Omani Patties!

This Saturday my roommates and I hosted a dinner party of sorts with some good friends.  We made the house look clean, but not so clean that it seemed like it wasn't normally that way.  Our plants were watered and groomed, the vacuum was fired up for likely the first time since moving in and boy did the porcelain sink in the bathroom sparkle.  Beyond the ancillary preparations that come with wanting your guests to think that your life is so well put together that your house always looks great and ready to host a party, we had a feast to make!  As most of our friends are pretty solid cooks, the stakes were high and all stops had to be pulled out to ensure a reputable and memorable evening.

I thought back to the meal prepared by my sister's roommate Rahma a few weeks back and realized it contained one of the best things I've eaten in a while: what she likes to call "Patties."  My definition of a patty is usually some kind of flattened disk made of either meat or a bean or grain gloop.  In this case, however, our Omani style patty took the form of a meat filled pastry, and boy was it good.  I contacted Rahma and politely demanded the recipe, which was written in a form that suggests a very intuitive and well practiced cook.

 The recipe commanded phrases like "cook some meat with the water" and "add in the spices" with no indication of how much water or what kinds of spices were to be used.  Rahma is clearly someone who has learned cooking not from books but from hard fought battles over hot stoves from the Middle East to the Midwest.  I have a great deal of admiration for such cooks; my mother is the same way.  As my culinary skills have developed, I've grown through a phase of such a style but have since learned to rely on measurements and the written word to get my cooking done.  For every efficiency and consistency gained by this, I feel it is equally important to really "feel" how much of each ingredient is appropriate on a given day at a given time when you are in a given mood.  Cooking without text and rule seems to avoid the inhibitions presented by depending on measurements and recipes that sometimes cause one to fear the repercussions of straying outside the lines.  This bold and brash bravado in the kitchen can indeed lend to disasters, but it can also make the difference between a cook known for "safe" food and a cook who really knocks the proverbial socks off each and every guest.

So, with the loosest of recipes in hand and no other guide save the memory of helping Rahma make our dinner, I went to Holy Land in Northeast to stock up on supplies and got to work.  (the Holy Land field trip will follow, don't you worry!)

The patties are pretty simple.  In one pan, saute your veggies.  "Hard" veggies first as Rahma says, in this case red cabbage, onions and zucchini.  Once those are browned satisfactorily, add Biryani spice, habanero pepper and garlic.  Shortly thereafter, your "soft" veggies go in; spinach, fresh cilantro and a chopped tomato.

Your other pan will have some kind of ground meat cooking with "some water."  I chose a pound of bison we had in the freezer and cooked it with garlic and just a splash of water along with some oil (firefighters would not advise this).  With both pans having dutifully cooked their ingredients, combine in a bowl with our secret ingredient: Puck!

Puck is a pasty kind of cheese that is some awkward cousin of cream cheese and yogurt with a nice dose of salt in there.  It reminds me of those florescent yellow cheese spreads my grandpa likes so much.  Either way, it made all the difference in this dish.

Here we see the filling, a combination of sauteed veggies, bison and the aforementioned Puck cheese.  This was put into a kind of pre made pastry dough (available in the frozen section of Holy Land) and sealed like a calzone, then put in the oven.

Overall I was very pleased with how everything turned out.  The patties offered the warm, dark and complex sweetness that I hoped to replicate and were enjoyed by everyone!  The dough added a nice sweetness to compliment the coriander-heavy Biryani spice and the rich and salty Puck.  I've never been one for meat pies but I could get used to eating these in a hurry!  Our friends brought chili and cardamom banana bread among other items, lending to a very interesting genre of flavors that all seemed to party quite well together.  The patties in particular were easy to make, tasted great and provided for some killer and quick breakfast fodder.  I'll definitely be making them again.