Maamoul – Recipes from a Traditional Lebanese Easter

Happy Easter! It’s really great to be able to share this recipe with you, and maybe from the photo above, you too will feel there are things worth coming back to this world for. This is my tray of maamoul, a traditional Lebanese sweet that is made especially for Easter. Maamoul is a semolina shortbread bound with butter, orange blossom water and rose water which on...

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Lebanese Breakfast

I remember breakfasts of Labneh, Zaatar, mint, tomato and cucumber with fresh, paper thin markouk bread. On weekends, when time was a luxury we could afford, it would be kishk and qawarma hiding full cloves of garlic in creamy whiteness speckled with shallow fried pine nuts. We burnt our tongues in impatience and never learned to wait. Eggs with sumac were fluffy and...

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Sous Vide

I want to buy a water bath but I can’t find one. I have been looking online, but I haven’t found a single company that sells them in Australia, and I am not yet desperate enough to ship one from the States. A search for sous vide returns a similarly frustrating result set. Has Australia not yet caught up? I bet no one has figured our what the perfect temeperature...

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Soy and Honey Pistachio Ice Cream – Dairy, Gluten and Sugar Free

I’m a pistachio nut. Let me rephrase that. I love pistachios. Growing up in a Lebanese home, our pantry had a section especially dedicated to Kloobat, a word that roughly came to mean “nut garnishes”: almonds, dessicated coconuts, pine nuts, walnuts and off course pistachios. Mom would use them on dishes both savory and sweet. Rice dishes like Chicken with Rice (tastes...

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Sweet Falafel? Why not?

What you see above may horrify and shock you, but yet, a part of you will be tempted to try these. I had the idea in a flash of brilliance. You see, to us Lebanese, tahini is a major major part of our diet. We make hommos and baba ghannouj with it, and we put it on top of fried fish, shawarma (Lebanese kebab, much better than the Turkish version, obviously) and falafels....

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Soft Boiled Eggs with Dukkah – Best Eggs Ever

soft boiled eggs with dukkahWas it Gordon Ramsay who decided if he would hire a chef based on how they cooked an egg? I’m not sure, but let’s say it is. I agree. And a boiled egg doesn’t give anything away, all happily encapsulated in an opaque shell, keeping its secrets to itself. Can you trust it? Has it cooked too much, or too little? Obviously a 65 degree egg...

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Shawarma – The real kebab

shawarma, the Lebanese kebab Can I have barbeque sauce, extra cheese and tabbouli with that? Certainly not!Imagine the horror upon my first encounter with the Aussie kebab! I don’t want to dig deep and talk too much about frozen reconstituted meat made from God knows what, impersonating as a poor excuse for a kebab. In fact, I want to avoid that all together. This...

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The Silence of Travel

Dinner Time at the Hartmann’s I’ve packed my bags and left to Nurnberg, Germany. My brother is getting married, and I’ve come to take part of it all. I’m not sure I want to spend much time behind my laptop, with all the fun stuff going around, so my posts will most probably be brief. But, I feel a few photos are in order. eine normale bretzel bitt...

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Chili and Garlic Okra with Pomegranate Molasses – Recipe

Chili and Garlic Okra with Coriander and Pomegranate Molasses There are simple pleasures in life. Falling asleep in a garden, taking your shoes off after a long day at work, hugging a loved one… To me, there is many a simple pleasure to be had with food, but after a visit that has been long overdue to my homeland, Lebanon, I have one more to add to that list: making...

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Secret Dinners Sydney International Food Festival 2013 –

Following a massive October, time is slowing down again and life is falling into place. I finally have a place of my own, after being displaced for close to 6 months (hence the low frequency of blogging) and it’s great having all the dinners I had been planning all behind me now. The eggplant dinners and secret dinners I’ve organised have been a huge success, but...

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The Tradition of Eating Pure Fat

One of the most revered traditional breakfasts in Lebanon is a platter of raw liver, raw lamb muscle meat and raw liyyeh, sheep tail fat. Middle-Eastern sheep are a particular breed with tails that grow to a massive size. I’ve heard it said that up to one quarter of the sheep’s weight could come from its tail. The tail is pure, soft, white fat. For breakfast,...

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Mezze to Milk Tart – Book Review

It took me a few months to get around to read Mezze to Milk Tart, the latest book by Sydney’s own Cecile Yazbek. Now that I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and go through it, I’ll tell you upfront, it’s wonderful. Yazbek, a Lebanese who grew up in the old South Africa (hence the Mezze to Milk Tart), ran a vegetarian cookery school in Sydney and is the author...

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Puy Lentil Salad with Hazelnuts, Preserved Lemons, Thyme and Isot Pepper

I’ve been commissioned to organise a Middle-Eastern feast for a cool PR event and this dish is one of the first on the menu. I always attempt to use ingredients that are typical in the Middle East but rarely seen in restaurants. I feel people get a sense of authenticity, despite any contemporary take on the ingredient. This dish, for instance, is not one you would...

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How to get the best out of your sauerkraut

Some fantastic news for those of you who are fans of sauerkraut: my experiment with vacuum bag sauerkraut was a success! Forget all about those recipes that call for jars and sauerkraut pressing. Vacuum bag sauerkraut is a set and forget method: shred some cabbage, salt it, put it in a vacuum bag and vacuum seal it. Two or three weeks later, and the kraut is made!...

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Yacon-Sweetened Macadamia & Hazelnut Chocolate Recipe

With The Food Blog nearing its seventh year, it’s almost impossible to believe that I have never written a post about chocolate. Having deprived you guys from chocolate recipes, I’m amazed I have a readership at all. I hope this might make up for it, but excuse the health-oriented take on chocolate. Most of you know that I have been off sugar for well over a year...

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Where to find Sydney’s Best Mexican Food – Travis Harvey at The Essential Ingredient

Sydney’s Mexican scene in no way resembles the real deal, and with our geographic remoteness from Mexico, Australians will probably always struggle to get anything decent at restaurants. Luckily, our best Mexican food does not come from restaurants, but is being cooked by chef Travis Harvey at the Essential Ingredient’s Rozelle cooking school. I have been invited...

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How I lost 24 Kilos and a Recipe for Macadamia Oil Mayonnaise

This blog post may change your life . Back in April 2010, Amanda from Lamb’s Ears and Honey posted a Facebook link to an article in the New York Times with the title “Is Sugar Toxic”, written by a science researcher called Gary Taubes. Amanda doesn’t know it, but by posting that link, she saved me from almost guaranteed diabetes and heart disease. Thank you Amanda! At...

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