Field Expedient Mac and Cheese

Sometimes, you get out of work at 1 AM after closing down a kitchen for an hour, and you're hungry. Sometimes, you manage to stop at a fast food joint or a coney island (a Michigan-native variety of the 24-hour diner, specializing in chili dogs with onions and mustard, and Chicken Lemon Rice soup.) Sometimes, you grab a pack of snack crackers at a gas station and feed yourself on $3, including a pop or sports drink.

Sometimes, you get home at 1:30 AM and you're just damn hungry. So you pull out a slice of havarti cheese from the fridge, and grab a log of Norcino salami, cured and covered in white mold. You slice yourself a bit, and nibble a corner of cheese, and think to yourself, "I want macaroni and cheese, but I don't have any to microwave and I don't have a box of blue stuff."

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Blue Box Macaroni and Cheese. I grew up very close to my grandmother, and while she didn't produce many culinary delights for me, she did make me Kraft Mac & Cheese, which was bright orange and delicious to my young self. At those times in my life when I've been at my lowest, or most in need of comfort, I've gone and bought boxes of Kraft M&C just so I could remember my Nana, and feel better about my life.

That, however, is somewhat of a diversion from the main focus here—field expedient mac and cheese, which is what happens when a hungry cook gets home from work and wants a dinner.

Mornay sauce is, traditionally, béchamel sauce with Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses added; In this instance, I've produced a slight variation on that, with Havarti, cheddar, and Parmesan, as well as a bit of parsley.

Majadara Kagashi

Auguste Escoffier, master of Classical French Cuisine, had a habit of naming his dishes after people. It's not immediately clear whether these names were chosen because the dishes were inspired by the people named, created for the people named, or merely associated with them by Escoffier to make a splash on his menu: the likely answer is a combination of the three, though during his tenure as head chef at the Savoy, Ritz, and Carlton hotels (as well as nominally overseeing many other kitchens, directly or indirectly,) he most certainly did serve food to many of the people included in his Guide Culinaire.

In the grand tradition established by the king of chefs, I have named this dish in honor of my good friend Miss Kagashi, author of The Steamer's Trunk (Multiculturalism for Steampunk.) She posted the recipe I used for the base of this plate; of it, she writes:

Majadara is a Levantine dish, dating back thousands of years. By its definition, it is a simple pilaf of rice and lentils topped with caramelized onions and was primarily eaten as "poor man's" or "working man's" food. As with most staple Middle Eastern and Mediterranean dishes, there's some squabble over where it actually originated[...], but the recipes differ country to country so it could actually be considered several separate dishes. In some places the rice is switched out for bulgar wheat, in Lebanon pine nuts and garlic yogurt are sometimes companions, and sometimes the recipe alternative between red or green lentils.

Considering what you use and the final yield, this is a fantastically cheap recipe that can be dressed up a couple of ways in good times or just eaten as is in less than fortunate ones.

As good as majadara is on its own, I chose to combine it with a few other dishes from the Mediterranean region, to create a dish delightful in its own right, and more along the lines of my typical presentation than a simple pilaf.

Turkish Beef and Cheese Böreks

We've encountered Böreks before, though by a different name. As was discussed then, they are found across the Middle East, and for the State Dinner at the Dolmabahçe, Oz decided to serve a Turkish style of Böreks, known as Sigara böreği, literally translating to "Cigarette Böreks." It's a descriptive name, coming from their construction: unlike the Israeli style seen at the Hanukkah Dinner,  these böreks are made with phyllo dough (or, traditionally, yufka) and rolled up like a cigarette, then fried—we chose to shallow-fry them in vegetable oil.

Oz says, "Phyllo dough is not ideal for this recipe—you should probably use yufka instead, or make kofte." Kofte is the meat mixture, lightly sautéed in olive oil and served. "It wouldn't be unheard-of to add an egg to the mixture, either," he adds.

For our dinner, we made two versions of these böreks, a cheese- and a meat-filled version, and we served them with zchug, as with the bourekas.