I’m back in Boston again, back to cooking for myself and working and studying. I’ll keep it short: taking a break from my “real life” for a couple weeks was quite welcome, and I cherished spending time with my precious brother and sisters and angel of a little dog, Cookie.
There’s a cold snap coming up here in Boston this week, which is what this issue focuses on: the financial hardship of working in food service through the winter as well as my trusted shakshuka recipes for those weekend days when it’s too cold to go out for brunch.
With that, I’ll leave you with some photos of some of my top meals in Yerevan, courtesy of my mother’s talents (except for pics 5, 6, and 8):
winter in food service
This time of year I always think of food service employees, not least because I’ve now spent 3.5 out of 5 of my adult working years in the food service industry. While the end-of-year holiday season is the busiest time in the industry, the slump of January through March brings with it fewer shifts, fewer tips, and mandatory shift cuts. While everyone and their mother is trying to be “responsible” in the new year in terms of their eating and spending, for the lots of us in the industry this means drastic pay cuts.
In the cafe I worked at years ago, the winter months were so slow, business-wise, that coworkers would get a phone call a few hours before their shift and telling them to stay home. Others would come to work for their eight hour shift and get sent home three hours in due to the low sales volume (three hours is the mandatory minimum in Mass. that an employer must pay an employee out for if they get cut after showing up to work).
In those years, I calculated my paycheck and found that I’d received a 30% pay cut in January and February. My rent was still the same. My food costs remained the same. But my pay was cut drastically and without warning. In an ideal world, restaurants would be mandated to provide consistent pay and hours to their employees year-round, regardless of business volume, or at least sufficient warning for the employees to find another source of income to support themselves through the winter, but that’s not the United States that we live in. Here, the onus of ensuring a customer-facing food service employee is paid out well depends on the generosity of customers.
All this to say, if you’re going out, be kind to your servers and consider tipping better than you usually do*.
*I no longer work in a tipped position in a restaurant, so this isn’t advice that would serve me directly.
If you’re interested in learning more or getting involved with equity and better labor practices in the food service industry, check out the Fair Workweek Act, which penalizes employers for sudden changes in an employee’s schedule, and One Fair Wage, the coalition organizing to end the practice of paying tipped food service workers a “sub-minimum wage.” Currently, the national sub-minimum wage in the US is $2.13/hour (unchanged since 1990), while in Massachusetts it is set to $6.75/hour.
are you interested in more writing about labor in the food service industry? if you are, please let me know in a comment or reply to this email, as this is a topic I’ve long wanted to explore
shakshuka
serves 2
There’s no one right way to make shakshuka. The dish is rooted in simplicity: you’re hungry, you have eggs on hand, you have some tomatoes that are fresh or canned and some pita bread, so you whip up a filling, spiced meal out of these humble ingredients. You make shakshuka to your taste. Here, I wanted to share the way I’ve been making it for a few years.
some notes
harissa paste: my favourite is the Les Moulins Mahjoub Tunisian Traditional Harissa, which is a thick, dark, slightly spicy red pepper paste. It lasts forever in the fridge and I use it to add depth to all sorts of tomato sauces. My most abhorred harissa is the Mina Spicy Harissa, which is a runny raw bell pepper puree.
can of tomatoes: for my shakshuka, I love a little texture. A cafe near me serves the dish as poached eggs floating around in a totally smooth tomato soup, which gives me the ick. If you really want your shakshuka to be smooth and dippy like that, you can use a can of crushed tomatoes. If you only have a can of whole tomatoes on hand, then you’ll need to break them apart into smaller pieces (such fun, to squish whole tomatoes by hand). I prefer using cans of diced tomatoes since they’re perfectly chunky. If you have some fresh tomatoes or mealy tomatoes or tomatoes that no longer look cute enough to eat raw, then this is a perfect dish to use them up, too.
pan size: the hardest part of this recipe is trying to get the egg whites to set before the yolks completely harden. I’ve found that this is more likely to happen if the eggs come together into one big mass. When you plop the eggs into the sauce, make sure they are separated from one another with a stream of tomato sauce running around each egg.
To ensure not over-crowding the eggs, you’ll need to use the right size pan for the job. For 2 eggs, use an 8 inch pan. For 4 eggs, use a 10 inch pan. For 6 eggs, use a 12 inch pan. For more than 6 eggs, split the sauce into two pans.
cooking ahead: the sauce takes 25 minutes to prepare, so if you’re prone to being hangry in the mornings, I would absolutely recommend preparing the sauce the previous night, letting it cool, and refrigerating it. When you’re ready to use it, reheat the sauce in your desired pan until warm, and skip ahead to step 3.
ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion or shallot, diced
1 tbsp harissa paste
1 tbsp concentrated tomato paste (optional)
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp red chili flakes (optional)
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 14oz can of diced tomatoes
4 eggs
2 oz feta, crumbled
salt to taste
1 just-ripe avocado (optional), thinly sliced
2-3 pita breads, or 4 slices of toasted bread of choice
method:
Place a 10 inch frying pan over medium-high heat. Add 2 tbsp olive oil. Once the oil is shimmering, add the onion. Salt and stir the onions, and lower the heat as needed to avoid crisping. Once the onions become translucent, add the harissa paste and tomato paste (if using), stirring the pastes into the fried onion. Cook 2-3 minutes, until the pastes turn a darker shade of brick red.
Add the paprika, cumin, red chili flakes (if using), and black pepper. Stir and allow spices to bloom in the hot oil for 30 seconds. Quickly pour in the can of diced tomatoes. There will be splatter! Pour about a cup of tap water into the can to dislodge the remaining tomato juices and pour this into the pan as well. Add salt, and allow the sauce to simmer on medium heat for around 20 mins. If the sauce is drying up too fast, add more water.
The sauce is ready when you can make little wells for the eggs without the liquid rushing back in to close the gaps. Make four separate wells and drop an egg into each one, making sure to maintain a barrier of tomato sauce between each egg. Lightly salt each egg. Scatter the crumbled feta all around the pan. Put a lid over the pan, reduce the heat to low, and set a timer to 3 minutes. At the 3-minute mark, take a peak and check the doneness of the egg whites. If they’re not yet set, cook for another 1-2 minutes until they are. Serve immediately with sliced avocados (optional) and pita or your toasted bread of choice.
Above, the shakshuka recipe from Sahten: The Skatepal Cookbook, a book of recipes and profiles of the skateboarding community of Palestine.
This reminds me so much of the food I grew up on, sitting around the table with all the Lebanese aunties, cooking and eating and gossiping. I love it. Thank you. Your mother’s cooking is incredible. ❤️