Za'atar is a category, like curry is. So there's an herb that's called za'atar just like there's one called curry, and not all za'atars or all curries even contain the titular ingredient, but they're all legit.
Also I have a peeve about recipes, where I think it's evil to claim to own a recipe or technique, and in line with my Strong Belief in the Opensourcedness of Food Preparation, recipes and cooking methods are just forks at most, not appropriations.
Your general premise is spot on, but IT DOES NOT APPLY TO COOKING. Everybody gets credit or nobody does! That is the rule! That I just invented right now!
Sort of on topic for lisarea's American Hating derail, this weekend I was feeling horribly lazy, so I picked up some stuff called Gorma Korma, which is a mild coconut-milk-based curry sauce that I'm sure some of you have heard of but I hadn't. The jar wasn't terribly cheap, like $5.50 or so, but since I already had some hugeassed chicken breasts in the freezer and potatoes and onion on hand, I pretended like it was a way to feed all 4 of us for only five bucks and change, which it totally was. Anyway, this stuff is excellent. Just interesting enough to satisfy my curry craving without being too spicy for the fambly wimps (Li'l Puppet mainly), while all I had to do was chop stuff up and dump it in a pot, thus satisfying my need to have something different and tasty without actually having to work at it. I'm gonna use this stuff again, but with more stuff like maybe lentils and some sort of greens.
So yeah, totally lazy enough to be American, but not so American to keep it from being actually, y'know, good.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Last edited by Sock Puppet; 02-16-2015 at 09:17 PM.
Reason: Not ready to be burned as a heretic by the pharisaical orthodoxy of spelling stuff right
We have a giant Asian supermarket right by the house, so I keep different little cans of curry paste and coconut milk in the cupboard, so I can make stuff into a fancy curry and act like I almost died from all the work, even though I just put some cans of stuff in. It's p. great and I totally recommend everyone do that, including the part about pretending you almost died making it.
Get it at an Asian grocery if you can, though, because the gwailo stores charge wayyyy too much for those ingredients, like I'm talking I've seen things cost ten times as much for the same exact thing.
That is p. great in areas like ours where there is an Asian store, because then you literally pay money to be racist.
Sort of on topic for lisarea's American Hating derail, this weekend I was feeling horribly lazy, so I picked up some stuff called Gorma, which is a mild coconut-milk-based curry sauce that I'm sure some of you have heard of but I hadn't.
Heh. Yes, it's Korma. Yet there are reviews of it misspelling it the same way I did.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Za'atar is a category, like curry is. So there's an herb that's called za'atar just like there's one called curry, and not all za'atars or all curries even contain the titular ingredient, but they're all legit.
Based on what I've read about it, the herb za'atar is "Biblical hyssop" (because, of course, there are different kinds of hyssop, because only one kind of hyssop would be too easy), and it's similar or related to what we usually call thyme (and which is what I put in my za'atar blend), but is actually a different thing. I was reading about it a while back because I apparently decided my life wasn't complicated enough yet, so I was trying to find authentical za'atar to use for that.
Oh for the love of god, look at this Wikipedia entry:
Quote:
Origanum syriacum; syn. Majorana syriaca (also Origanum maru, although this primarily refers to a hybrid of O. syriacum),[3] bible hyssop,[4] Biblical-hyssop,[1] Lebanese oregano[1] or Syrian oregano,[1] is an aromatic perennial herb in the mint family, Lamiaceae.
You know that thing when you think you know something and then you find out more stuff about that thing and it starts to make you question reality itself? WHAT THE FUCK ZA'ATAR? Oregano now too?
<-- This eagle renders all this za'atar talk on topic.
Huh, I always heard it referred to as thyme. It features in names of towns or even the name of the refugee camp Tell al-Zaatar in Lebanon, which is translated as the Hill of Thyme (or Thyme Hill).
Oh, yeah, I forgot to include that it is also referred to as wild thyme. (That man in the article is one of the most likeable looking people I have ever seen.)
But if you search on wild thyme, that term seems to refer to a bunch of different species, so I guess there's wild thyme and wild thyme, and of course, there are a bunch of cutesy named catering companies called that as well.
I hope I've been able to clear this all up for you.
Seriously, the more I read about it, the less I understood. This, in a nutshell, is why I gave up looking for authentic za'atar.
Huh, okay. I had my first za'atar in Palestine, Ramallah, where they usually use a pretty salty version and they mix it up with olive oil and dip their bread in it for breakfast. They also sell bread with it already on it, which they then dip in olive oil. I think the Palestinian one is thyme and salt mostly but not sure what else. The Syrian one has sumac added.
Wikipeed says:
Quote:
Thyme is said to be a plant "powerfully associated with Palestine", and the spice mixture za'atar is common fare there.
The version I make is, like, mostly sumac. Sumac, toasted sesame seeds, thyme, oregano, and salt, IIRC.
I love sumac. As soon as I got me some and tried it, I realized that this was the ingredient I was missing in a bunch of things. I'd be trying to add citrus and stuff to things to recreate what I was going for and never quite got it until I found out about sumac.
The moral of this post is: SUMAC.
ETA that my favorite middle eastern restaurant and probably the one I tried to copy the most is Syrian, so this totally jibes.
ETA yet again to tell Watser? a story but to respect the fact that I feel kind of bad for turning this thrad into a thrad about za'atar because that is inappropriate and I tried but I am impulsive and stupid.
So, you see, what happened was that I used to go to this restaurant called Jerusalem, which was a super-busy middle eastern place right across the street from the DU campus in Denver. The food was good, but it was kind of scarily dirty sometimes and always way too busy and sometimes there'd be really big fistfights, but it always won the reader awards from the local free paper for Best Middle Eastern food. So one day, we go there and are standing around in the lobby waiting like 20 minutes for a table, and someone 'important' (cops, maybe? I forget) rolled in and they gave the next table to them, so I was like OMG FUCK YOU ASSHOLES THAT IS BULLSHIT and they were all AW WE DIDN'T SEE YOU and I'm like bullshit I'm not waiting, and we left. And I was like, "I've seen another place before," and went like half a mile down the road to that place, which was called Damascus. And we went in, it was very sparsely populated, got a table, and it was clean and the people were nice, and the food was awesome and abundant and it was about the same price as the stuff from that other place, but there was more of it, it was better, and nobody was an asshole. So I wrote an email to the restaurant critic at that free paper, and she went there and gave it a glowing review, and maybe it's my imagination, but they seemed to be doing much better business after that. And they're still there and have better Yelp scores than stupid Jerusalem.
Based on what I've read about it, the herb za'atar is "Biblical hyssop" (because, of course, there are different kinds of hyssop, because only one kind of hyssop would be too easy)
Isn't a za'atar one of those twangy harp-ish arabian instruments?
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
That kind of reminds me of that thing where someone who is just starting to cook for themselves decides to just put all their favorite foods into one thing, so everything ends up having tons of bacon and cheese, and nothing really goes together.
I think there should be a distinction made between the traditional post-war Americaning up of food (processed cheese food product, Wonder bread, ranch spooge) and the hipstering up of food (bacon, bacon, bacon! and fat disgusting jiggling pork belleh. of course).
Everyone knows the best part of the New England clam chowder are the soup crackers!! How are you supposed to put these in a popsicle and still maintain their structural integrity??