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
