Mezze Matters

The High-Rise Baking Company is a cafe on Concord Avenue in Cambridge, MA. This cafe and bakery sports an impressive view of all the lavish breads and pastries being prepared, affirming to diners that almost everything is prepared in-house. The sandwiches served at High-Rise are pretty good but sport some of the strangest names. These include but are not limited to "Tito's Dance Moves," "Bill's Seoul Show," and my personal favorite, "Cash for your Hargo" (pictured above), which features arugula, short rib, pickled onions, and a horseradish aioli giving the sandwich a subtle sharpness. Odd nomenclature of the food aside, a visit to this place is recommended, especially in this mood-lightning weather. 

My first culinary enterprise in my six-week Mediterranean course was making a shrimp mezze involving three unlikely components: shrimp, tomato purée, and fennel. The result surprised me as I wasn't expecting such a combination to be so delicious! It comes off as a much fancier version of the cocktail sauce purchased alongside the frozen ready-made shrimp found at your typical supermarket (and with that comparison, I have infuriated a large contingent of Greek food devotees for sure). However, this version has the shrimp cooked inside the sauce. Making this dish introduced me to a concept coined by my instructor as "carry-over cooking," which involves utilizing the residual heat to finish cooking your food, a technique that is no doubt popular with other dishes utilizing shrimp. 

In the wake of my last cooking class, I've been positively chomping at the bit to try my hand at Moroccan tagine. Preparing the stew usually requires a unique cooking vessel that can be tricky to care for and keep clean, but modern tagine recipes turn to the far more accessible pressure cooker instead. Tagine has always been a favorite of ours at an East Village cafe, which my mother has been a loyal patron of since the 80s, so being able to recreate this Moroccan favorite myself is a privilege for sure!