickled red cabbage and Harissa. As you can see, the common denominator is vinegar and spicy. But plenty of recipes omit it all together.

So, what is a "must be" ingredient? From what I have read and tried out, there are 4 items which are always used: Grilled or fried aubergine slices, a hard-boiled egg, some kind of sesame sauce and parsley. Common are also boiled cold potatoes, a salad and Amba. The bread can be a pita or another flat bread, but it can be also served open faced.

The sesame sauce is either thinned Tahini or Houmous, or both. Some add yoghurt. Others dill pickles. Most layer the ingredients, others toss them all together and stuff them into the pita bread.

So feel free to swap one of the optional ingredients (not red) if you don’t like them.

Sabich

1 large pita bread

4 slices of 1 aubergine

1 hard-boiled egg

1 tablespoon of tahini

a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons of houmous

1 cooked potato in its skin

1 small tomato

3 rounds of cucumber

1 shallot

lemon juice and salt

olive oil

1 tablespoon of a pickle of your choice

Cut the shallot and sprinkle it with a bit of lemon juice and salt. Cut the cucumber rounds, the tomato and the parsley in small pieces, add to the shallot, sprinkle with more lemon juice and salt and put for a few minutes into the fridge.

Mix the Tahini with 1 tbsp of water, a bit of salt and a small drop of lemon juice and whisk until smooth.

Heat olive oil and fry the aubergine rounds until soft and slightly charred at the skin (you can also grill them in the oven, brushed with olive oil). In the meantime slice the potato and the egg. Toast your pita bread and take the salad out.

While the pita is still warm, open it and layer it as follow:

The houmous, topped by the aubergine, topped by the potato, topped by the tahini sauce, topped by the egg, topped by the salad and add finally the pickles. By now your Sabich will be pretty full and you wish you went for a bigger size of pita.

Tuck in and enjoy.

Sorry about the lousy photo, but I wanted to eat it while still warm.

Update:

Since I still had all the ingredients, minus the potato, I made it today again for breakfast. So the layering was a follow:

Houmous, fried aubergines, Tahini sauce, egg, salad and pickle.

I prefer it without the potato. Much creamier; mindboggling satisfying Vegetarian breakfast of the Gods. Or Goddesses.

Simple pleasures. Roti Canai and a soupy Curry.

Cyclonic 4 or 5, becoming southwest 5 or 6, occasionally 7 for a time.

Slight or moderate.

Thundery rain and fog patches for a time.

Moderate or good, occasionally very poor for a time.

The East of London was always a place for immigrants, from the Irish, to the Jewish refugees, the first Caribbean migrants and now it is home to the largest Bangladeshi community in the UK. If you take the tube to Whitechapel and go out, your senses are assaulted in the most wonderful way. Market stalls full of exotic fruits and vegetables, the spoken sing sang of vendors in a different language, colourful shop windows and incredible good food smells. 
I used to take an early tube and arrived there shortly before 8am. My next step however was not into a cafe getting a latte, but into one of the Bengali cafes in order to get my fix of Roti Canai. Sometimes I sat down and had the “full Monty”: freshly made Roti with the soupy curry and a lentil dish; if I was late I just grabbed a freshly made (as in: made after I ordered it) Roti and gobbled it down. What better way to start your working day with a hot, greasy pastry, especially in winter. Sometimes I also bought, on my way back, just the shaped dough and fried it at home with a proper curry.

Making a Roti is not difficult, at least making the dough. You need to rest it though, so it is best if you invest 10 minutes a few hours earlier (or the evening before), so all you have to do is making the quick curry and have fun with the dough flipping. I am pretty sure you can do that easily.

No? Neither can I. But if you look here, you realize it is actually not too difficult.

Still not convinced? You miss a lot of fun, but here is an easier method.

You will notice that this time he made a different shape. Both are common, the square one and the snail one which resembles a “cinnabon”.

The only difference is that once you have the snail shape, you stretch it, just before you put it into the pan, again.

You can also make it really flaky by using the croissant technique and brush each fold with ghee, but this is then very rich. The bread without ghee brushing is a bit denser, but not hard or chewy, just a bit more “substantial”.

This is what you can expect without brushing,  and this with (and an additional squeeze).
But honestly, it is really fatty and not really necessary.

You also have to decide on taste, do you want it flakier: then you omit the condensed milk (but have to add sugar and more water), or go for the richer taste.

Since the typical soupy curry, which accompanies it, is not very filling, I decided to go for the richer version.

The internet is full of the dough recipes, but finding a recipe for the soupy curry was quite challenging. In several blogs it was asked how to do it, but no one knew. But finally I struck luck. Okay, I was a bit miffed that it asked for “curry powder”, but to my surprise it tasted exactly how I ate it in several restaurants (and food stalls). They all seem to use some kind of ready-made generic mix. Here we go then, finally a use for “Schwarz mild curry mix”.

Roti Chanai

Plain Flour 60g

Water 27ml

Condensed Milk 8g

Oil or Melted Butter/Ghee 2ml

Salt 1 pinch

1 quail egg

Mix the flour and water. Once both water and flour are mixed evenly, leave it alone for 20 minutes for them to get to know each other intimately. This makes the further process much easier. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead it until the dough is a bit tacky but soft and flawless like a ball of marble. You might need a bit more flour for your hands. There is no way you can that small amount in a food processor, hence your hands need the odd dusting of flour. But kneading is easy. What you really want is a smooth ball of dough without any folds because these folds will cause problems during the flipping process. So form your dough into a smooth ball (a bit smaller than a tennis ball), oil one hole of your non-stick muffin tin, put the ball in it and rotate it, so it is evenly covered in oil. Rest it for at least 8 hours or overnight, outside your fridge, but covered with cling film.

When you are ready to cook it, flip it and shape it. Heat ghee in a pan and fry the Roti. Dont press it down, even if it expands unevenly, or you will destroy the layers.

Serve with the

Soupy curry

2 Potatoes, diced

1 small can Coconut Cream

½ onion, chopped

1 tsp Curry Powder

1 Star Anise

3 whole Cloves

1 Cinnamon Stick

1 pinch Chili Powder

1 tbsp Cooking oil

200ml Vegetable stock

Heat cooking oil, add onion and stir till soft.

Add curry powder, cinnamon stick, cloves, star anise and chilli powder. Stir for 30 secs. Then add potatoes into the curry mixture, stir for 2 mins. Add stock and coconut cream and simmer for 30 mins or until the potatoes are cooked.

 (I also added some mushrooms which needed using up, but this is not typical. However if you happen to have some okras or peas which start to wilt, feel free to add them. The whole idea is that the Roti is the star, and the soupy curry just something you dunk it in and scoop some bits out.)

It does help to have some cutlery, but you basically tear pieces of the Roti as you go along, dunk it into the sauce and enjoy. A beer goes nicely with it.

Verdict.

More pleased with the curry than the Roti. It was fine and flaky but maybe I just need more flipping practise. Could have been a tad airier. And the curry was not soupy enough, blame the extra mushrooms. But for a first attempt: Good enough.

A simple French cake for beginners. Quatre-quart cake

Northeast 5 to 7.

Slight or moderate.

Thundery showers.

Good, occasionally poor.

Sometimes it takes three things to go back into blogging after a break:

A request

Need for comfort

A challenge

My Dad died last week (see last entry). Since then I am eating like there is no tomorrow, but I don’t care what I am eating. I just throw things together and, if it fails to taste nice, there is always Srichia.

But I did miss cooking. Cooking is for me more than preparing something to eat, but it is difficult to get yourself excited about cooking if you don’t care what you eat.

Nevertheless I got restless. A crucial part in my life was missing. I was still looking at other food blogs but nothing captured my interest. Until I visited “Bloggers around the World” again. 

Chris sends us this month to France. 

LA FRANCE! FRONKREICH, FRONKREICH!

And that was the tipping point:

In need of comfort food? Check!

My last request (technically more have come up but I will deal with them in the next weeks), check.

A challenge? Check!

So it is going to be THE CAKE. The beginner`s cake. The simple cake. The cake with only four ingredients. The Quatre-Quart from Brittany. It is quite easy to make as long as you follow three rules:

1. You need a scale

2. You need only four ingredients (hence “four quarter cake”), but there are a few exceptions.

3. It only works with the best of ingredients, like all simple cakes.

Before I explain these rules, let me first tell you what you can expect in the end: A light, buttery, salty and sweet cake, a bit like a sponge cake. I don’t think it is a cake for a cup of tea, but it works like a dream with hot chocolate or a sweet wine like a Gewuerztraminer. It does not have a complex taste, but if you can get excited about freshly baked bread topped with the best of butter alone, this cake is for you.

It also works well not only with butter and jam, but also with a bit of cheese on top. Something like a Roquefort.

But now to the rules:

1. The American volume system doesn’t work here. Yes, there is a similar cake called pound cake which works with cups, but this here has a slightly different dough. You weigh your eggs (or egg), with the shell (!), make a note of the weight and all three other ingredients should be measured to the same weight. My first attempt on downscaling involved one egg at 67gr, so I added 67gr of butter, 67gr of flour and 67gr of sugar.

2. The four ingredients are egg, butter, flour and sugar. The allowed exceptions are: a pinch of salt for beating the egg white, a pinch of baking powder (it is NOT necessary but, if you have a not so perfect oven and/or feel nervous, allowed) and finally flavouring. Again, this is not necessary, the cake is perfect as it is, and in its simplicity will be a perfect canvas for other food, but if you feel adventurous  feel free to add a hint of vanilla extract, sauternes, lemon zest or (very nice) orange blossom water. Only a hint though, or you change the balance of liquids.

3. The quality of ingredients is important. Most notable the butter. French (and other Continental) butter use a different maturing technique. It results in a far more complex butter taste, both in the salted and unsalted variety. If you never had it before, you first taste of butter from Brittany or the Normandy is something which you will not forget. Furthermore they contain more salt than UK or Irish butter. While the latter two have a max of 2% salt, the butter from Brittany has 3%. And it is either coarse sea salt or “fleur du sel”.

The best butter available in a UK supermarket is the Reflets de France Guerande Salted Butter. If you can’t get it (or any other salted butter from Brittany), use the best quality butter you can afford and add some more sea salt crystals so it reaches 3%.

I personally like to use fine sugar (icing sugar), albeit caster sugar is fine. It just makes it a tad less grainy.

And since fine cake flour is a bit tricky to get, why not use the pasta (00) flour?

Nearly there, but before I go to the recipe let`s talk about portion size here. I made it twice. The first time with just a hen egg (67gr) and the overall dough filled nearly 4 of these mini cake tins. 

I then did it again with 2 quail eggs (together 29gr). The amount filled one tin and was thus perfect, but it was nearly impossible to get this small amount of egg white stiff. In the end I stopped at the soft peak stage and resorted to a pinch of baking powder. My advice: treat yourself and have more cakes. They keep a bit and if they get stale, why not make a Pain Perdu with the rest?

Quatre-Quart cake

1 egg

same amount of salted butter, flour and sugar as the weight of the whole egg (including shell).

Optional:

a pinch of salt

a pinch of baking powder

a hint of flavouring

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Separate the egg into egg yolk and white.

Cream the very soft butter with the sugar, but don’t overbeat it. You want to retain a bit of the sea salt crystals. Add the egg yolk, mix, and add the sieved flour and a pinch of baking powder if you want to use it. Mix. Beat the egg white to the firm peak stage and fold into the batter.

Fill into a silicone mould and bake in the oven between 15 to 20 minutes. Be careful in the last 5 minutes, it goes quickly from not yet quite done to over-baked and too brown.

Let it cool and serve with a nice glass of Gewuerztraminer

or even with a nice cold Pineau des Charentes

Happy baking and remember...

Obsession with dough. Taking time off

Southwesterly severe gale force 9 expected later

Moderate or rough, occasionally very rough.

Occasional rain

Good, occasionally poor.

Spend every free minute trying to get various doughs right.

Sod it. My Dad is now in intensive care and due for a major heart operation.

Will be back in a week. On the road.

Some things are more important than the question what the right amount of oil should be used in order to get the perfect flaky result in a Roti Chanai.