Sajiyeh

Hits Flavorful braised goodness abounds in their dish which takes some effort but is totally worth it

Misses It’s not a miss, but make this dish when you can focus on cooking because you have to keep an eye on the pan and add the water required after the previously liquid cooks down before your vegetables and meat are scorched. This dish is decadent and on the advice of somebody who cooks this dish herself as part of her cultural heritage, I added some butter. I only have a sm cast iron pan so I think the sauce would have come together better if I used a cast iron pan as suggested but it was still very good. Also I used london broil but if you were making at home, I would suggest not using such a lean cut of meat, because the sauce would be better. Not the only time today I said darn to myself about my food hangups.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 pound beef (such as sirloin, rib-eye, skirt steak or flank steak), cut into bite-size strips

• 2 ½ teaspoons Lebanese seven-spice blend (see Tip)

• 1 ½ teaspoons fine sea salt

• 1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced

• 1 small red bell pepper, halved, cored and thinly sliced

• 2 jalapeños or 1 small green bell pepper, halved, cored and thinly sliced

• Saj bread, pita, naan or flour tortillas, for serving

Who’s Got Beef with me? Maybe the people I would not share this with…because it was delicious.

The prep

Cut your beef into thin slices so they cook evenly and cut off some of the noticeably sinew. Toss with Salt and Pepper. This dish cooks down most of the fat in the meat, so no need to cut it all off. I used a lean cut of beef so I did not have as velvety a sauce. Sigh. Damn my commitment to heart health.

Just call me Spice Girl

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta like my food…(and like it, damn it)

Without the traditional 7 spice blend I made my own from cinnamon, cumin, garlic, turmeric and cardamon

Where I messed up

You’re supposed to use a cast iron pan and well my stove is ridiculously tiny so my pan I use does not heat evenly…

Anyway, in this step, add the beef, spices and S&p, and cook until water releases from the meat, then evaporates.

Sorry, I have a meeting

With some cups of water. This dish creates a relatively quick braise of the beef by adding water, a cup at a time and then letting it evaporate …then adding more water.

Add a 0/5 cup of water, cover and cook for 5-7 minutes (or until the water evaporates). Add another 0.5 cup of water, cover and again let it cook til evaporation.

Magic is real

The beef is being “quick braised” which I had no idea was actually a thing. This photo show the pan as the liquid is cooking down and the fat is rendering out. In five minutes, I’ll add the vegetables.

Fajitas? Nope, Sajiyeh

Cut the vegetables, jalapeño and onion into strips. I messed with the ration a little and added a green pepper because I had more than a lb of meat so I knew I needed to add more veggies to balance everything. Add everything to your skillet and cook uncovered for 5- 6 minutes. This is where I added 2 pats of butter. When it is aromatic and the vegetables are releasing water, move your heat resistant spatula or spoon around on the bottom to scrape up the stubborn bits. Add another 0.5 cup of water and cook uncovered for 3 minutes until a substantial sauce blend covers all the meat and vegetables. It should be the consistency of a sauce and not a watery liquid.

beautiful.

Serve hot with hand bread like pita, naan or tortillas.

I’ll be brief..I promise, this time I will.

This dish was brimming with unexpected loveliness as the cinnamon married your aromtic onions and summer sweet peppers. The love you put into making it you can actually taste in the finished product, even if you’re only serving yourself (like I was). I am told during the Islamic celebration which just passed it is traditional to eat meat all day and braised meet dishes like this are served from morning til night.

Often I am struck by how people who think themselves so dissimilar are so fundamentally the same in ways which almost always escape us when feelings are hurt and tempers are high.. This dish which is served during Muslim high holy days to me looks like fajitas but it tastes like ancient mysteries and olive trees and incense scented tapestries. This painstaking process results in braised meat which reads like a cinnamon bathed brisket served at Shabbat and I image when writing this a feast in an adobo house where we all sit and realize that what we say when we bless our food might be different, the love we put into making it for the people who matter, is so similar there is no need to even speak more about it.

I found myself talking to toddlers recently after I noticed some of the little people I have been working with when I help in the toddler room at work were noticing differences between how they looked and even what they had for lunch. Sitting down, I looked over a table filled with children who looked as dissimilar as could be, eying each other carefully. Realizing perhaps I needed to break the ice (because as a grownup I have more language and more life experience), I starting talking about what we all had for snack. I pointed out many people had cheese or yogurt for snack and they broke in to smiles that they had something in common. Noticing several children had cucumbers in their lunch we talked about how many of us like vegetables and all of us eat fruits and vegetables. I myself, I told them, love cucumbers in my lunch and they were in my lunch upstairs waiting for me! “Eating cucumbers together today, well, now we’re cucumber friends!”, I said. With glee the cucumber eating toddler who had seemed so hesitant initially said with glee “we’re cucumber friends!” The tables which had been filled with such suspicious two and three year old toddlers who had just met each other were now filled with tiny people feeling connected, smiling and feeling like they belonged.

Often we try to connect people and it’s hard or people are sensitive or we say something insensitive accidentally or we’re just trying to connect people who are just having bad days. In this magic set of 5 minutes I managed to say a sufficient amount of the correct thing to connect children who are just learning to notice difference and they left feeling safer, knowing they shared something with the people at their table even though they looked different. How often do we say things finding similarity like “In my culture we have a deep respect for older people too” or when do we say in trying to find common ground “ in my culture, we deal with things differently but we are probably all feeling the same kinds of things when we’re sad” or even, when trying to respect differences “can you explain to me about the rules your faith had about eating so I respect your traditions and you?” Rarely, but since I’ve lived such a funny life, I have started to more and more try to build these bridges out of respect and gratitude for the people who have made up the mosaic which saved my sanity and my life. Often I have been made fun of by people who think my earnestness is childish; I think the most grown thing you can do is respect somebody where they are and respect from where they come so it doesn’t usually bother me to be diminished by people who prefer sarcasm and discord over peace. What is left for me to be embarrassed over? Think of the things which have been said and the lies which have blanketed every corner of my life. Making fun of my pain should have always made people feel sm, but if people are making fun of my shy but stubbornly committed attempts to make people feel at home in themselves and heard, let them. The world will not be fixed by people who tear down bridges or burn down the house they grew up in, and it will not be healed by more derisive speech deriding the power of compassion or by diminishing not honoring the dignity of all who suffer. We all belong at every table the universe sets for us, if we are 3 or if we are 303.

This dish and just my life lately, encouraged me to make more connections and to try and connect with people even if its only over cucumbers. Cucumber friends are special friends indeed. because often those relationships with people you think you have little in common with are the friendships which teach you the most. Many of us walk around thinking our journeys have been so different nobody will ever see themselves as connected to us, and sometimes going through things does make it hard for people to see you as a person, especially if it happens in a real public way. My saving grace has been I am determined to find connections with people and in situations where people were not fair to me because they refused to see my humanity, I stubbornly reminded them that compassion, kindness and honesty look the same on everybody.

In closing I cooked this dish in honor fo somebody and as luck would have it, without her knowing how much I respect her, she recognized my humanity in a concrete way recently which moved me to tears. At first glance, people think we might just be cucumber friends, but we share a love of children, a commitment to being fair and a love of our given faiths, and her handling of my situation has affirmed in me that people don’t have to have the same journey as you to see you as a person of worth. The key is connecting, over something, and then to go from there respecting the humanity of all the people in your path.