Apron Strings

I was pretty young when I started to real­ize that my fam­ily didn’t eat quite like every­body else’s. I was 10 years old and we were spend­ing the sum­mer in upstate New York trav­el­ing with Circus Flora (I’ll save that story for another blog post) when we hap­pened on an Italian restau­rant. Hurray! I’d be able to have my favorite meal at the time, fried cala­mari on top of Caesar salad. But when I ordered it, the blond wait­ress cocked her head and looked at me real con­fused. “Sorry Sweetie, we’ve only got red and white house wine here.” Bummer.

My child­hood con­sisted of a lot of moments like these. Requests to my par­ents for pop­u­lar snacks foods, like Cup of Noodle soup, were met with good inten­tions but some­how I always ended up with Knorr Bacon and Corn instead of the chicken fla­vor every­one else had. And hell hath no fury like a scorned 5th grader. Sitting at my desk, tears in my eyes, I was wish­ing death upon my father for the ined­i­ble Genoa salami, tape­nade and sriracha sand­wich I had to force down. Couldn’t he have just made pb & j? But the way my par­ents saw it, being ordi­nary when it came to food was the worst sin one could commit.

My sav­ing grace was my mother, and while my peers mocked the avo­cado sand­wiches she packed in my lunch, “eww, your sand­wich has boogers in it,” she was able to be orig­i­nal while keep­ing in mind what kids actu­ally like to eat. Being from Israel, my mom never pre­pared a meal with­out by a very fresh salad.

Every Sunday, when you could roll a penny from our house at Bathurst and St.Clair and hear it plop in the lake because every­one else in Toronto was at church, we had a super loud and Jewy brunch com­plete with pick­led her­ring, lox, bagels and her per­fectly cooked scram­bled eggs.

And my mom always made up for it when my dad was off on one of his crazy food kicks, like a full week of cholent (and gas) or that time he started putting stale microwave pop­corn in with green salad, which pro­moted me and my brother to storm away from the table.

While I hated what I thought was my parent’s eccen­tric and embar­rass­ing tastes, I of course now cher­ish these mem­o­ries and love retelling the sto­ries. And I know I wouldn’t be a food writer with­out them.

Here is my (mom’s) recipe for fat­toush salad–an Arabic style bread salad.

• 2 large pita’s, cut into squares
• 3 ripe toma­toes, cut into cubes
• 3 Lebanese cucum­bers, cut into cubes
• 1 large red onion, thinly sliced
• A hand­ful of fresh Italian pars­ley, coars­ley chopped
• A hand­ful of fresh mint, coars­ley chopped
• 1 tbs sumac (avail­able at Arabic grocers)
• 2 Tbs spoons good qual­ity olive oil
• Juice from 1 lemon
• Salt, pep­per and zaatar to taste

Preheat the over to 350. Toss the pita in olive oil and kosher salt. Scatter the pita onto a bak­ing pan. You can do two or three rounds in the oven, just make sure the bread is spread out and not over­lap­ping. Toast until one side is done, toss and keep toast­ing until they are crisp like crou­tons, a total of 3 to 5 min­utes.
Take them out and let them cool.
Toss together toma­toes, cucum­bers, onion and fresh herbs in a serv­ing bowl. Add oil, lemon juice and sumac and give it one last toss along with some kosher salt.
Top with crou­ton and sprin­kle with zaatar.

To watch Maia pre­pare her mom’s famous fat­toush salad check out this awe­some video