Potato and Sheep's Cheese Casserole

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Potato and Sheep's Cheese Casserole
Musaka od Krumpira (Krompira)

Region: Balkans
Category: Vegetables
Season: Winter
Difficulty: Easy

After its arrival in Spain, the potato made its move east, where, along the Dalmatian coast, the culinary influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire met the influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and cooking was tempered by a long association with Venice. We can see the meshing of these culinary influences in local preparations such as this potato casserole which uses smoked bacon, an Austro-Hungarian influence, with sheep's cheese, a Turkic influence, for flavoring the basic potato. This Bosnian-style musaka is influenced by the Greek preparation of the same name; it's a substantial dish and quite appropriate in the winter. For fresh sheep's cheese you can use a young pecorino; it doesn't have to be actually fresh like mozzarella, or you can use soft goat cheese too. This recipe is adapted from Inge Kramarz's The Balkan Cookbook.

Yield: Makes 6 servingsPreparation Time: 1 hour

2 pounds potatoes
Salt
1/4 pound smoked slab bacon, cut into small dice
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 pound fresh sheep?s cheese (preferably), crumbled, or kashkaval cheese, grated
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place the unpeeled potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold water by a few inches, and lightly salt. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat (this will take about 20 minutes) and cook until the potatoes are easily pierced by a skewer, about another 20 minutes. Drain and, when the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them. Cut into 1/4-inch thick slices and set aside.

2. In a small skillet cook the bacon, stirring, until crispy brown. Remove with a slotted ladle to paper towels to drain and set aside.

3. Butter a medium-size baking pan with 1 to 2 tablespoons of the butter. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons bread crumbs over the bottom of the buttered dish, shaking them all around to coat evenly. Arrange the sliced potatoes around the dish.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

5. In a medium-size skillet melt the remaining butter and stir together with the sheep's cheese until smooth and bubbling over low heat. Stir the crispy bacon, the remaining 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, and dill into the skillet and season with salt and pepper. Continue to stir until creamy. Pour the contents of the skillet evenly over the potatoes. Bake the potatoes for 20 minutes and serve.

Source unknown

The Noble Breed

Want to ride horses in Turkey? Here's a reliable horse ranch, The Akhal-Teke Horse Center, owned by my friend, Erchian's family. I love the virtual tour on this website.

These Turkish horses are also famous in America. They come in many stunning colors.

The Akhal-Teke Association of American site describes their temperament:

The Akhal-Teke horses are vigorous, excitable, and restless. Thousands of years of selective breeding have left their mark not only on their physical appearance and efficiency, but also on their behavior. These horses are not only sensible but also very sensitive; they are even able to respond to mental suggestions of humans. Their intelligence is not comparable to any other breed. They not only need a sensitive rider, but a human being who can share their feelings when they gallop over vast areas just for the joy of movement. Due to the way in which they were raised and bred they are essentially one-master horses and bonding with a human owner is in their blood. Some Tekes may be difficult when ridden by strangers. With them you cannot achieve obedience by shouting or punishment; a glance, a small gesture, or a soft-spoken word are sufficient. A punishment not understood by the horse can cause them to be in a defensive mood for weeks. They are horses with character, outspoken individuals. Says Sue Waldock, President of the Akhal-Teke Association of GB: “They respond best to daily love and attention, a bit like a dog. If you ignore a dog it will misbehave too.” They are not suited to nervous or irritable humans. They are not suited to the limitations of modern stables, which kill their spirit. They are horses belonging to wide open spaces.

Back in the Land of Rain

Back in the land of precipitation. I slept like a rock last night, listening to the rain falling on the sky light, and delighting in the familiarity of the soft, flannel sheets and the worn, brown quilt on my bed.

This attic room, which is like the tree houses I had as a child, comforts me. It's not like I didn't enjoy my 12th floor hotel suite this week, with the balcony looking out over the bay. I did take a hot tub in my room every night, enjoying the pattern of lights from the adjacent buildings playing against the walls in the black marble bathroom. But it's this modest attic room of my home that I like most-- the fir floors, the sense that this room was the logical response to wanting to be more near the sky, or aloft in the tops of the nearby bamboo trees.

I like the cherry wood cabinets and the mismatched, handmade wool rugs and the ample sitting space. Glad to be home. Always am. Always.

Joy and All

This poem, from over at Whiskey River, my all-time favorite blog. Hat off to Whiskey, who makes me glad to read, on even the grayest of days.

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I've become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water -
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don't know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work - I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: "You're old." That's all, I'm old.

And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.


- Randall Jarrell

I don't relate to this person's experience as my own. But it does seems an excellent description of the human condition as it seems so many people come to know it.

The names of all those laundry soaps caught me by surprise.

A Special Tense

I am reading Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Nobel Prize winning author, Orhan Pamuk.

On page 8 he writes,

In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences, parents, our cradles, our baby carriages, our first steps, all as reported by our parents, stories to which we listen with the same rapt attention we might pay some brilliant tale of some other person. It's a sensation as sweet as seeing ourselves in our dreams, but we pay a heavy price for it.

Amazing. Are you amazed by this? I couldn't sleep after reading it, I was so amazed.

One Hundred Per Cent

Anxious. I am off this week to San Francisco to our conference, which has over 1000 participants. It will be a week of long days, and interesting work. I look forward to seeing old clients and meeting new ones. It’s also a chance to catch up with colleagues, since we are a virtual organization.

But what’s on my mind most is this trip to Turkey. I suppose it’s the lure of an adventure; a little free time, a little bit of the exhilaration of uncertainty and spontaneity.

Of course, given this economy, it’s an adventure whose budget could get spent on house payments or groceries. These are the times that I yearn to be unencumbered by houses and jobs and commitments to even the best of causes. I crave the wide open days of my time in Nepal.

But of course, that’s not what I’ll choose. Because on a more careful analysis, I’d choose the encumbrances I have, and I have chosen them, over and over, and my word is good on all that, one hundred per cent.

Always has been.

But this does not preclude a trip to Turkey, either. The economy does not. People have said, "You could lose your house if you do that." They might be right. When was the last time I was tethered to a house? When was the last time I didn't have a place to live that's better than most of the shelter that most people have?

I like the idea of a break, even not quite knowing what the break might look like.

The Relevant Questions

When I was considering my first expedition to the Everest region in Nepal in 1979, I made a list of questions to answer before deciding to go. It went something like this:

• Can I get in good enough physical shape to enjoy it?
• Can I save enough money to make it responsible?
• Can I get time away from other commitments?
• Is it a reasonable risk?
• Is this the right time?
• Are these the right people?
  
• Is there anything else I'd rather be doing with my time, energy and money?

Basically, I am considering the same questions for this trip. My life is full. I don't in any way feel lacking for entertainment. I enjoy my work and my involvement in Buddhism and the community of practitioners.

But I have loved a good adventure for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, people used to drop off their used National Geographic magazines at the local library. I'd carry an armload to my home, where I cut out the photos and pinned them to the walls in my room.

I always felt I would see those places and those people. It seemed they were mostly like me, bound by fate to live in out-of-the-way localities, yet full of life and an interest in the world. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to hear their stories. I still do. When I lived in Nepal and people came to visit, they'd ask, "What have you been doing this year?" and I'd reply, "Walking around." Sometimes I'd walk for weeks, from village to village, without a map or a destination in mind. It was never a disappointment. Never once.

And now, for some reason I can't quite fathom, Turkey is calling. Until now, it's a word I associated only with towels, coffee and Turkish Delight. Who knows how these seeds get planted? I can trace it back to some logical events, but it seems incomplete, as most explanations do.

I think if I go, I won't know why I went till I get there.