delicious kibby made by my beautiful sister

kibby is a lebanese dish that sitty makes. it is basically lebanese meatloaf... ground beef (or lamb) with bulgur wheat and spices. you can eat it raw (my absolute favorite... you pour melted butter on top and then eat it with slices of raw onion wrapped in syrian bread) or baked or fried. nobody ever made this as good as sitty until my sister annette decided to take on the challenge. readers, you heard it here first... annette's kibby is better than sitty's (don't tell sitty). she made it for me over christmas and it was the best gift anyone could have given me. here are some pictures.

annette is going to hate me for posting pics of her without makeup all over the internet

raw kibby

this is the filling (ground beef + onions + pine nuts) that goes between two layers of baked kibby

preparing the kibby for baking

it's almost ready to go in the oven

raw kibby (kibby nayye)

1 lb. very lean round steak (95% lean ground beef), ground 2-3 times (your butcher will do this for you)

3/4 c. fine cracked wheat (bulgur)

1 small - medium onion, ground or grated finely

1.5 t. salt

1/2 t. black pepper

1/2 T. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. allspice

soak wheat for 10-15 min in cold water. mix onions and meat together, add spices, mix (you are doing all this mixing with your hands, which you need to regularly dip into icy water to keep them cold). add wheat, mix (with a little cold water if necessary).

annette demonstrates what i want to do with that big lump of raw kibby

kibby stuffing (hashwah)

1 lb. ground lean beef

1 med. onion, finely chopped

2-3 T. butter (i think annette told me that this is too much so maybe less)

1/4 c. pine nuts

1/3 t. black pepper

1 t. salt

fry everything together except pine nuts. add 1/2 c. water if it's too dry and then drain it. add pine nuts.

baked kibby

grease 16 x 10 x 2 pan with 1 T. oil. spread a layer of kibby and then a layer of stuffing over the kibby, and then another layer of kibby (annette says that second layer of kibby is hard to do over the stuffing).

cut the kibby into 5 equal parts lenghtwise and 8 equal parts crosswise, then cut diagonally. pass a knife around the sides of the baking pan to release the kibby. put some little chunks of butter on the top (2 T.). bake for one hour at 350-375. put in the broiler for a few minutes if it's not brown on top.

the finished product

i like to eat my baked kibby with syrian bread and dip it into yogurt. but like i said my favorite is raw kibby. as long as you get the meat freshly ground from a butcher you can trust and make it right away, you will be fine.

red coat tavern

while i was in michigan over the holidays, my sister made a pretty serious proclamation. "i know a place that has the best burger in michigan." clearly i could not just let that one slide and demanded that she take me there. a short ride on 275 and there we were... red coat tavern.

the place was hilarious and... red. i read some reviews online and one angsty eater claimed it was "too red" for him to enjoy his meal. i found it to be a high, but acceptable, degree of red.

enough about the lighting... let's get to the food. they have an impressive menu that includes a scotch egg, a cuban sandwich, and two different seafood chowders. but we were there for the burger. you get your pick of toppings including onions which can be raw, grilled, burned, or caramelized.

there are about 10 cheese options and gruyere is one of them. smoked gouda is another. you can get "zip sauce" which is a reduction of au jus and butter. hi, my name is liz and i have died and gone to sauce heaven. and what about the bun? do you prefer brioche, an onion roll, grilled rye? or maybe something else? they have it. don't like lettuce? well how about watercress instead? the options were out of control.

we all got the burgers and we shared sides of onion rings and fries. the burger was everything it was supposed to be. huge (1/2 lb.), perfectly cooked (i asked for, and got, medium rare), delicious. the ingredients and toppings were top quality. there was a long wait but once i got my food i found myself completely unable to care.

another point worth mentioning is the beer selection. the back of the huge menu has a ridiculously long list of beers from all over the world. you could go there for a year and not try every beer (well maybe you could).

service was friendly. bellies were stuffed. taste buds were sated. best burger promises were fulfilled.

my thanksgiving in pictures

i am too lazy to blog lately so i am going to try doing things 5chw4r7z-style and just throw up some pretty pictures. he is winning awards and i am basically tanking as a blogger so i figure i can't lose. if nothing else, maybe i will get some more creepy japanese porn links in the comments.

is anyone still out there?

sorry for my miserable lack of posts lately. i'm not dead, just super busy and exhausted. i spent the weekend in detroit for the final four, where i watched my spartans kick uconn's ass on saturday only to get completely, embarrassingly destroyed by the tarheels on monday.

my awesome friend lavine got us last minute tickets on ebay and we had what i can really only describe as by far the most amazing sports event experience of my life. watching my team play in the final four in our home state? unbelievable. this even beats the time we snuck an entire pollo campero fried chicken dinner for four (for the two of us) into the us open and gnawed on drumsticks and plantains while watching roger federer kick everyone's ass.

this was one of the best nights of my entire life. yes we were in the nosebleeds.

the game on saturday night was beyond description. the energy in ford field was amazing, 2/3 of the 72,000+ fans were there for the spartans and we were all loud as hell. i screamed so much that i lost my voice and got lightheaded. it was so much fun. monday was another story but at least we made it to the championship game!

my metro detroit food highlights of the weekend:

• lou's deli in southfield. get the counterman's treat: "Corned beef, Swiss cheese, cole slaw, Russian dressing on an onion roll." you can thank me in cash. i accept paypal.
• the breakfast club in farmington. get anything. it's all awesome. go for the tomatoes au gratin as a side. yummo! (sorry, that just slipped out. i promise it will never happen again.)
• vicente's cuban cuisine downtown. best cuban sandwich outside of miami (other than zingerman's although, to be fair, vicente's is more authentic). maduros that are so perfect you just marvel at them. amazing cuban food in detroit? yes my friends, the dream is now a reality.
• la marsa mediterranean cuisine in farmington hills. the detroit area la shish restaurants used to serve the best hummus i ever tasted in my life and chicken with this dipping sauce that was literally crack mixed with garlic. for years they were having problems with tax fraud and then rumor spread that they were sending money to terrorists in lebanon. thousands and thousands of metro detroit residents ignored the problems and continued to pour their hard earned dollars directly into funding al qaeda simply because they could not live without this hummus. then la shish got shut down in 2008 and the city mourned. but no worries, the food carries on at la marsa, which somehow got its hands on all the la shish recipes.
  
• jamaican curry, rice and peas, coleslaw, and lemon cake cooked by lavine and cindy and my mom's roast rosemary chicken. good luck finding that, suckas!
  

it was an awesome food and sports weekend. however, i barely slept. we drank bottle after bottle of wine, talked 24-7, and went to bed no earlier than 2 am every night. i also visited my family and tried to keep up with work email/voicemail. so it was crazy.

then i got back to work on wednesday and the shit was hitting the fan all over the place. hence no time to blog. i promise i will do better. don't leave me, readers!

zingerman's delicatessen

i'm sorry new york but the best deli i have ever been to in my life is in ann arbor, michigan. if you have ever been anywhere near the metro detroit area, odds are you have heard of zingerman's. it started off as a deli specializing in i guess just the best of everything. then it grew and grew and now it is this cluster of gastronomic deliciousness... there's a creamery, a bakery, a roadhouse, a coffee company, and a big mail order business.

if you just stopped here and never ate anywhere else again, you would die happy

this may sound like a recipe for disaster but let me tell you that i have literally never eaten anything that was not amazing from anywhere zingerman's. when i was younger, my family would take occasional trips to ann arbor and we always stopped at zingerman's for sandwiches, soup, and of course the crazy good pickles ("new" or "old").

when i went away to college i would make my friends drive to ann arbor on road trips just to eat at zingerman's. in the past year or so i've had to go to ann arbor a few times for work and i have rallied up posses of coworkers to nosh their way to sandwich heaven. i love this deli and so does everyone i know who has ever eaten there (and that is a lot of people since i have dragged practically everyone i have ever met there at some point).

goal in life #281: eat everything pictured in this photo before i die

the basic premise of zingerman's is simple... provide the absolute best of every food item they serve. if this means scouring the globe, even better. and on top of providing you with the most delicious array of food items available, the service kicks ass. it's like the staff just loves working there and can't help being happy just to be at zingerman's. i know that sounds cheesy but that is what i tell myself anyway. but seriously, if i worked there, i would be damn happy.

for me, zingerman's is all about the sandwiches and the pickles. that's what i go for. they have a huge menu (maybe 100 sandwiches at any given time?) which constantly rotates. of course, there are a number of old favorites which have been on the menu as long as i can remember. but there are also quite a few new choices every time i go.

i think these people might love cheese even more than i do

like any good deli, they offer all kinds of delicious sides (matzo ball soup, salads, latkes, etc.). they also have a full deli with every kind of meat and cheese imaginable, a bakery with chewy/tasty/delicious bread, a mind boggling variety of the best olive oils you have ever tasted, yummy sodas and coffees, and a spread of desserts including cakes, pies, gelato, cheesecakes, and cookies. and probably a ton of other things that i can't remember.

like i said, i always love eating at zingerman's and have never been disappointed. but on monday, during my most recent trip there, the heavens parted and the angels sang. it was as if zingerman's had chosen january 5, 2009, as the day of liz. readers, let me be the first to tell you... zingerman's, the best deli in the world, now serves a cuban, the best sandwich in the world. i thought i had died and gone to food heaven, until i realized that if i was truly dead i would probably be in hell and there ain't no cubans there (at least no cuban sandwiches anyway). here is the description: "#00 D-$'s Cuban Conundrum Cuban-style pulled pork, Arkansas peppered ham, Switzerland Swiss cheese, old-fashioned dill pickles, mayo & hot mustard on a grilled paesano roll."

best cuban in the US competition winner: ann arbor. runner up: miami

well since my soul is going to rot once i'm done on this planet anyway, i may as well live it up now. i ordered that cuban and a new pickle and i ate it like it was my last meal on earth. oh my god. soooo good. my sister got: "#57 Nic's Opportunity Zingerman's handmade fresh mozzarella, thinly sliced pepperoni, oven-dried tomato spread, oregano, & balsamic vinaigrette on grilled Sicilian sesame semolina." silly me, i let her try my cuban and she was hooked. so i agreed to trade sammies with her halfway through. if that doesn't get me a one way ticket to eternity with jesus, i don't know what will.

my mom is on a low carb kick so she opted for: "Mediterranean Experience Homemade hummus, barrel-aged marinated Greek feta, Spanish piquillo peppers, Italian artichokes, kalamata olives, oven-dried tomatoes & cucumbers." all this plus a big hunk of crusty bread. she chowed it down so fast that i did not even get a chance to taste it.

i'll take "things liz would sell her soul for" for $200, alex

we were so full at the end of the meal that we wanted a nap. i still had a 4 hour drive back to cincinnati ahead of me, so i recharged with some tasty zingerman's blend coffee. i had never had this before and it was excellent. we drooled at the desserts but didn't have room. ahh zingerman's... you never let me down.

bus ride from astoria to la guardia airport: $2
checking a piece of luggage on northwest airlines: $15
flight from LGA to DTW: $180
traveling 600 miles away from new york to eat at the best deli in the world: priceless