{"id":5745,"date":"2018-06-13T17:03:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T21:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=5745"},"modified":"2018-08-02T09:46:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-02T13:46:50","slug":"al-mazaq-restaurant-and-bakery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/?p=5745","title":{"rendered":"Al-Mazaq Restaurant and Bakery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Instagram Post 6\/13\/2018 <\/h4>\n

(Click on any image to view it in high resolution.)<\/em>
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\nAn Iraqi (\ud83c\uddee\ud83c\uddf6 \u2013 not often do I get to use that flag!) meal at Al-Mazaq Restaurant and Bakery at 46 East Railway Ave in Paterson, NJ turned out to be a novel experience. Al-Mazaq (\u0627\u0644\u0645\u0630\u0627\u0642) is the Arabic word for taste and I assuredly tasted some flavors I hadn\u2019t come across before. A family operated business, our food was appropriately homespun and humble, elevated by the charming assistance of sisters Riyam and Hiyam.<\/p>\n

[1] From the breakfast side of the menu, we ordered the Bagila Platter, seasoned broad beans (bagila<\/em>) with eggs served over a foundation of Iraqi bread, languishing there to soak up every bit of flavor. But what was that vaguely familiar but elusive dusty seasoning?<\/p>\n

[2] The mystery close up. Many questions and a lot of research later yielded the answer: \u0627\u0644\u0628\u0637\u0646\u062c \u2013 butnij<\/em>, or crushed, dried river mint, a first for me.<\/p>\n

[3] Next up were gaymar<\/em>, a homemade fresh cheese supplemented with clotted cream and \u201cblack honey\u201d, [4] and its accompanying kahi<\/em>, squares of syrupy bread; dishes that when consumed together were elegant in their simplicity but ambrosial in their lusciousness. I found a similar cheese in a nearby market and intent upon reproducing this delicacy at home, tried numerous permutations of honey, pomegranate molasses, and date molasses along with clotted cream and heavy cream. Alas, I never even got close.<\/p>\n

h\/t Dave Cook, @eatingintranslation and by extension, Peter Cuc\u00e8, @baoandbutterblog
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An Iraqi meal at Al-Mazaq Restaurant and Bakery in Paterson, NJ turned out to be a novel experience. Read on…. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,6],"tags":[94],"class_list":["post-5745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-instagram","category-restaurants-food-courts","tag-iraqi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5745"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5748,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions\/5748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethnojunkie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}