Hummus with spiced lamb and pine nuts

The new series I am writing for Borough Market, Box Clever, is encouraging me to be much more adventurous with my packed lunches and how I pack them. Don’t you just love these Indian tiffin tins? I bought them for pretty pictures, but I find I am using them all the time.

I first tried this dish in a little family-run Lebanese restaurant called Emma’s on Liberty in Enmore, Sydney. They called it “traditional houmous” but it was so much better than any hummus I’d tried before. It did make me wonder why I’d been eating the unadorned version my whole life. Never again.

The dish is more often called hummus kawarma or hummus b’lahmeh, both of which mean hummus with lamb, but I am sure there are many other names to match the myriad recipes. There are almost as many versions of this dish throughout the Middle East as there are recipes for hummus. Chopped lamb or minced? Pine nuts or pomegranate seeds? Chunky or smooth? Tahini? Herbs? Spices? It depends who you ask.

Click to read more ...

Chicken, chorizo and chickpea stew

It’s that time of year again. I’m back at uni and this year is going to be even busier than the last. This is why it has been such a long time since I have written anything. I have barely had time for anything else, including cooking.

Last week, though, I cooked a proper meal for the first time in a while. It was my friend Amy’s birthday so we had her over for dinner. I cooked one of my favourites: chicken, chorizo and chickpea stew.

This is a variation on one of the early recipes on my blog.

Click to read more ...

Claudia Roden's potaje de garbanzos y espinacas

(Chickpea and spinach stew)

For my birthday my Mum gave me Claudia Roden’s fabulous cookbook, The Food of Spain. I love this book because the recipes are real and unadulterated Spanish food. The other Spanish cookbooks I have are full of extravagant recipes that are difficult or very expensive to source ingredients for in London or which are too fiddly to make for anything other than a special occasion. Roden’s book is full of the kind of recipes Spanish people actually cook and eat regularly.

I have tried to replicate this Spanish staple several times before and, until now, it never tasted quite like it does in Spain. I have a good palate for detecting spices, and got close with that, but I would never have guessed that the key to it’s “rich texture” and “intriguing flavour” comes from a paste made of stale bread fried with garlic blended to a cream with hard-boiled egg yolks and stock.

Click to read more ...

Middle Eastern mezze no.2: Falafel

Updated on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 7:51PM by Vix

Falafel is one of those foods which you either love or hate. Or is it? I think the people who hate it just haven’t had the good stuff.  

When falafel is bad, it is really bad – bland and dry, you might as well be eating cardboard. It is a pity that this is many people’s only experience of falafel, because the problem is so easily remedied; add more! More spices, more herbs, more garlic, more salt. This may seem obvious, but in practice more people turn out bland falafels, than aromatic and fragrant ones, so it is worth driving the point home.

At first glance, 4 tablespoons of cumin, 3 bunches of herbs, 6 cloves of garlic and 2 tablespoons of salt may seem excessive, but bear in mind that this falafel mixture makes 20 to 30 balls. You can test a small bit of the raw mixture, it won't hurt you, but if you don't want to do that, then fry a little piece to check it.

Click to read more ...

Middle Eastern mezze no.1: hummous

 

One of my favourite of Dad’s meals from when I was younger was his Middle Eastern mezze selection – spicy lamb mince with pine nuts, falafel, tabbouli, hummous, babaganoush, tzatziki, olives and feta served with flatbread for making DIY wraps or just mopping up the juices.

This Middle Eastern medley is now a regular part of my own dinner time repertoire, mainly because I like taking the leftovers to work for lunch. I often break it out for parties too because the mezze style is great for picking and dipping, mixing and matching, forking or wrapping.

Over the next week or two I am going to share all of the above recipes with you so you can create your own mezze selection, and where better to begin than with what is arguably the most well-known and ubiquitous of Middle Eastern mezze – hummous.  

Click to read more ...