Eggs and Sumac in Pottery – A Lebanese Breakfast

Eggs and Sumac with yoghurt

The Lebanese are bacillophobic, but their fear of bacteria is somewhat selective and irrational. Growing up, most chicken I had was cooked until all trace of moisture had evaporated. Runny eggs? Forget it. Sashimi? Unheard of. Yet, from the age of five, I have been enjoying delicacies such as kibbeh nayyeh (raw minced beef/lamb), liyyeh (raw tallow fat) and even raw liver (which is great by the way, with nothing but finely ground black pepper and a sprinkle of salt). It seemed that lamb and beef were exempt from germs, if your uncle knew the butcher, but a nice fresh piece of raw kingfish was out of the question. Things are changing, and sushi is now all the rage (I have a good story about that, but I’ll save it till later), but it seems there is no convincing my fellow compatriots of the virtues of a buttery, creamy egg yolk that is barely starting to set. For instance, my good friend Ludwig, upon a recent visit to Lebanon tried to make his brother scrambled eggs. The eggs were organic and fresh, and Ludwig cooked them to perfection, but his brother still would not touch them because they were still “raw”! Instead, the normal way of eating eggs would be frying them until the whites were golden crisp and the yolks were completely dry. Then and only then would they be safe! It was only when I came to Australia in 2001 when I saw the lunacy of this approach.

A jar of sumac

Now that I’ve sufficiently ranted, it is worth mentioning that we do have some excellent egg recipes. Eggs with qawarma (lamb preserved in its fat) for instance rivals the best eggs and sausages, truly. Another favourite of mine is eggs with sumac. Sumac is both the sumac plant and the dried crushed berries that grow on it. Sumac, verjuice and pomegranate molasses form a trinity in the Lebanese villager’s mouneh (larder) and they serve the purpose of providing acidity, and are excellent substitutes for lemon juice, especially in the mountains where citrus trees can not grow. The use of pottery to cook the eggs is also traditional, and with sufficiently low heat, you will be able to achieve crisp egg whites, while maintaining a creamy yolk. Sumac sprinkled on top of the eggs is wonderfully decorative, and its acidity is not overwhelming, but is aromatic and interesting.

Eggs with sumac recipe

There is really nothing to this recipe. Put a ceramic fry pan on a low flame and add a tablespoon of olive oil. When the oil is hot, crack the eggs on top. After a minute or two, add your salt, pepper and sumac. How much you add depends on your taste, but I’d say half a teaspoon of sumac for each egg. Keep frying until the egg whites have set. Serve with fresh Lebanese bread and Greek-style yoghurt.

Manakish – Lebanon’s Favourite Breakfast

Manoosheh b zaatar with tomatoes, mint and cucumber

It is difficult to think of a Lebanese breakfast that is more popular or loved than the manoosheh. Round flat discs of bread covered with zaatar (thyme, sumac and sesame seeds) mixed with olive oil and baked in the oven or on top of a saj. Manakish (مناقيش), the plural of manoosheh (منقوشه), are so prevalent in the Lebanese culture that every borough or village has one or more dedicated bakeries. They are also entrenched into our pop culture and are symbolic as being the food of the poor (along with falafel). The word itself means decorated or stamped, referring to how the dough is flattened using the tips of the fingers which leave a stamp-like decorative pattern. The manoosheh may be famous for being the Lebanese pizza, but despite its fame, there is little available literature that points in the direction of its origin, and nothing that gives us an idea of how long it has been present in Lebanese homes. Chef Ramzi, the Lebanese celebrity chef has a brief paragraph on the subject in his book “From the Heritage of Lebanon” (من تراث لبنان). The manoosheh, he suggests, is a recent addition to the Lebanese diet:

The manoosheh has only recently appeared in Lebanon, evolving to this day to become Lebanon’s most demanded breakfast. The main reasons for that are its ease and speed of preparation, its low price tag, it being tasty and its readiness to marry with a multitude of ingredients to produce a world of flavour… Each house wife would, upon returning from the fields, prepare a zaatar mix and distribute it on the saj loaves… All these variations fall under the category of manakish. This is considered a good example of the evolution of the Lebanese traditional village cuisine, in that it aligns itself to the needs and requirements of the modern consumer and adapting to them.
Chef Ramzi – From the Heritage of Lebanon 2002

The accompanying herbs and veggies are no less important

The paragraph above surely paints a picture, but, doesn’t really tell us much about the history of the manoosheh. I for one am a sceptic of the above claim of relative recency. Firstly, zaatar (thyme) is a wild herb that has always grown in the Lebanese mountains. Olive oil is presumed to have been first pressed by the Canaanites (Phoenicians) at around 4500 BC. Flat breads, leavened or unleavened also reach back to antiquity. In the tenth century, Ibn Sayyar Al-Warraq, in his Arab cookery book Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Cooking), includes six recipes for bread, baked in a tannur (the Arabic word for tandoor). So if by the tenth century, the Lebanese had access to thyme, olive oil and flat bread, it seems highly unlikely that these ingredients so destined to be together wandered the earth lonely for long.

To me, the manoosheh holds the same special place it does for every Lebanese. There is beauty in its simplicity, its aroma brings back childhood memories and the flavour of zaatar reminds me of home. The toppings can certainly vary: akkawi cheese, kishk (dried yoghurt and burghul), spinach, meat, eggs and qawarma, etc… But the original and best is zaatar. Eat it with loads of fresh mint, tomatoes and cucumber. To me, that’s the taste of Lebanon.

Manakish Recipe

Ingredients
5 cups strong pizza flour (if you can, otherwise, all purpose white flour would do)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 and 3/4 cups water
2 tspns salt
2 tspns sugar
1 tbspn yeast

Toppings
1/2 cup Zaatar mix (buy it from your Middle-Eastern suppliers) adding enough olive oil to make a slightly runny consistency. If it doesn’t have toasted sesame seeds, add them.

Method

In a large bowl, Mix all ingredients except for the water. Incorporate well. Make a well in the center and add the water. Knead the dough. It will be much stickier and softer than pizza dough, but it needs to hold together. If it doesn’t, keep kneading until it does. Keep aside to rise for an hour, covered with a wet cloth.

Heat the oven up to 220 C. Take some dough and spread it on a tray, using the tips of your fingers until it is the thickness of thin crust pizza. Top with the zaatar mix, again using your fingers to spread. Put the manoosheh in the oven for around 15 minutes. Remove when the bottom has cooked and become nice and golden.

Sujuk – from Armenia to Lebanon and to the land down under

OK. This is not here just to save face value. I have neglected you. I’m sorry. But hey, I’m back now. Let’s just move on.

I was showing a colleague some blog pix back in December and her comment was: How do you expect people to follow your blog if you haven’t updated in a week… Truth of the matter is, I don’t really expect people to follow my blog. The fact that I have a few visitors each month is taking me continuously by surprise. A recent comment on my blog was chasing me up for a task I had set myself in the first ever post. I obviously have not done any entries on Lebanese breakfasts. But, after a visit to Emma’s on Liberty, I had the chance to get reacquainted with an old favourite: Sujuk. Before I get stuck in, I want to make it clear, this is not a post for the sake of posting. This is the real deal, a full subject matter, so let’s dig in.

Red Sujuk Stockings, probably great for Christmas, with black Sujuk in the background

Lebanon has a fantastic Armenian community who have enriched our cuisine and with whom we have co-contributed to much cross-cultural osmosis. Our fellow Armenians have had a presence in Lebanon for centuries, but the major influx was during the Ottoman empire’s Armenian genocide in 1915 – a very sad event.

But Armenians are a strong and positive people, and they persevered well, and integrated into the Lebanese society where they now have representatives in the parliament. An area of major concentration is Bourj Hammoud, and there you will find some of the best sujuk ever.

All cut up and frying, with no oil.

So sujuk, it turns out, is a semi-dry, spicy sausage that crosses cultural boundaries. It can be found in more or less similar form in Macedonia, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Armenia. The version familiar to me is the latter, and after the visit to Emma’s, I wanted more. Emma’s version of this Armenian specialty is pure authenticity. What left me hanging is the mean, upsettingly small portion.

My recipe based on a traditional version with plenty of onions and fresh tomatoes, made smokey by the sujuk slices

Normally, I would seek sausages out at the butcher’s. This particular one however, has an alcoholic ingredient (red wine or arak) which means none of the Lebanese butchers I know would make it, alcohol being a forbidden ingredient by Islam. So, determined to make my own, I looked around the net for resources and found several. So I took the best bits of all the recipes, and came up with my own. It turns out there are two types of sujuk – red and black. Red sujuk contains red wine and has paprika as a main ingredient, which gives it its color. Black sujuk depends on pepper for spice, with the aniseed hit coming from Arak (the macho Lebanese cousin of ouzo or pastis). Beware, you will be stuffing the meat in freshly bought single legged ladies stockings. So here is how you make it:

Red Sujuk
1 Kilo fatty beef mince (or half beef, half lamb)
1/4 cup finely minced garlic
2 tsp salt
2 Heaped Tablespoons Sweet Paprika
2 Heaped Tablespoons Smokey Paprika
1 Heaped Tablespoon Fenugreek spice
1 Heaped Tablespoon Cumin
1 Heaped Tablespoon Black Pepper, the fine powder type, not the fresh cracked.
1/2 cup of Red Wine, nothing too expensive

Black Sujuk
1 Kilo fatty beef mince (or half beef, half lamb)
1/4 cup finely minced garlic
2 tsp salt
1 hpd tbsp white pepper
1 hpd tbsp black pepper
1 hpd tbsp cinnamon
1 hpd tbsp cumin
1 hpd tbsp allspice
1/2 cup arak

1. Mince all ingredients together for your chosen color in a mincer (or in a food processer).
2. Stuff meat nicely in clean stockings and make sure the meat is nice and uniform.
3. Hang meat for 3 to 5 days at room temperature, less if hot, more if cold.

So, of course, after a week, I had to get everyone over for a sujuk festival.

Stuffed soujouk foccaccia, pre-oven

To cook the sujuk, you need only slice it and fry it dry in a frying pan. The amount of fat within is sufficient to fry it nicely.

For the foccaccia, I used a basic recipe with mozzarella, parmesan, semi-dried tomatoes and sujuk.

The following are questions I had in my mind
1- Is this safe? Should I be hanging meat in the garage? A – Yeah, come on!
2- Will it rot? A – You won’t know unless you try. My batch didn’t rot
3- Will it dry up? A – Yep, slightly, and it becomes harder on the outside, which makes it easy to slice
4- Will it drip as it hangs? A – No
5- How do I know if it has gone bad? A – Evidently, it will smell bad, but the alcohol and salt should preserve it well.

The stuffed foccaccia as an end result.

So, what do I think? Fantastic result, and everyone loved it. None was left over, so that’s cool… I had to buy a few books about sausage making as a result, but that’s another post for another time.

*References
http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm#DRY
http://www.georgefamily.net/cookbook/16Soujouk.html

Lebanese Breakfast

I remember breakfasts of Labneh, Zaatar, mint, tomato and cucumber with fresh, paper thin markouk bread. On weekends, when time was a luxury we could afford, it would be kishk and qawarma hiding full cloves of garlic in creamy whiteness speckled with shallow fried pine nuts. We burnt our tongues in impatience and never learned to wait. Eggs with sumac were fluffy and crunchy, slowly fried with olive oil in pottery and devoured within seconds with farm fresh home made goat’s milk yoghurt. Every once in a while, mom would send dad down to the baker’s with a variety of containers to be made into Lebanese pizzas and pies. The one for manakish would be full of her special zaatar mix – hand picked mountain thyme, dried and mixed with freshly roasted sesame seeds, sumac and of course, olive oil from our decades old olive grove. Another would have spinach and wild silver beet mixed with onions and used to fill the triangular Fattayer b’Sbenekh w Selek. Then there was Lahm b’Ajeen, mutton and beef mince mixed with onions, tomatoes, pine nuts, pomegranate molasses and spices served piping hot on top of the crispy golden brown pastry. A squeeze of lemon juice was all it needed to become the perfect meat pie. Let’s not get into an argument here.

Dad would drive on missions in search of the freshest produce. On his way back home, he would beep the horn, sending a special message that got us on to our feet and out to greet him. The three boys would help dad carry boxes full of the freshest produce upstairs where mom would complain. On a good day. electricity was only available for two or three hours if we were lucky, and that meant that produce needed to be bought and consumed very quickly. But Dad had a problem. Buying a kilo or less of anything was a strange concept he never embraced; and so mom got busy cooking three or four meals at a time, preserving what she could and handing out the rest to the neighbours, who were all too keen to repay the favour and offload their own husbands’ overzealous shopping habits, undermining mom’s evacuation efforts.

Over the next few posts, I want to cover many of the Lebanese breakfast foods we eat. I will aim to recreate the recipes using high quality raw ingredients sourced locally from Sydney wherever possible . Wish me luck.

(grapes from my father’s garden)