Good Company for Eid

I thought I was going to lay off cooking for a while, but as it turns out, I had picked the wrong time to do so as Eid was just around the corner. Apparently (as I've come to realize a few days ago), we, the Aal Hamzah, have somewhat established our biannual Eid Open Houses in the past years, such that when I didn't email the sisters about it for this Eid, I received questions. Not in email, but on the forums!

Here is some of the exchange:

"I'm also wondering, are we coming over yaa UmmSakinah?" asks my dear K.

"Why don't you girls just call if you can come over? I don't have anything prepared though...got really fed up with cooking," I respond.

"You don't have to cook UmmSakinah... we just like chillin' with you and the family on Eid though..." she replies back.

"Then you all are very welcome to come over, but call first just to make sure,"I write back.

And somehow, it all percolates into,

"Fantastic...the time sounds great..see you girls tomorrow inshaallah!!"

And here I am, with renewed vigor, after having cooked up a 13 x 9 oval casserole dish of stir- fried Farfalle, replete with accurate measurements (an effort to train myself to write proper recipes) and of course with photos (which I truly enjoyed taking).

After spending days of tension headaches and crazy mood swings, I really look forward to having some good company.

Eid Al Adha Stir Fried Farfalle

You will need:

1 lb. box Farfalle (or any kind of pasta), cooked al dente
3 Tablespoons Canola oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 yellow onion, minced
1/2 Tablespoon chili paste*
3 Cups ground beef
1 Tablespoon oyster sauce (I used the Lee Kum Kee brand)
2 Tablespoons light salty soy sauce (I used the ABC brand)
5 Tablespoons tomato ketchup
1 Maggi cube
1 Cup sliced carrots
1 Cup bean sprouts
2 Cups thinly sliced bok choy/nappa cabbage/cabbage
1 Tablespoon lemon juice


You will have to:

1. Heat the canola oil in an open wok or wide saucepan, and toss in the minced onion and garlic
2. Saute for about 1 minute before dumping in the chilli paste. You can add more if you wish to kick up the spicometer
3. Saute for 1 minute more before adding the ground beef. Keep stirring.
4. Add in the oyster sauce, Maggi cube, tomato ketchup, soy sauce, and sliced carrots, and stir until carrots are soft and ground beef are cooked
5. Add the bean sprouts, bok choy, and Farfalle
6. Stir well, making sure to turn the mixture over several times such that the pasta are evenly coated in the ground beef sauce, and the bok choy and beansprouts are slightly cooked (not too cooked).
7. Sprinkle evenly with lemon juice and enjoy it with some good company.

Serves 8 - 10


Cook's Notes:

• You can omit the chilli paste if you wish
• You can omit the beansprouts and substitute with other vegetables if you wish
• It's best to use a flat metal spatula to cook this with as it's easier to shovel the pasta and flip it over in the last step
• * You can make the chilli paste by soaking some dried chillies in hot water to rehydrate them, and then blending them with just enough water until they come together as a wet paste. Refer to this post.
  
• I mix the smaller dried chilli peppers with the larger sweet ones so as not to make a chilli paste that is too pungent. (Rule of thumb: the smaller the chilli pepper, the hotter it is)
• You can keep this in the fridge for other uses, though be careful not to let it sit in the fridge too long without using it, as it can get moldy. If you don't use it a lot, either keep it in the freezer, make only enough for the dish that you are going to cook (but it's more energy efficient to make a big batch).
• You can also buy the ready made chilli paste called Sambal Oelek at Asian grocery stores.
• More information about dried chilli peppers on Cook's Thesaurus.

And, mashaallah, such good company it was too! Having these sisters over for Eid really made my Eid extra special. Jazakillah khair K, for asking me,

"Are we coming over, yaa Ummsakinah?"

Resurrecting Qabeelat Hayl - Fall '06

Hayl al Awwal, Hayl At-Thaani. No, I'm not talking about the Islamic months. I'm talking about the student body of AlMaghrib institute in the 'cow-tipping' town of Columbus.

Hayl was born in 2004. Hayls' first Almaghrib class was in the spring of 2005, The Code Evolved, taught by Sheikh Yaser Birjas. However, by the beginning of 2006, we were shut down. We didn't meet the required number of students.

The qabeelah on wheels was born. Ann Arbor, Maryland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago. If we had walked, we'd probably be following in Baqiyy's footsteps.

After being bashed mercilessly by Ustadh Muhammad Alshareef in Chicago, we, the sensitive and 'emotional' sisters, took it personally and decided to do something about it. Of course when our emotions left us, we realized the wisdom behind the bashing.

The action plan was born. The promos began. There was buzzing all around, and we were gettin' down to business! I was by then in my first going into the second trimester (did I tell you that my baking frenzy always strike during my pregnancies?). The Haylsters (that's Hayl sisters) were busy preparing for the Promo down at Columbus State. Since I was partially incapacitated by pregnancy, they didn't let me do much, but they didn't know how stubborn I can be.

I told them I had a surprise, inshaallah. It was to be my first ever mass cuppies, all 200 of them. AlMaghrib junood I call 'em: standing proudly with their Almaghrib purple armor, bearing their liwaa flags with the word 'AlMaghrib'.

Those flags by the way, were hastily handwritten, with much love, I might add, by a pregnant woman whose common sense had belied her. She could have asked her husband to print out the AlMaghrib logo, all 200 of them, for the cuppies, but instead, she ordered her children to help her do it the hard way.

She measured the sizes of those little flags. She scrutinized the AlMaghrib logo to figure out the font, and she tried writing it out on paper. It was not easy. She tried again. That sun was one heaven of a thingamajig to draw! But she tried again. After many tries, she got it.

She took a deep breath, sat down, gathered all the colored papers on which she had precisely measured and gridded, and set to work. She wrote, drew, and wrote and drew, until her husband turned to look at her, tsk, tsked, and remarked,

"You're out of your mind."

200 of them. She was going to make 200 of those little flags, by hand, and time was running out. But he knew enough to leave her alone. She can be crazy when it comes to one of her creative strikes. Before long, she has mastered the font and logo, that she could probably do it in her sleep. Yet, she fell short of 200, but she made do. Each flag, she traced with highlighters, pink and blue, mostly, to cover the flaws in her handwritten logos.

On D day, the cuppies were ready, all gussied up, bearing their homemade flags. Worried they might slide and bump into each other in their expansive cuppy boxes, she had her children pipe dots of royal icing on the bottom of each cuppy and stick them in their place in the boxes. Of course, the boxes were lined with aluminum foil, so it'd look nice (also rendering the boxes reusable).

Logictics problem: her fridge wasn't big enough to hold two huge boxes of AlMaghrib junood cuppies.

Solution: the van. The temperature outside was in the forties, perfect fridge temperature. Her husband helped her put those cuppies in the van, and in the van they remained until the time of the promo.

The ride to Columbus State (the site of the promo) was excruciating. Every bump, turn, and stop was unbearable, and no, she was not in labor. Her little cuppies, her little babies, all 200 of them had to stay intact. They just had to! Alhamdulillah, they did. Those little AlMaghrib junood behaved very well, remained in their respective places, and lowered her heartbeat and blood pressure upon frantic checking on arrival.


These cuppies were baked, decorated, and flagged by a pregnant woman who was crazy enough to attempt making 200 (and more) decorated cupcakes, thinking at the back of her mind,

Let's see if I can pull this off. If I can, it would help when I make a decision to open a cupcake business in Malaysia.

And the flags were actually a last minute idea (the reason why she couldn't have them printed, which turned out for the best anyway), since she couldn't find anything at the Cake Craft store to represent AlMaghrib. So they had to be customized.

That, my friends, is the story of the Almaghrib cuppies, lovingly baked, decorated, and agonized over by an AlMaghriber, an auntie Haylster who is about to leave her beloved Haylsters for she doesn't know where soon.

And no, I haven't attempted making anymore cuppies since then. I'm waiting for some Obama ones.

Got Hayl?