All about Milk Kefir + A Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Make Milk Kefir at Home

Milk what?

Milk kefir (keh-feer) is a fermented milk drink, similar to a drinkable yogurt.  Thick, creamy, tangy, with a slight effervescence, some describe it as the "champagne" of dairy because of the lovely light fizz in this creamy drink.  When homemade, its flavor changes with the seasons, becoming thicker and milder in the summer, and yeastier in the winter. A living food, kefir is cultured with wild yeasts and bacteria, and depending on the milk, fermenting practices, and strains of microorganisms, its taste ranges from mild or pungent, tangy or sour.

What is Old is New Again

Kefir originates from the ancient the Caucasus region, where it was lauded as a gift from the gods, a traditional elixir for health and longevity.  Traditional kefir was made from fresh raw animal milk, and hung from skin bags near the doorways, so that the family's movements in and out would agitate the grains and the milk.  Today, you can find kefir just about anywhere in the world, but it remains popular in eastern and northern Europe. I remember sampling it when we traveled through Europe, and loved it immediately. I also remember seeing it on the shelves of the Jewish supermarkets in Jerusalem, which is why I had the impression for a long time that it was an Israeli drink. Arabs also drink it (my mother tells me that families in her childhood neighborhood in Nazareth brewed it) and it is often strained into a thick cheese, very similar to yogurt cheese, or labaneh. It is also rising in popularity in the United States, and you can find it in pasteurized forms in most natural food stores or in larger markets.

Milk is transformed into kefir when it is mixed with "kefir grains," usually left at room temperature, and left to ferment until it has thickened. "Kefir grains" are live active cultures, forming a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY).  These small, gelatinous particles develop into complex cauliflower-like structures. My toddler, who likes to help me make the kefir, describes the grains as "wet popcorn," which is a very apt description.

While this all sounds exotic, obscure, and (perhaps a little terrifying?) making kefir is very simple. All you need is a couple of grains, add them to milk, and leave them on your counter to ferment until thickened. If you are lucky, you can inherit some from a kind friend, or join a free culture-sharing Facebook page, where people mail them off or give them away freely. Otherwise, purchase them online.

Drink to Your Health

I am in love with this drink.  Have you ever tried something for the first time and you were instantly hooked? This tangy, fizzy, creamy, thick drink, just won me over at first swig. But it wasn't just the taste that drew me in.  It made me feel good.  Happy.  Relaxed.  And I thought that this was strange until I read that the word "kefir" is thought to derive from the Turkish word "keif" which means "good feeling." It turns out that kefir is rich in tryptophan, that amino acid that raises your feel-happy seratonin levels in your brain. After just a cup, I do notice that I feel slightly calmer and more relaxed.

Fertility and Traditional (Middle Eastern) Diets - Part Two

In my last post, I shared my fertility story, and described the impact that changing my diet had on my fertility.

I asked: is it possible that eating a more traditional diet, particularly a diet that has produced generation upon generation of Palestinians, supports fertility?  After looking at some of the recent research on fertility diets, here is what I found.  Here are some common components to fertility diets, with a short explanation of their benefits, and how they fit into a Middle Eastern cuisine.

{Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist or a medical professional, so please consult a medical professional if you have any concerns about your fertility.  Not all fertility issues can be resolved through diet.  Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health who have studied this topic have concluded that diet can have a positive impact on those who struggle with some infertility (ovulatory dysfunction and possible endometrial problems), but other causes of infertility do not respond to dietary changes. To read more about their findings, find the link at the bottom of the page.}

1.  Eat and Drink Full-Fat Dairy

Do you know that skim milk and other low-fat dairy products actually promote infertility? Modern studies agree: full-fat dairy increases fertility, but low-fat dairy actually decreases fertility!  Women who ate two or more servings of low-fat dairy foods had an 85% increased chance of adulatory infertility problems.  (Listen to an interview with these Harvard researchers here, see another study here.). So even though the American public has been warned repeatedly about the dangers of natural saturated fat, and urged to drink low-fat or skim milk, women who wish to become pregnant are now encouraged to consume one serving of full-fat dairy every single day.

Why is this? Researchers are not sure, but they posit that fat-soluble hormones in the milk play a role in ovulation. We do know that since we need an ample supply of vitamins A, D, E and K to achieve pregnancy, and since these vitamins are fat-soluble, it is extremely important that you have a good source of fat for your body to be able to absorb them.

If you are on a low-fat diet, I think that this is the first change that you should make.  Ditch all of the low-fat dairy products and opt for high quality, full fat diary foods every day. Organic, hormone-free, whole, grassfed milk products will give you the most benefits, and if you can find a source for raw or low-temperature pasteurized dairy, that is even better.  Opt for butter, not artificial spreads, whole milk and whole milk yogurt and cheeses, real cream, and homemade, naturally-sweetened ice cream.  When I was growing up in the Middle East, we drank whole milk, ate full fat plain yogurt at most meals, and ate whole milk yogurt cheese (labaneh), and whole milk farmers cheese (jibneh baida) regularly, and even enjoyed cups of cultured cream (shemenet). 

Sesame-Honey Fudge with Pistachio, or Halaweh

Halaweh, (also called halawa, halwa, halva)  is a dense, sweet, nutty-tasting confection, made with many variations throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and  eastern Europe. It is a fudge made with tahini, or sesame paste, mixed with sugar that has been boiled to the hard-rock stage, and then formed into a block. You can find a number of flavors of halaweh in Middle Eastern grocers, including plain, chocolate or pistachio.

I am so excited to share with you a five-minute, five-ingredient, raw and wholesome version of this treat!  This recipe is sugar-free, and  allergy sensitive, without gluten, dairy, eggs, (and can be prepared without nuts). 

To read more and find the recipe, click over to my post on the blog MidEATS. 

Also check out my related posts:

*How to Make Tahini, or Sesame Paste

*Spotlight on Tahini, or Sesame Paste

Fertility and Traditional (Middle Eastern) Diets - Part One

Did you know that Palestinians have one of the highest fertility rates in the world? 

In the last twenty years, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have averaged from 6.5 births per woman to the most recent statistics of 4.92 births per woman (World Bank) .

That's a lot of babies. 

And while there are a number of driving forces behind this number, including political, cultural and socio-economic forces, I can't help but conclude that Palestinians, as a whole, are gifted in the area of fertility.  The fact that we are able to achieve these record high fertility rates, when so many other people in other countries struggle with fertility is something that has always caused me to wonder if there is something in the water, so to speak.

In fact, when my husband and I were trying to conceive for the first time, and were unsuccessful for a year, I clung to this comforting thought:  Palestinians have one of the highest fertility rates in the world!  Surely, my body knows how to do this!  And yet, even though we were young and healthy, we struggled to conceive. 

In the end, it wasn't until I changed my diet, (and though I didn't know it at the time) moved towards a more traditional diet by adding in more full-fat products, and gained a little weight that I was able to very rapidly become pregnant. 

Palestinian Chickpea Fritters, or Falafel

What is crunchy and crispy on the outside, and smooth and buttery soft on the inside?

Falafels!!!

(By the way, we pronounce this word with a short second "a," as in apple, alligator, and maybe a better phonetic spelling would be falaafil, with the emphasis on the second syllable.)

There is something genius about these little fritters, for they are tasty, cheap and vegetarian, full of protein and nutrients.  They are satisfying and filling, like meatballs, but made from legumes and vegetables, which is useful in a place where meat is an expensive luxury.  In some parts of the Middle East, falafels are made with fava beans, or a combination of fava and chickpeas, but in Palestine, falafels are made exclusively with chickpeas, also known as garbanzo beans.

Falafels are the quintessential street food, served in stands and shops throughout the Middle East.  Some people make these at home, but everyone has a favorite falafel stand, where you can pick up a sandwich or a tray of falafels for a few shekels. Falafel sandwiches bring me right back to my high school days, when I would run down town with my friends to buy fresh falafel sandwiches from a stand on King David Street.  There was a dizzying array of toppings and sauces for me to choose from--all sorts of brightly colored pickled vegetables and salads to stuff into my soft pita sandwich, all topped with a tahini-lemon sauce and then stuffed with a handful of French fries.  It's the kind of sandwich that stays with you- the vinegary pickles, the creamy, garlicky tahini sauce, and the crunch of a fresh falafel, cradled in soft bread. 

Rice Tabbouleh {Gluten-Free}

Fresh and verdant, light and lemony, there is so much to love about tabbouleh, the classic Middle Eastern salad.  And as much as I enjoy the well-known parsley and bulgur version, today I am sharing a recipe for a rice-based tabbouleh, which is just as lovely as the original, but even easier and gluten-free!

Today, I am blogging over at the beautiful Middle Eastern food blog, MidEats.  To find my recipe for rice tabbouleh, click here!

Sahtain!

Related Posts:

*Cucumber-Tomato Salad with Tahini-Lemon Dressing

*Middle Eastern Tomato Cucumber Salad

Shared on Real Food Wednesday.

Bint Rhoda's Real Food Advice for Keeping Sanity in the Kitchen

After a generation or two of shortcut cooking, we have sadly lost the art of keeping a kitchen.  We have lost the rhythms of yesteryear, when food preparation was a central part of our lives.  Now, instead we have two approaches to food:  we have either overly complicated cooking (cooking as hobby, something gourmet and worthy of Instagram shots, something that we love to talk about and watch performed for us), or we have fast-food cooking, where we attempt to produce food in our kitchen with as little investment of energy and time as possible.

We know the problem of the second approach:  Little invested, little reaped.  Anyone who has survived for more than a day on junk food and processed food knows how quickly your health begins to fall apart.

But the other problem, the problem of approaching food as hobby, has just as devastating an effect on our cooking.  It is too overwhelming to produce gourmet food every day, let alone for three meals a day, and then for a family.  Never mind adding in snacks and drinks.  It is just too much, so we are stuck.

But there are ways to get yourself unstuck.  You just have to change your approach to food.  Here are a few practical pieces of advice for how to keep your sanity in a real food, traditional kitchen.  Many of these are the things that my mother taught me to do when I was growing up, and others come from my own experiments in the kitchen.

1.  When you cook, cook big.  Since the very beginning, I learned that if I cook enough for two days, I only have to cook half as much. That seemed like a really great deal to me.  Half the prep time, half the cook time, half the clean up time. Once I got into cooking more and more real food, I found that this wasn't just a time-saving technique, but really the only way that I could manage to keep up with all of my kitchen tasks. Aim to serve every meal to your family twice, if your family is small enough.   If boiling eggs, boil a dozen.  If making rice, make a huge pot, enough for leftovers and then some.  If cooking up beans, freeze extras for later.

2.  On days that your family is eating leftovers, use your kitchen time to prep other things.  On my "leftover" days, I use the extra time to work on other tasks, like replenishing my kombucha and kefir, restocking my yogurt, making labani or kefir cheese, baking bread or crackers, or making a special treat.

3.  Empty you fridge before you fill it.  This might seem like common sense, but it can be often overlooked.  Try to use up as much as you can before you refill your fridge (or pantry).  Yes, every family has a few items that we feel we must have at all times (butter! cheese! apples!) and it may be an emergency if you run out of these items, but try, as best as you can, to make sure that you have really used up all of your food before you do a full restock of your fridge.  This will prevent less waste all around - less cooking, less shopping, less food waste.  

4.  Make a master grocery list. Type it up and organize the ingredients in a way that makes sense to you.  I have a fresh produce section, a meat and dairy section, a dry goods section, and a place to write down my week's meals.   Print it off every week (or laminate it and reuse it), and use that to help keep your kitchen stocked.

5.  Repeat after me:  Real food doesn't have to be complicated.  Real food doesn't have to be gourmet.  Focus on the quality of the ingredients rather than how "foodie" it seems.   Think of your week ahead and set limits for yourself in the kitchen.  Find a few easy, nourishing recipes that everyone in your family likes and make them regularly.  

6. Choose dishes that stretch, instead of single portion foods.  Think casseroles, pots of soup, stews. Round out dishes by serving each of these main dishes with a veggie, a salad and/or some bread.  Not only does this stretch out your food, but I also like to think of this as hospitality food.  If you have a giant casserole in the oven, you can ask that friend to stay for dinner.

7. Roast a big hunk of meat a week.  Roasts have a high yield for minimum effort.  For example, one week, make a large pot roast.  Another week, roast a pork shoulder.  The third week, roast a couple of chickens.

8.  Consider centering your meals around one cuisine.  This is the secret of traditional cooks!  I know, I know, we live in a world where we can have exotic ingredients, condiments, and flavors from around the world, and we certainly do enjoy that.  The down-side of this is that you end up with half used ingredients, and far too many ingredients filling up your pantry.  I find that as I focused on developing a pantry centered around traditional ingredients for one cuisine, made sure my pantry was stocked with those ingredients, and developed simple recipes centered around those ingredients, planning, shopping and cooking became much simpler.

9.  Keep a couple of extremely easy, or extremely fast meals in mind, and keep the ingredients stocked.  For example, I can always make mujjadara, because I always have rice, lentils, and onions, and bone broth in my freezer.  For a fast meal, I always keep a few cans of canned wild salmon.  I can make salmon cakes in ten minutes (and my children are in training to learn how to make this on their own! A woman can dream, right?).

10.  Teach your family to eat (and be thankful for!) what is available rather than what they want.  If you are only buying local, and buying what is in season, this lesson is already evident (no, honey, there are no strawberries.  It is November).  It is so easy to develop a restaurant attitude in a home kitchen, there is so much to be gained by reorienting your and your family's relationship to food.  The gains: more efficient use of food and time, with translates for us, very practically into more time to play with my kids and enough money for quality ingredients.  But even more than these practical gains, this change in attitude changes our relationship with food.  This simple stand against a me-centered consumer attitude toward food (What do I want to eat?  What do I feel like having?) is gently broken when we look away from ourselves and instead look at what we have, what is in our pantry, what the ground has recently produced, and gratefully eat that which we have already been given.


And One More Really Important Piece of Advice . . . 

11.  At least once a week, take a break from the kitchen.  This might mean take-out or a picnic lunch, or a meal with a friend, or leftovers from the freezer.  Remember, cooking real food is real work.  One way that you can honor the real work of the kitchen is by stepping away from it on a regular basis.  I find that when I don't honor this, I run the risk of burnout.


What else do you do to keep your kitchen sane and happy?   

A New Collaboration!

Friends,  I am so happy to share some good news with you. We all need a little good news, right? 

If you are following me on Facebook, you probably already know some of my news (and if you are not a follower, you can start following me by finding the link on the right).  I am honored to announce that I will be writing as a contributing blogger on the wonderful Middle Eastern food blog MidEats. 

For me, this is a full-circle moment.

A few years ago, when I started learning about the traditional food movement, I read many books, and so many traditional food blogs.  The first traditional food blog that I read was Nourished Kitchen, and I was instantly captivated by Jenny McGruther's beautiful photography, simple and wholesome food philosophy, and her incredible recipes (her Salmon Baked in Cream and Herbs, prepared by my dear friend, hooked me into traditional foods forever!). What drew me to the traditional foods movement was that so much of it was already familiar to me, because it followed the basic outline of the way my mother and grandmother taught me how to eat.  Arabs have always eaten this way, I thought to myself.  But even though I saw a few recipes here and there, such as kibbeh nayyeh (a Middle Eastern raw meat and bulgur dish), most of the recipes I read came from elsewhere around the globe and did not center around the Arab table.   

Where are all of the Arab traditional foodies? I wondered. 

And then, one day I found this guest post on the Nourished Kitchen blog:  Get Freekeh with Ancient Grains: Braised Lamb with Freekeh Pilaf. The writer, Heba, wrote beautifully about this ancient Middle Eastern grain (which I happen to adore, but that this another post).  When I read this guest post, I thought:  Aha!  I have found my people!

Heba, along with another blogger, Brenda, are founders of MidEats, an informative and beautiful blog which celebrates traditional Middle Eastern foods.  Both advocates for real food, they write to preserve their heritage, and share delicious recipes, interviews and stories of their Egyptian culture.

So I am honored that they have chosen me to be a part of their writing team.  We have a lot of exciting posts planned, and I hope that you will come and visit me over at MidEats and check out our newest posts.  You can read Heba's most recent post on hot pink (beet) hummus, and an interview with  Egyptian paleo food blogger, Rehaam of Steak and Sass.

Leftover Saver: Curried Lemon Chicken Pieces

There are two kinds of people: those who love and those who hate leftovers.

My mother insisted on cooking huge batches of food, so we ate leftovers regularly.  But we didn't have a microwave.  Everything had to be reheated on the stove-top.  Ever tried to reheat roasted chicken pieces on a stove top?  It can be a bit challenging.  The chicken can come out very dry and tasteless. And since we did not grow up in the land of boneless skinless chicken breasts, all of our chicken was cooked on the bone, usually roasted.  Then the next day, my mother would pick the bones clean, save the bones for stock, and fry up the meat a second time, seasoning it generously with her stash of Middle Eastern curry powder and finish it with a splash of lemon juice.

So I grew up to love leftover chicken.  I think I may even love this more than the original meal of roast chicken.  I just can't stop picking at the bowl of juicy, caramelized chicken pieces, flavored with the sweet and mildly spicy curry powder.  The final squeeze of lemon juice brightens up the whole dish, balancing out the flavors of the curry.

If you have leftover chicken, this whole dish will take you five minutes, start to finish.  If you don't have any leftover chicken, I do like to use boneless chicken thighs here for a very quick dish.  For a fabulous sandwich, serve this tucked into a loaf of pita bread.  Otherwise, serve it next to rice, a plate of green beans - really, whatever you have in your kitchen.  It is as forgiving as it is delicious.

How to Make Fluffy, Flavorful Rice (Like an Arab)

Sticky rice, fluffy rice, gummy, gluey rice, bland, wet or crunchy rice.  I have made all of these things.

I remember rice as my first culinary challenge out of college.  If I can just cook rice, I thought, I can feed myself.  And while the instructions on the sack always seemed so simple, so straight forward, the results were rarely good.  My Chinese roommate had a little electric rice cooker that she swore by, and I loved the beautifully steamed rice that she produced, but even that little gadget alluded my attempts.  For a while, I gave up and accepted half-soggy, half-crunchy bland rice.

It was very sad.

Because we Arabs love our rice!  Like our friends farther east, from India all the way to Japan, we love our rice.  Our rice style is more similar to Indian rice, and every time I dig into a vibrant dish of biryani, it reminds me of home.  Arabs pride themselves in producing light, fluffy rice, with a nutty and rich flavor, well seasoned enough to stand on its own.  We love to serve mounds of fluffy white rice, warmly spiced with the flavors of allspice, turmeric, cinnamon or nutmeg, topped with buttery pine nuts or almonds fried in ghee.  For a simple childish favorite, we serve this with just a scoop of fresh plain yogurt, and we call it rooz ma' laban.  Please, mama, we would beg my mother, can we skip the sauce and just have rooz ma' laban?

Can you blame me?

After watching my mother, badgering her with questions, and then (this was the hard part), actually doing what she told me to do, I learned how to make a decent pot of rice.  If you want to make delicious rice that will wake up any basic fish, chicken or steak meal, look no further.

How to Make Arabic Coffee, or Boiled Coffee with Cardamom

Nothing takes me home like the sight of my father standing over the kitchen stove, making a pot of Arabic coffee.  He stands over the stove, heating water in a small metal pot, waiting for the right moment to spoon in the mounding spoonfuls of coffee.  Then he stirs the boiling coffee down, and lifts the pot, stirring again, then returns to the pot to the flame.  It's a little dance, to boil the coffee without overflowing the pot.  The rich smell of coffee fills the house, scented lightly with the sweet aroma of cardamom.  He pours the little cups, as small as a child's play teacup, and carries one to my mother. They sit and sip in the afternoon sun, reaching for a bowl of chocolates.This is the daily afternoon ritual in my family home, and it is a ritual repeated all over the Middle East.

Savory Palestinian Cauliflower Pancakes

Any day that my Palestinian mother fried up a batch of these garlic and onion-scented cauliflower pancakes was a good day for me.  Served with a pile of Arabic bread, some fresh cut vegetables and olives, these savory omelette-like pancakes, full of softly-cooked cauliflower and fried in pungent olive oil, are enough to make you a believer in cauliflower.  Unless, that is, you already are.  In that case, ahlan wa-sahlan.