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 the inside holds a sweet filling. The filling is either buttery dates, or a concoction of walnuts or pistachios with sugar, more orange blossom water and rosewater. Now consider that for a minute. Imagine biting through that buttery, crumbly crust and getting the faint hint of roses and orange blossoms, followed by the chewiness of pistachios, nutty and sweet. Delicious opulence and comfortable luxury. Maamoul works on so many levels.

If you look through the photo series, you will get a basic understanding of how these Easter cakes are made. You can see the beautiful pattern that is formed when the filled dough is pressed into a traditional wooden mold. There is a shape for every flavour and that makes it easy to know which is which. According to Ludwig’s sister, who’s a real wiz with computers, there’s anecdotal evidence pointing to the tradition of making maamoul on Easter. Apparently the wooden mold symbolises Jesus’ cross, the mold’s pattern resembles the shape of the sponge with which Jesus was given vinegar to drink, the crust contains no sugar in reference to Christ’s death containing no happiness, and the inside is sweet and joyful to symbolise the resurrection. I’m not sure how steeped in tradition all this symbolism is, but at the least, it’s a nice story.

It’s been nine years since I’ve taken part in a maamoul making session, and this is actually my first attempt at it, as it was usually my mother who took care of the whole mission. Long distance phone calls with mom, mirrored by similar efforts from Ludwig resulted in the recipe we used. Just like we used to do, the dough was prepared on Good Friday and the maamoul was baked on Easter Saturday. But unlike being under the strict, observing eyes of our parents, this time we allowed ourselves to indulge in trying the maamoul as it was warm, instead of having to wait for Sunday as tradition requires. I am now convinced that eating maamoul warm is the only way to do it with the filling still gooey and slightly runny. The flavour warms my heart and the scent takes me back to my childhood, and the result is a maamoul I know even mom would be proud of!

Maamoul Recipe

Ingredients – Crust

• 900 g coarse semolina
• 150 g fine semolina
• 550 g good quality butter at room temperature
• 125 ml rosewater
• 30 ml orange blossom water
• 1/2 cup milk (used on the second day)
• Equipment – maamoul molds bought from a Middle Eastern supply store

Ingredients – Fillings

Fillings are tricky to give amounts with, because it depends on how many types you want to make. Use these ratios as a guideline, and make less/more depending on how much you want to make

• 2 cups dates and 1/2 cup butter combined in food processor
• 2 cups coarsely ground walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tbsp rosewater and 1/2 tsp orange blossom water
• 2 cups coarsely ground pistachios and 1/2 cup sugar with 2 tbsp rosewater and 1/2 tsp orange blossom water
• Try the combinations and adjust the sugar and aromatic waters as you like

Method

• Knead the coarse and fine semolina with the butter until incorporated
• Gradually add the orange blossom water and the rosewater until all added
• Knead for 30 minutes
• Rest for 12 hours, kneading it around 3 times in between
• Before you start using the dough, you must knead it one last time, this time you wet your hands with the 1/2 cup of milk and kneading until all the milk is used up
• Now your dough is ready, create a little ball of dough and make a hole in it, making the sides even
• Look at the picture that shows the stages of filling the maamoul. Fill with your desired filling. If you are using dates, they should be formed into individual balls to fill the dough
• Close the dough so that the filling is totally covered by dough
• Put in the maamoul mold and push firmly but not overly so, otherwise the dough will stick
• Put a cutting board and cover with a kitchen towel
• Strike the top tip of the mold on the kitchen towel to release the maamoul
• Repeat and when you have a tray full, put into an oven that has been preheated to 220 degrees Celsius
• It will take around 15 minutes to bake, but what you are after is the slightest colouring. You don’t want it to brown
• Remove, cool down and eat when warm or cold

Read More

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 crunchy, slowly fried with olive oil in pottery and devoured within seconds with farm fresh home made goat’s milk yoghurt. Every once in a while, mom would send dad down to the baker’s with a variety of containers to be made into Lebanese pizzas and pies. The one for manakish would be full of her special zaatar mix – hand picked mountain thyme, dried and mixed with freshly roasted sesame seeds, sumac and of course, olive oil from our decades old olive grove. Another would have spinach and wild silver beet mixed with onions and used to fill the triangular Fattayer b’Sbenekh w Selek. Then there was Lahm b’Ajeen, mutton and beef mince mixed with onions, tomatoes, pine nuts, pomegranate molasses and spices served piping hot on top of the crispy golden brown pastry. A squeeze of lemon juice was all it needed to become the perfect meat pie. Let’s not get into an argument here.
Dad would drive on missions in search of the freshest produce. On his way back home, he would beep the horn, sending a special message that got us on to our feet and out to greet him. The three boys would help dad carry boxes full of the freshest produce upstairs where mom would complain. On a good day. electricity was only available for two or three hours if we were lucky, and that meant that produce needed to be bought and consumed very quickly. But Dad had a problem. Buying a kilo or less of anything was a strange concept he never embraced; and so mom got busy cooking three or four meals at a time, preserving what she could and handing out the rest to the neighbours, who were all too keen to repay the favour and offload their own husbands’ overzealous shopping habits, undermining mom’s evacuation efforts.
Over the next few posts, I want to cover many of the Lebanese breakfast foods we eat. I will aim to recreate the recipes using high quality raw ingredients sourced locally from Sydney wherever possible . Wish me luck.

(grapes from my father’s garden)

Read More

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 for cooking kangaroo is. Why shouldn’t it be my discovery? Imagine, one of the world’s healthiest meats becoming one of the tastiest. And who does the world have to thank? Moi.
My usual gripe with roo meat, as you would hear any Australian complain is that it is too hard to cook without becoming tough. Kangaroos are fit animals with hardly any intra-muscular fat, so it’s hard to keep the meat moist. Have you ever had a kangaroo steak that’s been thrown on the barbie and treated like it were a beef steak? Shudder.
But not only do I want a water bath to cook kangaroo. I want to see how vegetables behave and if I can make a ratattouille in it. I also want to try that 65C egg (at 67C).
Follow this link: http://discovermagazine.com/2006/feb/cooking-for-eggheads/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

Read More

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 much better than it sounds) and Stuffed Lamb would never be complete without a mixture of golden pan fried pine nuts and halved almonds and bright green pistachios. As for desserts, Mighli (a spicy rice dessert made to celebrate a new birth and Christmas), Mhallbiyyeh (a creamy and light milk based pudding) and even drinks like Jallab had their fair share of toppings. These nuts add a depth of flavour and texture to whatever they come across, lifting the dishes to new heights.
And so recently, while I was reading through David Lebovitz’s blog, I came across his recipe for pistachio ice cream. His description of that Bronte Pistachio Paste was so enticing, I knew I had to make that ice cream. However, I had a couple of problems. I looked everywhere in Australia for Bronte Pistachio Paste but I couldn’t find it. The other problem was the fact that I was on a gluten/dairy/sugar free diet under the strict orders of my naturopath. That meant that I had to substitute milk for soy milk and sugar for honey. I was up for the challenge, but first, I had to find my pistachio paste.
Weeks later, on my way back from work, I decided to venture on the realm of the unknown. I passed by Abu Hachem’s Lebanese grocery in Dulwich Hill and bought half a kilo of Pistachio kernels for $10. I got home, put 250 grams of kernels in the food processor and started it up. A minute later, I had something that resembled almond meal. Good, but not good enough. I wanted Marzipan texture. So I got 2 tablespoons of almond butter and whizzed that in. The texture starting transforming to something more like what I wanted, but it was not quite there. So I got some neutral oil (Canola) and in a pesto like fashion, I added a thin string to the mix while processing until I ended up with a perfect Marzipan like block of pistachio paste.
So to make the ice cream, you will need the following (based on David’s recipe)
500 ml soy milk (I use Bonsoi which is great)
2 Tablespoons of cornstarch
200 grams of pistachio paste
A squeeze of lemon juice
Honey (to taste)
1 Tea Spoon Rum or Vodka
Make a slurry from the cornstarch and half a cup of soy milk. Heat up the remaining soy milk, add and stir in the honey. Keep adding honey until desired sweetness is reached. Constantly stir and when the soy milk starts boiling add the cornstarch and soy milk slurry. Boil on a low heat for 2 minutes then take off the heat. In a blender or a food processor, liquidise the soy milk with the pistachio nut paste and a squeeze of lemon juice until well blended. Without waiting for it to cool down, churn in an ice cream maker. Five minutes before you feel it’s ready, add the alcohol. This will help keep the ice cream soft when frozen. Freeze overnight for a well set ice cream or consume immediately if you like it soft.
I tell you what. This ice cream is the bomb. You will not believe that something that tastes so naughty is actually OK on the healthy scale. On the down side, I think I should have peeled the pistachios because the skins make for a gritty texture, which is not too unpleasant – a smoother texture would be nicer, but I’m not sure I want to spend 3 hours peeling pistachios. Maybe sieving the liquid before churning might work.
David, thanks for the inspiration.

Read More

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. We also use it in a limited way in sweets. We mix it with carob mollasses to make a nice sweet dip which we simply eat with bread, and we also butter cake tins with it, such as in sfouf, a yellow cake flavoured with tumeric. The Greeks also use tahini in their own way and they make tahinopita, a special pie made for Lent. The ingredient is without doubt Lebanese, or at least from our side of the med. The word itself signifies something that has been ground up, in this case sesame, which are ground as they are to produce tahini. Nothing else is used, pure sesame.
Now my idea as it ended up resulted in a very simple yet tasty dish, which at first glance looks very similar to falafels, but tastes very different. The falafel disks are made from white bread, tahini, salt and sugar, mixed with fennel seeds, with a small bit of water to help it come along. The mixture needs to be strong and not too sticky. As it is already edible, you need to taste it to make sure you have the right balance.
As a guidline:
4 large slices of white bread (not Lebanese bread)
3/4 cup tahini
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 to 1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons fennel seeds
Mix all ingredients except fennel seeds in blender/food processor. Work into a nice not too sticky paste, add the fennel seeds and deep fry in small batches. Make sure the oil is not too hot as you want the inside to cook a bit as well. These fellas will brown very quickly, so remove when nice and golden.
My initial idea was to make a sweet tahini sauce, which is what you see in the photo. I made that by mixing tahini, lemon juice, icing sugar, and water. You need lots of lemon juice and sugar. This completes the illusion that you are serving falafel, but this is also tasty with a simple syrup of sugar and lemon juice, with lots of lemon juice.
Apologies on the not too clear directions, but this is a first attempt. Try it, and taste the paste as you go along and it will not go wrong. A cheat’s recipe for dessert, and makes for interesting conversation!

Read More

Soft Boiled Eggs with Dukkah – Best Eggs Ever

soft boiled eggs with dukkah
Was 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 is a different story (see here), but cooking an egg in normal conditions requires attention and good judgment. Luckily though, attention is only required for a short period of time. In this recipe, inspired by Greg Malouf’s version, dukkah eggs would land you a job at Mr Ramsay’s.
Dukkah is a spice mix I got introduced to only four years ago. It originates from Egypt and has become popular, with many restaurants serving it with dipping olive oil and bread. It is similar to zaatar, but is quite heavy on the spicing, so I can’t have it in the same quantities I do with zaatar. Making dukkah is easy, and the recipe below can tolerate a large margin of error.
Traditionally, roasted hazelnuts are used, but I don’t keep hazelnuts around. I do keep pistachios though, and they can be used instead. So this is how you make dukkah, my way.
2 tbsp cumin seeds (heaped, roasted, crushed)
2 tbsp coriander seeds (heaped, roasted, crushed)
3 tbsp sesame seeds (heaped, roasted, crushed roughly)
3 tbsp pistachios (peeled, heaped, crushed roughly)
large pinch of salt (good salt, like Maldon)
large pinch of pepper (fine ground)
Instructions: mix all of the above

Dukkah spice mix
Now for the eggs. Its best to boil eggs that are at room temperature, so they don’t crack.

• Put the eggs in a pot, cover with cold water.
• Bring to simmer, and simmer for 2 minutes
• Take out of boiling water, and into cold water immediately. Keep there for 3 minutes
• Peel eggs, dust in white flour and deep fry for 1.5 minutes, until slightly golden
• Put some dukkah in a plate and roll eggs around in dukkah

Serve with nice crusty bread and goat’s cheese. Enjoy thoroughly.

tasty dukkah crusted eggs

Read More

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 quick post is about shawarma, the real kebab, and mainly about what goes with it.

the perfect kebab, shawarma only needs tahini, parsley, sumac rubbed onions and tomatoes
Making shawarma is simple. Just marinate some lamb in red wine vinegar, oil, salt (yes), all spice, cinnamon, black pepper and a bit of cumin. Wait for a day or two, then you can oven roast or pan fry the meat. But how do you eat it? The answer is simple, and so it should be, as the flavour of the meat needs to shine through, along with a cleansing freshness that comes from only 4 other ingredients: finely chopped parsley, onions rubbed with sumac, tomatoes and a slightly thin tahini sauce (tahini, garlic, water, lemon juice and salt, whizzed up in a food processor, made to taste). That’s all it needs. Try this combination, and you will never turn back. And please, no cheese.

Read More

bbksa.com

www.bbksa.com

Read More

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 bitte

Read More

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 food from the produce in the garden that fed your parents and grandparents. Fresh, seasonal food that is bound to your history and forms part of your identity.

Stunningly beautiful okra flower and fruit
In anticipation of the return of his three sons (2 in Australia and 1 in America), dad made sure the garden is abundant with produce. And for days, mom has been holding off picking the okra so that we could pick it ourselves. Okra is one of those vegetables. You know what I’m talking about. You either love it, or you hate it. Cooked poorly, the slimy sludge oozes into the dish, turning it into a textural monster. But mom cooks nothing poorly, and the secret she tells me is to deep fry the Okra fruit (yes, it is a fruit), which eliminates the slimy liquid.

the day’s bounty of Okra fruit
Mom usually makes an okra stew with meat and tomatoes. But I wanted to do something a bit different, so we made both dishes. My recipe is so simple, that it does not need measurement. Simply deep fry some okra that has been cleaned like you see in the picture (get rid of the stem) and in a separate pan, fry some chopped garlic and chili. When the garlic is golden and crunchy, mix and cover the okra with the garlic and chili. Dish up in your serving plate and top with freshly chopped coriander and fruity, citrusy pomegranate molasses. This is a great mezze dish, so eat it with your fingers. No forks and knives, please…

Read More

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 man, they were exhausting. Without the massive amount of support I’ve received, things may have turned out differently.
The post below is a guest post by Linda To, aka: cuz, Jonathan, your sister and what’s your name again?. Linda is a good friend of mine, a hugely talented cook and a blogger at Eat Show and Tell, one of my favourite Sydney blogs. Below she shares her experience of being part of the secret dinner team. Here’s a huge thank you to Linda, Justine, Darren and Thomas from Restaurant Atelier where my secret dinners were held, Somer, Anise and the boys from Efendy and Priscila, my friend from Romeu & Julieta.
Linda To, the creator of a most awesome secret dinner dessert, writes:

The last couple of weeks has been one of the most amazingly intense experiences that I have ever experienced. Thanks to Fouad, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a couple of Secret Dinners for the Crave International Food Festival. This will be a relatively long post summarising the highs and lows of my journey, so sit back, relax and enjoy.

Prepping in the kitchen

It all started 5 weeks ago. Howard and I bumped in to Fouad and a friend whilst walking along George St in the city to our dinner destination one saturday night. It had nearly been a year since I’d seen Fouad, with his newborn baby Sara and months of travelling around the middle east taking up his time, the bloke was a busy man so it was quite a pleasant surprise.
Fouad proceeded to introduce us to his friend, the conversation went something like this:

Fouad: Hey Guys, this is my friend Linda. Linda, this is my friend Howard and…

All four of us must have stood there for about the longest 5 seconds ever with Fouad staring at me in confusion. Sensing this, I reminded Fouad that my name was also Linda =P. Understandably embarassed by this encounter, we both laughed it off and bid each other farewell.
An hour later, I received a message from Fouad apologising profusely for the little mishap, but more importantly asking me whether I’d like to work with him on a couple of Secret Dinners. Having worked with Fouad before, I knew this was too good an opportunity to miss, however I did vow to never let him forget about “that” incident.

The First Secret Dinner

Fast forward one week to the first Secret Dinner. At 5pm on Sunday, the guests were notified of the location of the dinner via SMS which was at Restaurant Atelier in Glebe. Fouad suggested that I come up with a Lebanese inspired dessert for the secret dinners. On such short notice I wasn’t able to come up with a dessert I was actually happy with, so we both agreed that we could serve a dessert that Fouad previously made for his chickpea dinner.

Chicken liver parfait with pomegranate molasses

Fouad divised the menu in to 4 courses; Cold Mezze plus a salad, Hot Mezze, Main and Dessert. Cold Mezze served on the first night were: deliciously smooth Chicken Liver Parfait dressed with pomegranate molasses, pieces of pomegranate seeds and watercress salad; and Hummus with pomegranate molasses.
These Cold Mezze were served with freshly baked turkish bread. I am generally not a fan of hummus finding it little bland (please don’t shoot me), however I found the addition of the pomegranate molasses added that much needed kick that I was yearning for. The salad was the only consistant factor throughout the three dinners, a refreshingly herb salad consisting of tomato, cucumber, radish, red onion, watercress, A LOT of thyme, cheese and olive oil.
Prior to serving each of the courses, Fouad would go out and describe to the diners the next dish, the history of the dish and sometimes adding anecdotes of his family’s influences. Most of the time whilst Fouad did his thing, I was busy in the kitchen plating the dishes whilst desperately trying to listen to his stories. The only thing I can derived from listening to Fouad’s gibberish (=P) is that this guy is one hell of a storyteller.

Hot Mezze for the first night were Fried Pumpkin Kibbeh stuffed with minced lamb and onion, served with a yoghurt and green chilli dip. Initially Justine (sous chef of Atelier) and I had difficulty shaping the Kibbeh in to it’s traditional oval shape. Realising the impossibility of producing 65-70 evenly shaped kibbeh, Fouad suggested we used plastic dariole moulds to help shape the kibbeh, producing what we later named the “Fez Hat” Kibbeh.
The other hot mezze served on the night was my Linda Fried Chicken Wings (LFC) served with Toum (Garlic Sauce). I absolutely adore toum, thanks to El Jannah in Granville, however after tasting Fouad’s version, I think Fouad’s could rival the holy grail.

Fouad proudly presented his Main course of Moghrabieh served on a round platter approximately 1m in diameter (I may be exaggerating a little) to a silent room. Each person stopped in their tracks as they realised the sheer monstrosity of the platter. It was definitely the talking point for the remainder of the night. The Moghrabieh was cooked in a concentrated chicken stock, topped with tender, fall off the bone roast lamb shoulder and poached chicken.

To finish off the night, we served Fouad’s trifle chickpea dessert. The bottom layer consisted of a Labneh, thickened cream and icing sugar mix, it was then covered by pieces of Mamoul-mad (a semolina and walnut cookie/cake), another layer of the Labneh mix, sprinkling of chopped candied chickpeas and finally garnishing of vibrant candied orange blossom. Each components of the dessert worked really well together, the tangy Labneh was a good balance to an otherwise too sweet dessert.
For me, our first secret dinner was the most difficult. Working in an unfamilair kitchen for 10 hours straight, slicing, dicing, chopping and frying took its toll on me and by the end of the night, I was buggered. My back and legs were aching, my arms sore, I was tired and hungry, I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to handle another 2 nights like this. However, learning about all the different traditional Lebanese food that I have never ever heard of before, the franticness (is that even a word?) of getting food ready at service time, and generally having a hoot working with Fouad made all the pain worth it.

The Second Secret Dinner

The second Secret Dinner a week later was a vegetarian dinner. This time, I found working the entire day much more manageable, this could also be due to the fact that we had a couple of chefs, Greg Malouf, Darren Tempelman, chef and owner of Restaurant Atelier, Efendy’s Somer Sivroglou and Fouad’s friend Priscilla helping us in the kitchen throughout the night. Overall, it was just a relaxing and enjoyable evening.
Cold Mezze served for the Vegetarian dinner were two delicious dips, Muhammarah and Baba Ghanoush served with deep fried Lebanese bread or fresh Lebanese bread. I loved the Muhammarah so much that I smuggled a container home after the dinner. It was a great addition to my mundane sandwiches for lunch.
Hot Mezze for the vegetarians were traditional Turkish Pacanga which Somer happily taught us how to make. As Pacanga are normally filled with Pastrami or prosciutto and kashar cheese, for the vegos, Somer substituted the pastrami for mozarella cheese, creating a super cheesey Pacanga. The other Hot Mezze was Stir Fried Okra, chillies and deep fried bread with pomegranate molasses.
Vegetarians were served main course of “Fez Hat” Kibbeh, however the lamb mixture was subsituted for a caramelised onion and toasted almond and pine nut mix. These fried goodies were served in a yogurt soup.
Once again, dessert for the night was Fouad’s chickpea dessert.

The Last Secret Dinner

Fouad warned me for the last dinner there was to be no more excuses, he really wanted me to come up with a dessert, the pressure was definitely on. Throughout the month, I had so many ideas racing through my mind, deciding on what Lebanese ingredients to use, and how to incorporate these ingredients in to each components of the dessert. After weeks of experimenting and chopping and changing ideas, finally, 2 days before the dinner, I came up with something I was proud enough to serve to people.
The final dinner was held last Sunday. By this time, I knew the kitchen like the back of my hand and everything ran smoothly on the day. Each person knew their roles and responsibility, we were so efficient that we finished prepping by 4pm, which is extremely rare.

The Cold Mezze were the Muhammarah and Baba Ghanoush, you can’t go wrong with these two beauties. Hot Mezze were traditional Pacanga filled with Pastrami and Kashar cheese and Somer’s Loquat kebabs. The main was the Morabiah that we had served at the first dinner, however the Moghrabiah pasta was replaced by Basmati rice.

Ding Ding Ding. Show time! It was my turn to reveal my dessert.

The aim of my dessert was to utilise ingredients that are commonly used in traditional Lebanese desserts and incorporate it in to modern desserts that most people are familiar with e.g. chocolate cakes, caramels and ice cream. I wanted to show the versatility of these ingredients and hopefully encourage people to experiment with them.

“Johnathan” – My plated dessert

Components of my desserts consisted of:

• Chocolate Pistachio dacquoise base – Fouad loves dacquoise so requested I somehow use it in my dessert.
• Chocolate Labneh mousse – Chocolate mousse are usually quite rich. To cut this richness, I incorporated Labneh (strained yoghurt) into the mix.
• Kataifi dusted with icing sugar – Kataifi is finely shredded filo pastry. I couldn’t believe that I had never used Kataifi in any of my desserts before. It’s such a light pastry that when baked in ghee provides a beautiful buttery delecate crunch.
• Orange blossom caramel – As the name suggests, orange blossom syrup is a syrup made from the flowers of an orange tree. Prior to this dinner I had no idea this fragrant thing existed. For the orange blossom caramel, I made a standard caramel and to finish it off splashed in a couple of teaspoons of orange blossom syrup.
• Pistachio crumble - I used the same recipe as the one I used for the Merivale’s Bistro CBD dinner, however substituted the almond for pistachio.
• Zaatar ice cream – Fouad’s contribution to the dessert was the Zaatar (thyme) ice cream. Using Fouad’s recipe, I churned out 8L of ice cream which we found out later that night was way more than is necessary, however I was more than happy to take home the leftovers. I love the idea of using herbs in desserts so I was ecstatic by the outcome of the ice cream, it was freaking fantastic.
• Poached spiced pears - I poached the peeled and cored pears in a syrup spiced with star anise, cloves and cinnamon.

Plating up desserts

Somer and Darren helping to plate my dessert

Looking back, the most memorable moment of the whole event for me was standing back and supervising Darren, Somer, Fouad and Justine plate up what I had conceptualise, my dessert. It was such a surreal moment, something I will remember for a long time.

A special event like this would have not happened without a couple of key people. To finish off this post, there are a few people I would like to thank. Fouad – for giving me the opportunity to work with him again, I meant it when I told him it was such an honour to work with someone that’s so passionate about their food and their culture. The chefs that helped us throughout the month, Somer, Darren and Justine - some of the most resiliant people that I have ever met. All the patrons that came along for the experience, hopefully you all enjoyed yourselves!
Finally Howard - for being my critic and advisor. If you thought Terry Durack was tough, try being criticised by Howard, toughest critic ever!

The original concept using chocolate brulee instead of Labneh chocolate mousse.

Its funny how blogging has opened up opportunities like this for me. Hopefully, I get to experience something like this again in the near future.

——–

Thanks Linda for a great post, and a huge thanks to Howard, also from Eat Show & Tell for providing all the fantastic photos.

Read More

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, along with the raw meat and liver, the liyyeh is sprinkled with salt and pimento and eaten with bread. It’s not for the faint of heart, especially the liver, but the initial reaction subsides when you take the plunge and eat some. I personally find that the flavour of liver, or anything for that matter, is milder when the food is raw.
Raw sheep tail fat is delicious, but, I also really like it barbecued on charcoal. The outside caramelises beautifully, and a bit of salt brings out a sweetness in the fat. It’s not greasy or oily, but rather creamy with a round, buttery mouthfeel. Here in Australia, sheep tail fat isn’t something you can find. My Lebanese butcher tells me that they tried, but failed, to raise Middle-Eastern breeds of sheep in Australia. Something to do with the weather and humidity causes the sheep to get sick… Don’t quote me on that.
So a few days ago, I find myself at AC Butchery in Leichhardt looking at a piece of lardo: cured pig fat. The fat is subcutaneous, which is the soft fat from underneath the skin of the pig (as opposed to visceral fat, which is intramuscular). The fat gets cured with salt. It’s  sometimes flavoured with herbs and sometimes it’s also smoked. I couldn’t resist buying it – $15 a kilo for fat from a free range pig sounded like a financially wise investment. Today, I had a craving for the good old days back in Lebanon. No tail fat for me unfortunately, but the lardo did the trick. The Italians slice the fat thinly and eat it for antipasti, or use it as a topping for bruschetta, among other uses. I tried something else with the fat: seared on a hot pan until it goes slightly crisp and golden, flipped and then served with sauerkraut and hot english mustard. Delicious, and so nutrient and energy dense, I probably won’t have to eat anything else until winter arrives. Maybe I’ll hibernate for the afternoon…

Read More

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 of Olive Trees Around My Table, her memoire about growing up in South Africa under apartheid. Yazbek became a vegetarian early in her youth for political reasons; she couldn’t justify eating meat as the cost of a meal for her family could feed a poor South African family for a month on a plant-based diet. Mezze to Milk Tart is her vegetarian cook book, full of a lifetime of vegetarian recipes.
Regular readers of my blog probably know where I stand with regards to meat eating (I’m for it). So, a book on vegetarian cooking might not seem like the ideal subject for me to be reviewing, given my bias toward an animal-based diet. But Yazbek’s book really appeals to me, for several reasons.
Last October I ran a series of secret dinners, one of which was a vegetarian event. One of the main challenges I wanted to overcome was to showcase the role of “vegetables” in a vegetarian diet, since, as much as I am a supporter of an animal-based diet, I am equally in complete opposition to a grain-based diet. My food had to focus on real vegetables, nuts and plant-based fats, and I believe I did so successfully. Focusing on grains (disregarding their detrimental effects on health) is an easy way out for the vegetarian cook. There are so many wonderful dishes one can make with vegetables without relying on grains, and Yazbek seems to agree. Yazbek’s book is an example of real generosity in vegetarian cookery and for the most part focuses on true vegetables. Think okra, artichokes and eggplants, with recipes so deliciously simple that often the list of ingredients is longer than the cooking method itself. I quite like that. Also, her cooking is richer in legumes than it is in grains, and that makes me happy.
There are also stories between chapters where Yazbek tells us about her life and her food. Read about her journey out to Sydney’s west in search of mafrouki, a traditional Lebanese dessert of semolina, clotted cream and candied orange blossoms. Lebanese story-telling genes are evident. Her stories are almost timeless and folkloric, with wonderfully stereotypical characters described with the skill of a writer, not a celebrity chef.
The book itself is slightly different to what we’ve come to expect from a cookbook. It is in paperback, has more photos of people and places than of food, which makes it lack the glamour people look for in a cook book. But I feel that what it lacks in glamour, it more than makes up for in honesty and content. The writing is wonderful and the recipes are rich. The cuisines Yazbek borrows from are perfect for her topic, where the dishes are not simply trying to replace meat, they are wholeheartedly and generously vegetarian. You can find Mezze and Milk Tart on the Wakefield Press website.

Read More

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 find anywhere in the Middle East. The ingredients are eclectic and not singularly regional. But they work.
This salad is all about balance, freshness and texture. The lentils need to be cooked just after the al dente stage, the pumpkin needs to be creamy, and roasted hazelnuts add crunch and nuttiness. Oven-dried tomatoes are a great alternative to fresh tomatoes: they’re sweet and not overly moist. Preserved lemons and fresh thyme contribute that “je ne sais quoi” element, where the flavour is somewhat fleeting and exotic, only identifiable by an experienced palate. The real kicker here is isot pepper – one of my favourite all time chilis, second only to Maras chili. I went crazy for isot in Turkey and am always well stocked. Find a Turkish shop and buy some. That smoky sweet flavour of isot pepper goes with anything.

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

Since this is a salad, quantities and proportions are up to you. Want a bit more kick? Add some more isot pepper. Love preserved lemons? Go crazy!
Mix the following ingredients together:

• 2 cups puy lentils, boiled until just after al dente. I added a bouquet garni in there but you can omit. Also, I couldn’t find puy lentils, so I bought something labeled “french lentils” which are brown in colour but tastes like puy.
• 1/2 cup roast pumpkins, cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup oven-dried tomatoes – Make your own or use good quality semi-dried tomatoes – coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp preserved lemon peel – rinsed and finely chopped
• A handful or two of roasted hazelnuts, peeled
• 1 tbsp isot pepper
• 1 tsp allspice
• olive oil and salt – to taste

Read More

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! And once you do make it, there’s no turning back to store-bought sauerkraut. Let me know if you decide to make sauerkraut and how it turned out.
For many, the flavour of sauerkraut is a bit too much like vinegar and is off-putting. I happen to like vinegar and therefore sauerkraut, but I also like a bit of variety, so I’ve come up with a recipe to turn my sauerkraut into a delicious salad. Drain some sauerkraut and dress it with olive oil, a few drops of sesame seed oil and sprinkle it with isot pepper (or any chili you like) and sesame seeds. This sauerkraut salad is the bomb. I like eating it on its own but it goes brilliantly with roasted meats.

Read More

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 now, in an attempt to regain my health. With abstinence from sugar, chocolate consumption declines drastically. I’ve looked for sugar-free/insulin-friendly chocolates, but most of them are made with aspartame (or some other artificial sweetener) or maltitol and emulsified with soy lecithin, and I try to stay away from these things. Of course, there are agave-sweetened chocolates, but health-wise, that stuff is the worst sweetener ever. Agave is higher in fructose than high-fructose corn syrup, and if you want to see why too much fructose is bad, do yourself a favour and listen to this.
My sweetener of choice is xylitol, but when it comes to home-made chocolate, xylitol doesn’t do the trick since it is not fat-soluble (does not dissolve in fat). I’ve found that the best sweetener to use is yacon. Yacon is a sweetener derived from a south-American tuber. The syrup is a sweet-tasting fructooligosaccharide, which is a prebiotic fermentable fiber and seems to have little/no effect on blood sugar (my blood sugars went from 4.3 to 4.8 on one of the tests I did to see if yacon affects me, which is pretty okay). It has a rich, caramel flavour and a buttery mouthfeel, and it also works wonders in chocolate. Now, yacon isn’t cheap (340ml for $22.40AUD from iherb.com), but for special occasions, it’s worth it. I’m a huge fan of hazelnuts and chocolate, and macadamia is by far my favourite nut, so to make my home-made chocolate a bit more of a treat, a few handfuls of roasted hazelnuts and Australian macadamias are perfect. One last thing. I recently bought a Thermomix and have used it to make the chocolate at home. The recipe below is a Thermomix recipe based on Quirky Cooking’s recipe (thanks Jo) but can easily be adapted if you don’t have a Thermomix. My guess is that you can melt the cacoa butter in a bain-marie, making sure the temperature doesn’t go over 50degrees C.

Yacon-Sweetened Macadamia & Hazelnut Chocolate Recipe

Ingredients

•  100 grams cacoa butter, chopped in small pieces (I bought mine here)
• 35 grams cocoa powder (I bought mine here)
• 70 grams yacon (or 40 grams yacon and 30 grams xylitol. The yacon will allow the xylitol to melt through)
• A pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla syrup (the real stuff)
• 1/3 cup roasted hazelnuts
• 1/3 cup roasted macadamia (or raw, if you prefer)

Method

1. Line a banana bread tin with baking paper
2. Evenly distribute the macadamias and hazelnuts inside
3. Melt cocoa butter in Thermomix on speed 1 at 50c for 6 minutes. Make sure it’s all melted.
4. Add cocoa powder and mix on speed 5 at 50c for 3 minutes
5. Add yacon (and xylitol if using), salt and vanilla syrup and mix on speed 5 at 50c for 3 minutes
6. Pour over the nuts
7. Refrigerate overnight. You can eat it as soon as it sets, but it will have a lower melting point and will feel as though it is melting instantly on your fingers.

Read More

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 to two of Travis’s cooking classes, and I have been blown away every single time. Travis’ knowledge of Mexican food is encyclopaedic, and I am not one for hyperbole. I get the impression Travis knows more about Mexican food than I know about Lebanese food. Travis has been researching Mexican food for many years. He has spent much time in Mexico where he got the opportunity to learn firsthand all these traditional Mexican recipes he is teaching. And his food is so damned interesting and awesome that I want to be this guy’s best friend.

I’ve learned so much about Mexican food that go far beyond recipes and dishes simply be hearing Travis talk about how the food interplays with the culture. But I’ve also learned about the large variety of chilis used in Mexican cuisine, the variance in their uses and flavour profiles; I’ve learned how to make a real mole in a way that a book could never teach me; I’ve learned about amazing ingredients like an out of this world goat’s milk caramel; how to use a comal to bring the best flavours out of ingredients; how tortilla dough should feel like in order to turn out the good stuff; how boiled and grilled sweet corn with chili and parmesan can rock your world… However, I don’t want this post to be an account of the class itself, because that would be pointless. You have to see it to believe it. I can not encourage you enough to go visit Travis and learn from him. The food is amazing and the class is educational while also being a whole lot of fun (you finish up by eating what you cooked along with some great wine). I promise you, you will want to go back over and over again. Do it! For information on classes at The Essential Ingredient, click here.

Read More

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 the time, I weighed 122kg and had a waist circumference of 122cm, and with those measurements, I was obese. After reading Taubes’ article, I watched the amazing video, “Sugar, The Bitter Truth” by Dr Robert Lustig that discusses the health dangers of eating high amounts of fructose. I also saw that Taubes had written a book entitled “Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It”. Having always thought that getting fat is all about calories-in/calories-out, I was intrigued to find that there may be another explanation to the problem I had suffered with all my life (having dieted non-stop for 15 years) so I bought Taubes’ book and read it. That book changed my life forever.
Zoom forward to today, my nutritional re-education continues as I weigh 98kg and my waist circumference is 98cm. My diet has switched from one focused on carbohydrates to one that that uses fat for energy. My energy comes from grass-fed and free-range animals, fish, eggs, low-starch vegetables, olive oil, coconut oil, nuts, and berries. To a lesser extent I also eat full-fat dairy (cheese, cream and sour cream), bananas and sweet potatoes. I eat around 2700 calories a day, so by any definition, I am not on a diet. Having lost the weight I did without caloric restriction may seem to defy the laws of thermodynamics, but what I found out during my reading is that the well-established adage of calories-in/calories-out is a big fat lie. For almost all people, we gain weight because of hormonal issues. The main way to lose weight is to reduce insulin levels and make our body more receptive to the action of leptin (which, being a hormone discovered only relatively recently may not be known to most doctors).
Having (effortlessly) lost the weight is great, but I realize now that weight was not a problem in its own. It was merely a physiological indicator that my body wasn’t healthy. The health of our body is greatly determined by our diet. Using my newfound way of eating, I have helped many friends with their weight and health issues. My father, a long-term diabetic, now has stellar blood sugar levels. I personally enjoy vastly improved energy levels, no longer have the acne problems that plagued me throughout my life, no longer have plaque, have less/no joint pain, and I feel more clear-headed and happier.
As I continue to learn new things, I try to keep it simple to introduce people I care about to the diet that I know will change their lives for the better. I try to explain that there are 3 things I believe cause most of the health issues we encounter
1- Fructose – this is a sugar found naturally in fruit (and natural sweeteners like agave). It is used in massive quantities as a sweetener for soft drinks, junk food and mass-produced food. Though it doesn’t cause insulin spikes on its own, it does cause fatty liver disease. I highly recommend you watch Dr Lustig’s video “Sugar, The Bitter Truth“ as it will give you all the info you need on why you should avoid fructose.
2- Omega 6/PUFA oils. For years, we have been told to eat margarine as a healthier alternative to butter. Poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) found in margarine, canola, corn oil and other seed/grain/nut oils. These fats are easily prone to oxidation and as we consume them in the large quantities we do, we create an unfavorable ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 (found in fish) oils in our body. The right ratio is crucial for our liver function and the makeup of our cell membranes and many other bodily functions. I have personally cut out all PUFAs (no more margarine, canola, grapeseed, rice bran or vegetable oils) and the fats I eat are either fully saturated (butter, animal fat and coconut oils are saturated and that makes them stable and not prone to oxidation) or mono-unsaturated oils like macadamia or olive oil. I do not fear cholesterol. Cholesterol is a healthy, healing substance and is largely misunderstood. I suggest you read Gary Taubes’ life changing book, Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It to re-educate yourself on the real science of fat.
3- Grains – It amazes me to see a diabetic being prescribed a diet high in complex carbs and whole grains and low in fat! Seriously? Diabetics have a problem with blood glucose and insulin. Why are they being fed food that will turn into sugar in the body at all? My diabetic father made the switch and only gets his carbs from leafy greens and non-starchy vegetables. The rest of his diet is protein and fat based and his blood sugar levels are now AMAZING. If you are not diabetic, there are still plenty of compelling reasons why grains are not a good idea for you. Grains increase gut permeability (they penetrate the gut wall and allow dangerous material in our gut to leach into our blood stream which leads to chronic inflammation) to grains’ anti-nutrient properties (which depletes the body of vitamins and minerals). People with acid reflux, coeliac or autoimmune diseases can reverse or control their condition by eliminating grains. For more details on the dangers of wheat and grain, and the amazing health benefits to be gained by eliminating them, read Dr William Davis’ book Wheat Belly.
I am not giving anyone medical advice. I firmly believe that health is a journey and that people need to make their own decisions on where they want to go. What is clear to me is that a carbohydrate centric, fat fearing diet is not the answer. Read through the links and books I suggest. You’ll feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole. If you decide that you are convinced and want to follow the advice in these websites and books, let me know. I’d love to hear from you and to learn about your journey.
When you are convinced and want to start straight away, here’s a great recipe to help kick-start things. Macadamia Oil Mayonnaise. When I stopped eating oils rich in Omega 6, I found that I can no longer eat mayo. All commercial mayo is made with either canola or soybean oil and that’s just poison. Olive oil doesn’t make good mayonnaise – the flavour is too strong and bitter. Macadamia oil, on the other hand, is a wonderfully aromatic oil with a beautiful buttery texture and a heady aroma. It’s not a neutral oil (because it’s not chemically processed unlike vegetable and seed oils). This delicious mayonnaise takes 1 minute to make, is high in monounsaturated fat from the macadamia oil and saturated fat from the eggs, and, yes, it’s SUPER-HEALTHY! Just don’t eat the bread.

Read More

www.bbksa

www.bbksa.com

Read More