After the first rain comes, and the wind swirls the fallen leaves and makes it clear that she is here to stay at least until spring, I find myself returning to one of the dishes that always warm my heart, and my belly. Although as a child I did not agree to eat foods that contained more than one ingredient...
Some people call meatballs in tomato sauce kids food. If so, then I am a kid. Meatballs in tomato sauce is one of the dishes I have loved for as long as I can remember. As a matter of fact, there are very few dishes that I still love as I used to. Mom taught me that when making meatballs you must always double the quantity, and even then it might not be enough.
There are dishes that I never get tired of eating. One of them is Kubbeh. Whether it is red kubbeh, yellow, sour, kubbeh nia (raw meat kubbeh) or kubbeh nablusia, also known as fried kubbeh. I love them all. With some of them, like the sour kubbeh, it took quite some time for my taste buds to get used to and to like it. But with the fried kubbeh it was love at first bite.
More than a few years ago, when my older son was still young, we used to to go on a daily walk in our neighborhood. The neighborhood was still small, many mom and pop shops, family restaurants and the famous local cafe.
"I’ll make the first course” I told mom when she called to ask if we are coming to Rosh HaShanah dinner. “Really? “ she asked, “you don’t have to”. “I know i don’t have to” I replied, “I want to”. “Well, if you really want to, that’s ok, but you’ll have to make it here, in our place”.
In my childhood home we ate couscous only in one way. Hand made and steamed over a pot of soup. It was almost impossible to enter our small kitchen when mom would make couscous. In one bowl there was the semolina that mom would wet slowly while stirring so that no clumps would form.