I posted a recipe for mujadarra a while back, a delicious rice and lentil concoction found all over the Middle East, rice and lentils are probably one of my 'go to' comfort foods. Easy and quick to make and utterly delicious and satisfying. Nothing like a double dose of carbs to ease a troubled soul. Double dose you say? Pah! I laugh on your double dose, what about a triple, quadruple or even quintuple dose of carbs? Yep, now we're talking, and we're talking koshari!
The Egyptian take on mujadarra. It has the rice and lentils, but snuggling up to them are vermicelli, pasta and chick peas all smothered in a spicy tomato sauce and topped off with fried onions. Oh yeah!
I've side-stepped from tradition slightly with this recipe, it's probably more of a pimped up koshari than the type you'd encounter on the streets of Cairo, as I decided to make the sauce with some canned cherry tomatos and ancho chillies, I also had no ditalini pasta (short macaroni tubes) so mine is the lightweight 4-carb version, but immensely satisfying all the same. I made this with a packet of ready cooked puy lentils - you could use canned brown lentils or cook your own lentils from fresh. As for the sauce, wing it! The ancho chilli gives it a lovely rich smokey flavour, but I've had koshari with a variety of sauces from the thinner vinegary end of the spectrum to the thicker lucious side. It's all good!
Ingredients
200g rice (rinsed)
100g vermicelli
250g cooked lentils
1 can of chick peas
Water (or vegetable stock)
Olive oil
For the sauce
400g can of cherry tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic (crushed)
1 large red onion thinly sliced
4 large ancho chillies (soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes)
1 tsp cumin (ground)
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
Salt to taste
Balsamic vinegar
1. Rince the rice to remove some of the excess starch. Roughly break the vermicelli and fry in olive oil until toasted and golden, add a pinch of salt, stir in the rice and cover with boiling water or stock (I'm not giving amounts here, I pour in the water until it's around 1.5 cm from the top of the rice, it's a pretty forgiving recipe as the pasta soaks up any excess water). Turn up the heat and boil vigorously for 1 minute, then turn down to the lowest heat, cover the pan with a cloth and put on the lid and cook for 30 minutes
2. While the rice and pasta are cooking, prepare the sauce
3. For the sauce, fry the crushed garlic and half of the onion in olive oil until softened
4. Toast the cumin, caraway and coriander seeds in a dry pan for a couple of minutes and then grind.
5.
Drain the ancho chillis (reserving a little of the soaking liquid) and
deseed them. Put in a blender and pulse until they form a smooth paste.
Add this to the onion and garlic mixture and fry for a few minutes
6. Add the tomatoes, ground spices and balsamic vinegar and simmer on a low heat for around 30 minutes. Season to taste, if you want a spicier sauce add a spoonful or two of harissa
7. Once the rice is cooked, stir in the lentils and chick peas and put the lid back on. I usually leave things to mingle while I am frying the onions for the topping
8. Fry the remaining thinly sliced onion until crispy and caramelised
9. To serve, spoon the rice, lentils and chick pea mixture on a plate, add a ladle or two of the tomato sauce and top with a handful of crispy fried onions. Delicious!
I
was prompted to upload this recipe after hearing my mother wax lyrical
about the humble broad bean (fava bean) the other night. Her theory being that
mother nature must have known just how special they were because unlike
peas and their simple unadorned pod, broad beans
are swaddled in a luxurious fur lined casing that befits their role as
king of the beans.
Broad beans are a much maligned pulse in a lot of Western (or specifically Northern European) cooking, however head further south and they take on a much more important role. None more so than in Egypt where in addition to being the star of the ultimate breakfast food fuul medames, they are also found in the Egyptian version of falafel (taameya) and fuul nabet (sprouted bean soup) to name just a few dishes.
Egyptian bean dishes traditionally use the dried fava beans, I had fresh frozen, while the flavour is perhaps not as concentrated and rich as the slow cooked dried beans, I decided that I would try making the fava bean dip known as besara (or bessara, b'ssara etc depending on transliteration). While traditionally Egyptian it is also found in Morocco. If you want to go down the more traditional route then substitute the 500g fresh beans for dried. Soak them overnight and then cook according to your preference.
Ingredients
500g fresh broad beans (or frozen)
1 large bunch of coriander
1 large bunch of dill
1 large bunch of parsley
Olive oil
4 cloves of garlic (crushed)
Salt and pepper to taste
For the tasha (garlic and coriander seasoning):
Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1. Add the beans to water and boil for around 10 minutes, drain (reserving a little of the cooking liquid) and once cool enough to handle, take off the skins. This is time consuming. Ideally for this part of the recipe it helps to have a mother who's idea of a good evening is watching antiques shows on TV whilst skinning broad beans :)
2. Once the beans are skinned (you don't have to be too obsessive about it, but really the taste and texture is so much better) add them to a blender with a good glug of olive oil, the fresh coriander, dill and parsley, crushed garlic and blend until smooth. If the resulting mixture is too thick then add a little of the cooking liquid until you have the desired consistency and season to taste
3. To make the tasha seasoning (so called because when you add the hot oil to the bean mixture it makes a "tssssha" sound) heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the remaining crushed garlic until it is lightly browned, add the coriander and cumin and cook for another few minutes then pour the hot oil and spice mixture into the pureed beans
4. To serve, transfer into a deep serving plate and top with some fried onions. Delicious!
The
weather is getting decidedly chilly. While by rights we should have
summer for at least a few more weeks, the wintery chill in the mornings
is ominous. I
have to say I am a summer person, I function far better in daylight and
the thoughts of dark dreary northern European winter mornings does not
fill me with joy. What does fill me with joy is the thought of hot
sahlab to drink.
Sahlab (or sahleb, salep etc) is hot thick milky drink (or sometimes
dessert) popular throughout the Middle East and Turkey. It’s made from
sahlab flour which comes from the ground dried roots of a particular
species of orchid. While it doesn’t have much in
the way of taste (other than being slightly ‘earthy’) it acts as a
thickening agent giving a distinct texture. True sahlab itself is not
too easy to come by outside of Turkey (or other sahlab drinking
countries), and most of the commercially available sahlab
mixes contain artificial flavours and cornflour as a thickening agent
due to cost/scarcity. The recipe below gives both options, but using cornflour gives perfectly
acceptable results.
Ingredients
2 cups of milk
1/2 tsp ground mastic (optional)
2 tablespoons cornflour (or 1 tablespoon sahlab powder)
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
2 tablespoons sugar
Raisins, pistachios and coconut for garnish
1. Pour the milk in a saucepan, add the sugar and place over a medium heat
Cornflour version: As the milk
warms up, pour a little into a container and mix it with the cornflour (and mastic if using) until you've got a smooth paste, keep to one side
2. Sahlab version: Bring the milk to the boil then add the sahlab in small amounts whisking constantly so you don’t get lumps
Cornflour version: Bring the milk to the boil and add the cornflour/mastic paste and whisk constantly so you don't get lumps
3. Continue to whisk for around 5 minutes, lower the heat slightly and then add the orange blossom water and stir well
4. Ladle into mugs, sprinkle with raisins, nuts and coconut and serve hot with a spoon
It's always fun to play with new kitchen toys, and my beautiful hand carved maamoul mould is my newest. I already posted a recipe for the pistachio filled maamouls a couple of weeks ago, this time I'm going for the other main traditional filling - dates. Nature's chocolate... the desert's candy... simply divine...
I used medjool dates to make the filling here, lucious plump beauties. If you can't get a hold of them and are using standard dried dates, soak them for a bit longer in the rose water, overnight if possible so they soak up all that goodness. If all you can find in your supermarket is the so-called 'ready to eat' dates then frankly I wouldn't bother! I am not sure what they do to them, but whatever it is seems to render them useless for cooking.
Ingredients
300g semolina
100g white flour
150g margarine / ghee
50g caster sugar
1/4 tsp ground mastic (optional)
1/4 tsp mahleb (optional)
1/4 tsp yeast
100ml orange blossom or rose water
For the date filling
8 medjool dates
Pinch of cinnamon
Orange blossom water
1. Mix the dry
ingredients in a large bowl, melt the margarine or ghee and pour in,
along with the orange blossom or rose water. Mix together until it comes
together in a large dough ball. Cover with plastic wrap and leave for
around 4 hours. I should point out, in that time nothing particularly
magical happens, it doesn't transform in size, the waiting period is
more to allow the semolina to absorb the fat
2.
While the dough is resting, blitz the dates in a blender, with the cinnamon and orange blossom water. You want a fairly thick textured paste
3.
Pinch golf ball sized (or walnut, depending on your frame of reference)
pieces of the dough and roll into balls. With this quantity you should
have enough to make around 20 (ish) maamouls
4.
Take a ball into one hand and flatten out with the heel of your other
hand. Pinch off a teaspoonful of the date paste and roll into a ball. Place this in the middle of the flattened dough circle and
close the dough around it to encase fully
5.
At this point squish it in your maamoul mould, traditionally the oval
ones are used for nut fillings, and the round for date. If you don't
have a mould then you can decorate a pattern on the top with a fork
6.
Arrange the maamouls on a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper
and bake in an oven preheated to ~190C for 15-20minutes. You want the
bottom golden, but the top to be lightly coloured
7. Cool, and dust with icing sugar to serve
I already wrote a little about kibbeh/kubbe before, those delicious morsels consisting (usually) of a bulgar wheat shell encasing a filling, and then fried until crisp or cooked in a soup. Sometimes, as in the case of tray kibbeh it is based with the filling sandwiched between the bulgar wheat.
I found a box of chestnuts that I had bought some time before and then promptly forgotten about (actually, more correctly they got buried under a million cans of chick peas and shoved to the back of the cupboard). After a clean out I decided that I needed to use them, and I knew exactly what to make. Mushroom and chestnut kibbeh.
While it is not a traditional kibbeh filling, it is a combination that works wonderfully well together. I can't take credit for the idea though, as I first tasted them at the Arabica deli counter in Selfridges... Pricey, but oh so delicious.
Ingredients
200g bulgar wheat
100g semolina
2 tablespoons flour
1 tsp salt
For the filling
2 large portobello mushrooms
200g chestnuts
3 cloves of garlic (crushed)
Olive oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp oregano
A splodge of harissa (optional)
1. Put the bulgar wheat in a bowl and cover with boiling water. You want it to be completely covered and leave to soak for 30-60 minutes
2. While the bulgar is soaking prepare the filling. Chop the mushrooms and fry in olive oil with the spices until softened, then stir in the chestnuts and cook for a few more minutes. Turn the heat up high and cook briefly until all the excess water from the mushrooms has evaporated. Tip onto a plate and let it cool
3. After the bulgar wheat has soaked, drain and squeeze out the excess water (a clean kitchen cloth is ideal for this). I couldn't get a hold of any fine bulgar wheat, so I mushed it up between my fingers to try and break down the grains at this point. Tastewise it makes not one bit of difference, but the fine bulgar does make for a slightly neater and prettier kubbeh
4. Mix in the semolina, flour and salt
5. Knead the dough for a few minutes, you'll notice that the dough tends to crack or crumble as it dries. Keep a bowl of water beside you as you work to dip your fingers in as you make the kibbeh shells
6. Take a lump of the dough (what size? Hmm... kibbeh size, bit bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball!) and roll it into a ball. Placing your thumb in the centre of the ball squeeze the sides out so
as to make a cup-shaped receptacle for the filling. If the dough starts to crack or split
dip your hands into water to moisten it. Question: how thin
should your kibbeh walls be? Answer: as thin as possible!
7. Add a spoonful (or as much as you reckon will fit) of the filling and gently pinch the sides together. If it looks like there will be some leakage, just pinch off some more dough to patch it up. Wet your fingers and roll into an oval shape (traditionally the ends are pinched so it's more of a torpedo shape)
8. Continue until you run out of either dough or filling. This amount should make around 10 kibbeh. As an aside, if you have any excess filling it is delicious spread on toast. If you don't want to cook all of the kibbeh you can also freeze them at this point
9. Now to cook. You kibbeh afficionados may have noticed my kibbeh look a bit weird. That is because I decided to bake them rather than the more traditional deep frying. How you cook them is up to personal preference. Mine were baked at around 200C for 30 minutes until crispy. If you were so inclined you could also drop them into a soup and simmer for 30 minutes. It's all good!
I don't need much of an excuse to cook up a batch of maamouls as they are probably one of my favourite cookies to make. However, if I did need an excuse I found the perfect one in London last weekend - a maamoul mould. My granny used to have a few but along with her kitchen axe and massive cauldron they went AWOL after she died. This maamoul mould I bought from the rather fabulous Persepolis in Peckham. Well worth a detour to if you are hankering after all things Iranian (and generally Middle Eastern and scrumptious).
A small note on a couple of the optional ingredients: mastic is a resin from the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus), it's used in quite a lot of Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean sweets and desserts and lends a pine-y flavour to the finished dish. Mahlab is a spice made from the seeds of a particular species of cherry (Prunus mahaleb) and gives an almondy/cherry flavour to the dish.
Ingredients
300g semolina
100g white flour
150g margarine / ghee
50g caster sugar
1/4 tsp ground mastic (optional)
1/4 tsp mahleb (optional)
1/4 tsp yeast
100ml orange blossom or rose water
For the pistachio filling
100g pistachios
Sugar (to taste)
Orange blossom water
1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl, melt the margarine or ghee and pour in, along with the orange blossom or rose water. Mix together until it comes together in a large dough ball. Cover with plastic wrap and leave for around 4 hours. I should point out, in that time nothing particularly magical happens, it doesn't transform in size, the waiting period is more to allow the semolina to absorb the fat
2. While the dough is resting, blitz the pistachios in a blender and add sugar to taste and then the flower water until you have a fairly tough marzipan-ish paste
3. Pinch golf ball sized (or walnut, depending on your frame of reference) pieces of the dough and roll into balls. With this quantity you should have enough to make around 20 (ish) maamouls
4. Take a ball into one hand and flatten out with the heel of your other hand. Pinch off a teaspoonful of the pistachio paste and roll into a sausage. Place this in the middle of the flattened dough circle and close the dough around it to encase fully
5. At this point squish it in your maamoul mould, traditionally the oval ones are used for nut fillings, and the round for date. If you don't have a mould then you can decorate a pattern on the top with a fork
6. Arrange the maamouls on a baking tray covered with greaseproof paper and bake in an oven preheated to ~190C for 15-20minutes. You want the bottom golden, but the top to be lightly coloured
7. Cool, and dust with icing sugar to serve (or alternatively leave for 5 minutes and eat while hot... Mmmm)
Keeping on the apricot theme, and with some left over amardeen sauce
from my mahalabiya, I thought I’d make up some amardeen drink. A
refreshing drink made of apricot leather (amardeen*) traditionally
served to break the fast at Ramadan. As with most of my
recipes amounts are approximate. Some recipes for this drink use added
sugar, but personally I find the apricots are sweet enough as is. Feel
free to chuck in some sugar if you like yours extra sweet!
* Also known as kamardeen/din / qamardeen/din / Amar el Deen/Din / Qamar el Deen/Din etc etc depending on the transliteration of Arabic
Ingredients
100g amardeen (or a few handfuls of dried apricots*)
100ml boiling water
2 tablespoons rose water
Pine nuts / pistachios (to decorate)
1. Tear the amardeen / apricot leather into small pieces and put in a bowl.
Cover with boiling water and leave to soak for at least 30 minutes (or
until softened, may take longer). *If you can’t get a hold of amardeen,
dried apricots are an acceptable substitute,
though the flavour wont be as concentrated. Try to avoid the ‘ready to
eat’ apricots that most supermarkets sell nowadays, they are partially
reconstituted and while perfectly ok to eat they are lacking in the
concentrated flavour. Ideally what you want is
wizened dried up shrivelled things
2. Once softened, puree until smooth. If necessary push through a sieve
3. Dilute with cold water until it reaches the desired consistency - you want a thickish juice
4. Stir in the rose water
5. Serve with ice and pine nuts (or pistachios) to decorate
