Muhammara (or m'hammara) is a dip found over the Middle East and and beyond (there's also an Armenian version called garmeroug), its origins are said to lie in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Primarily it consists of either fresh or dried peppers, ground walnuts and olive oil, flavoured with pomegranate molasses and sumac. It can be eaten as a dip, spread on bread or served as a sauce, typically for grilled meats or fish.
I was inspired to make this after reading the Comptoir Libanais cookbook, but I've moved away from the traditional ingredients slightly, I had a bag of ground hazelnuts in the cupboard that needed to be used up, also I had no aleppo pepper, which is the type of chilli that most versions are based on, however I did have some dried ancho chillies which I figured would give a nice earthy smokiness to the finished dish.
It's pretty easy to make, and with the exception of the time taken to roast the peppers, it's something that can be whizzed up in minutes.
Ingredients
2 red sweet peppers
2 large ancho chillies
100g ground nuts (I used hazelnuts, traditionally walnuts are used)
1 tsp sumac
1 tsp ground cumin
1 large garlic clove (crushed)
1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses
Olive oil
Handful of fresh coriander (optional)
Salt to taste
1. Roast the peppers until the skin is blackened, allow to cool and peel
2. While the peppers are roasting soak the ancho chillies in boiling water (for around 30 minutes)
3. Add the cooled and peeled sweet peppers, rehydrated chillies and coriander to a blender with a dash of olive oil (can add more to taste) and the pomegranate molasses and blend until smooth.
4. Stir in the nuts, crushed garlic, sumac and cumin. Add salt to taste.
5. Eat!
Despite recent posts to the contrary I'm not big on sweets, preferring
savoury any day. However, I've currently got a bit of an obsession with
making North African sweets and cakes,
partly prompted by the gorgeous patisseries I was window shopping in
when I visited Paris last November, and partly due to boredom. I hate the
winter, I hate the cold and I hate the rain. For the past few weekends
the weather has been dire and the incentive
to go out and 'do' something has been sadly lacking. Add to the mix a
Winter lurg and you’ve got a recipe for staying at home.
Mlabes are a Tunisian and Algerian delicacy, beautifully iced almond
biscuits that melt in the mouth. I searched high and low for a fool
proof recipe, but the majority I found online seemed to be based on the
same original recipe, one that had at some point
been translated from Arabic, in itself not a problem, but no one seemed
to know what one of the mystery ingredients was (kthira*) so omitted
it. All the recipes did contain egg whites, and as I'm not overly fond
of using eggs if I can get away with it I decided
to play around with the ingredients a bit. Using margarine as a binding
agent seemed to work acceptably, admittedly my cookies are probably a
bit 'heavier' than they should be, but I like the texture. I also
substituted half ground pistachios for the almonds.
I should point out that any weights listed below are an approximation
only; I didn't weigh anything out while I was making the cookies, and
adjusted the ingredients depending on the texture. You want the dough to
hold together and be quite malleable, so adjust
the ground almonds / margarine accordingly.
For the icing, I used an all-in-one royal icing mix (icing sugar and
powdered egg white), and added a little more water than the directions
on the packet stated so I could dip the cookies in.
Ingredients
200g ground almonds (or 2/3 almonds 1/3 ground pistachios)
50g sugar
2 tablespoons rose water (or orange flower water)
50g margarine (melted)
1. Mix the ground almonds and sugar in a large bowl. Stir in the rose water.
2. Add the melted margarine slowly, you should have a slightly oily
malleable dough. If it's too crumbly add more margarine, too loose then
add some more almonds.
3. Pinch off small pieces of the dough and roll into balls slightly smaller than golf ball size
4. Arrange on an oiled baking tray and bake at 175C for 20 minutes
5. Allow the cookies to cool completely before icing them
Icing
1. Prepare the icing according to the packet (or Google a recipe for
royal icing if you want to make your own with egg whites!) you may need
to add a little more water, the icing should be thick enough to coat the
cookies without slipping off, but not so think
that you’ve got to trowel it on! You can either leave the icing plain,
or flavour it. I made half with plain icing, and added some violet
essence and mauve food colouring to the other half
2. Dip the cookies fully into icing and place on a rack to dry
3. Traditionally they are topped with a diamond of gold or silver leaf, I
used a combination of edible gold glitter, bronze sprinkles, and gold
stars. To go with the violet ones ideally I would have topped them with a
crystallised violet petal…
4. Step back and admire your finished work. Sure they are a little wonky
and the icing may not be great, but for a first attempt they are not
bad at all
*Best guess for kthira is that it is a gum or a resin similar to mastic or gum arabic...
I'm not a big baker of cakes, in fact I rarely attempt to bake anything, preferring instead to make savoury foods. Well, with the exception of Middle Eastern sweets. Basbousa (also known as hareesa, revani or ravani) lies somewhere in between a sweet and a cake. It's found thoughout North Africa and the Middle East, and also in Greece and Turkey, though its actual origins are probably Egyptian.
There are numerous recipies out there for basbousa, some using self raising flour in addition to semolina, some using eggs, some yoghurt, and some milk. I've gone for the yoghurt version as I think the tanginess of the yoghurt contrasts beautifully with the sweetness of the syrup. And about the syrup, some versions have a rose water syrup whereas others call for a plain simple syrup.
Don't worry about being too precise with the ingredients, like just about everything I make it doesn't call for exact measurements. Same with the cooking time, depending on the size of dish, efficiency of the oven and the phase of the moon it could take anything from 30 minutes to an hour :)
Ingredients
350g semolina
50g dessicated coconut
100g caster sugar
Vanilla extract (optional)
150g margarine (melted)
200g Greek yoghurt
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
Blanched almonds (to decorate)
For the syrup
250ml water
225g sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
1. Mix the semolina, baking powder, coconut, sugar and salt in a bowl
2. Stir in the melted butter, the mixture should look like damp sand
3. Add the yoghurt and vanilla extract (if using) and mix well. You should end up with a thick batter-like dough
4. Grease a baking dish (~ 27cm/10 inch) and spoon in the mixture. Smooth down and leave for around 20 minutes (Use this time to make the syrup and let the oven heat up...)
5. To make the syrup add the water and sugar to a pan and bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice (this will stop the syrup crystalising when it cools) and then add the orange blossom water. Leave to one side
6. Score the top of the cake mixture into lozenge shapes, and then put into a preheated oven (175C) for 20 minutes
7. It's not ready yet, you just want to reinforce the scoring, and if you're using almonds to decorate press them into the centre of each lozenge at this point (if you do it right at the start they tend to burn)
8. Put the cake back in the oven and cook for another 20-40 minutes. You want the top to be golden brown, as the cake is so moist cooking it for longer wont dry it out. Just keep checking on it!
9. Once the cake is cooked, take it out of the oven and pour on the sugar syrup. You may not need all the syrup (in fact you probably wont! Keep some aside to drizzle on the leftover yoghurt and top with dessicated coconut and chopped pistachios... delicious). Once it's drunk enough of the syrup it's ready to eat. Basbousa can either be eaten warm or cold.
When I was in Paris last November I found myself perusing the window displays of the many North African bakeries, entranced by the delicious looking offerings on sale. Particularly the makrouth and montecao (a shortbread type cookie). It was when I was making a batch of montecao the other weekend that I decided to use half the dough to make some ghriba - a cookie of many shapes and forms found over North Africa. I had an awful lot of pistachios in the cupboard, so decided that my cookies would be pistachio based. Incidentally 'ghriba' in Arabic means strange or foreign, indicating possibly
that these cookies come from elsewhere. They are popular among the North
African Jewish communities so it is possible
that they arrived via Spain...
A note about chickpea flour, uncooked it has a beany flavour with a
slightly bitter aftertaste however once cooked it gives the cookies a
delicious creamy texture with no flavour.
As with most of my recipes, quantities are approximate and nothing particulary bad should happen if you use a little more or less...
Ingredients
1 cup chick pea flour
100g blanched ground pistachios
1/2 cup sugar
50g margarine
Pinch of salt
4 cardamom pods (remove seeds and grind)
Natural green food colouring (optional)
1. If you can’t buy ready blanched peeled pistachios (can anyone?), boil
for a few minutes and then plunge into cold water. Remove the skins (an
easy way is to put your hands in the water and rub the pistachios
between your fingers, the skins should sink to the
bottom of the bowl), and once de-skinned blend to a paste. It doesn’t
have to be too smooth.
2. Add the chickpea flour to a bowl and mix with the sugar and ground cardamom seeds.
3. Stir in the ground pistachios, it doesn’t matter if the resulting mixture is a little lumpy
4. Melt the margarine, and slowly add to the dry ingredients (along with
green food colouring if using). This is one of those recipes that
doesn’t hinge on exact amounts, if your ground pistachios are more of a
paste than a powder then you’re likely to need less
margarine. You want the dough to form a fairly tight ball with minimal
crumbliness. Chickpea flour contains no gluten so you need something to help it stick together
5. Pinch off small pieces of dough (slightly smaller than golf ball size, I
tried to think up a suitable comparison object but drew a blank… ) roll
into balls and place on a baking tray
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes in a 175C oven, the cookies will initially be quite soft so
leave on the baking tray until cooled. While they are still soft you can
decorate them with slithers of almonds, pine nuts or pistachios.
7. Eat, perfect with coffee or mint tea if you are so inclined…
I love eating Indian and Pakistani sweets, but have never really attempted making them, partly because I live near so many great sweet shops and partly because a lot of the recipes are quite time consuming. However today a friend gave me a recipe for carrot halwa (well, more of a list of ingredients - quantities are left to the discretion of the cook...) and having nothing better to do on a wet Saturday afternoon I decide to cook up a batch. The end result was pretty tasty, I didn't have any kewra essence that the recipe called for, neither did I have any condensed milk, but to compensate I was quite generous with the amount of milk I used and cooked it down for longer. With regards to the sugar content you can use more or less depending on how much of a sweet tooth you've got and how sweet the carrots are. Cooking times are approximate as are quantities, it's a very forgiving recipe...
Ingredients
1/2 kg carrots
400ml milk
100g sugar
50g margarine (or ghee)
1 pinch of saffron
2 cardamom pods (whole)
seeds from 2 cardamom pods (ground)
50g pistachios, almonds, pine nuts or other nuts of your choice
dried fruit (optional, I didn't have anything in the house!)
1. Grate the carrots finely
2. Pour the milk in a heavy bottomed pan, add the whole cardamom pods and carrots and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the milk has been absorbed and the carrots are soft. Takes around 45 minutes to an hour. Don't worry if it takes longer, it's all good! Fish out the cardamom pods at this stage if you don't want a nasty surprise of biting into one unawares...
3. Now add the margarine or ghee and turn up the heat. The idea is to fry the carrot mixture to give it some more flavour. Again, the time it takes may vary, you want to continue cooking until the mixture comes together in a lump (technical term)
4. Stir in the nuts (and dried fruit if using) and ground cardomom and cook for a few more minutes
5. Add the sugar, the mixture will suddenly start to look 'wet' don't worry, this is normal, now you need to continue stirring until the mixture starts to thicken and caramelise
6. Serve warm (best) or cold, with some additional nuts sprinkled over the top
It's winter... cold dark days and cold dark nights. At least here in northern Europe. A time for soups, stews and other comforting foods. I have to say dips probably would not be at the forefront of my mind under normal circumstances. However, at work we were having a buffet where everyone was to bring in some dishes. I had a butternut squash in the house that I'd planned on roasting and turning into a soup (actually to tell the truth, my immediate plans involved thoughts of hibernating until next year and I'd probably find the squash sometime in January turned into a mysterious pool of nastiness at the back of the cupboard) but looking at it with fresh eyes, I thought why not go for Tirshi? It's a spicy North African pumpkin-based dip that is popular in Israel, and would make a change from my usual offerings of hummous and baba ghanoush.
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash
1 small potato
2 cloves of garlic crushed
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons harissa (or to taste)
Olive oil
1. The butternut squash and potato can either be boiled or roasted, roasting will give a much better flavour and a drier dip, but it all depends on time. I made this in a last minute rush, so I peeled and cubed the squash and potato and boiled for 30 minutes. Drain well
2. Mash the squash and potato until well combined
3. Roast the caraway and cumin seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, then grind
4. Add the crushed garlic, ground spices and salt and pepper to taste
5. Stir in the harissa, the brand I had was pretty mild so I put in a couple of tablespoons, if you want to amp up the heat (I was making it for work so thought I'd better play it safe) then some additional chilli or Aleppo pepper could be added
6. Add a splash of olive oil, et voila!
7. Eat: Delicious with crusty French bread, or pitta. Or anything really...
Despite appearances to the contrary, I don't actually have a sweet tooth. I do however have a weakness for Middle Eastern and North African sweets and pastries... Concentrated sweetness that goes perfectly with a cup of strong black coffee, maybe at the end of a meal, or maybe during a lazy afternoon. The sort of sweetness that caresses the throat and excites the taste buds. I was preparing a batch of maamouls at the weekend, and decided as I had an awful lot of semolina left, I'd try my hand at making makrouth (or makrout, makroud, makgrood depending on how the name's transliterated) a North African semolina pastry filled with dates. Traditionally fried and then soaked in a hot honey mixture, they are beyond delicious. I have to say, I went down a non-traditional route as far as the cooking process goes and baked them, but the end result seemed to be quite acceptible.
Ingredients
380g semolina
200g margarine (melted)
150ml orange flower water
1 pinch of salt
For the filling:
250g dates
1 tsp cinnamon
Orange flower water
1. Chop the dates roughly and add around 50-100ml of boiling water to them (the amount of water will depend on how soft your dates are. I love the really dense fudge-like dates but in the UK they are getting harder and harder to find in supermarkets as the pre-soaked ready-to-eat ones seem more in favour. Nice but they don't work as well in cooking. Leave the dates to soak for at least an hour (ideally overnight)
2. Put the semolina and a pinch of salt in a large bowl and pour in the melted margarine and the orange flower water. Mix the margarine into the dry semolina with your fingers until you have what resembles a bowl of damp sand. You don't want to overwork the dough, so there's no need to knead it, but slowly work it together until you have a firm ball. Wrap in cling film and leave for around 30 minutes (while you make the date filling)
3. Pour any excess water from the dates and blend until they become a smooth paste. Stir in the cinnamon and orange flower water. I haven't given quantities for the orange flower water because it all depends on how moist your date paste is. Ideally, you want something that you can form into a sausage shape.
4. Dividing the date mixture into four, roll into 'sausages'
5. Now divide the semolina dough into four pieces and roll out into a log, flattening slightly. It should be the same length as the date sausages
6. Make an indentation in the dough and add the date filling (hot dog in a bun analogy...)
7. Carefully pinch the sides together so the filling is completely encased in the dough, then roll it backwards and forwards to make sure it's all sealed in
8. Usually at this stage special moulds are used, however if you don't have a mould (I don't) just cut the log diagonally into 2cm wide pieces. If you're feeling adventurous you can decorate the top with a pattern
9. Bake the cookies in an oven preheated to 250C for around 20 minutes,or until they just start to brown
10. Once cooked, you can eat 'as is' or go for the dipped in honey option. I made a simple sugar syrup and added a good squeeze of honey and some orange flower water. I then poured the mixture over the cookies and let them soak for around 30 minutes. Serve with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
