Lex Culinaria

Fragrant tomato and beef kofta

Type "Kofta recipe" into Google and see how many different cultures claim it as theirs: Greek, Turkish, Indian, Lebanese... the list is larger than that, I assure you. For me, kofta will always mean onion-y meat balls in a cinnamon-spiced tomato sauce topped with a runny poached egg.

I first had something similar at Bedouin Kitchen in Melbourne, and lately I've been making it at home, based on a recipe from Greg Malouf. I know you're supposed to use ground lamb for kofta - it's just that it's hard to come by decent ground lamb here, and I happen to have an embarrassing quantity of ground beef in the freezer, so ground beef is what I've been using (and honestly, I quite like it).

This is a great savoury, saucy dish for winter. It's exotic enough to be impressive for a dinner party and looks smashing served up in teeny little individual lidded casseroles. The cinnamon makes a divine smell when you lift off the lid, allowing the steam to billow out.

I like to serve this with a gorgeous creamy feta, tzatziki & garlic mashed potato and a tangy fattouche salad and a stack of warm, fresh pitas to sop up all that gorgeous sauce. In the photo above, there was no poached egg, but I do generally serve it with a quivering egg perched on top, ready to ooze creamy yolk all over the top of the sauce.

(adapted from Greg Malouf's Arabesque)

For the meatballs:

• 500 g ground beef, lamb or a combination
• 1 medium yellow onion, minced (I just whiz mine in the food processor)
• 3 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 egg
• salt & pepper
• canola oil for frying

for the sauce:

• 2 Tablespoons oil
• 1 large yellow onion, minced
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 (796 ml) can pureed/crushed tomatoes
• 1 (398 ml) can diced tomatoes
• 2.5 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• salt & pepper
• 1/2 cup Italian parsley, chopped
• 1/2 cup corriander, chopped
• 6 eggs

Meatballs: Combine all meatball ingredients, other than the oil, in a large bowl and use your (clean) hands to squish all the ingredients together until the meat is sticky and pasty and well combined. Heat oil in a large frying pan. Fry meatballs on medium-high heat until well browned and thoroughly cooked. The better cooked they are the better they will hang together in the sauce. Set aside

Sauce: In a large pot (preferably a dutch oven) over medium high heat, saute onions, garlic and spices several minutes until they begin to colour and soften, stirring often.add remaining ingredients (except herbs and eggs) and let simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the meatballs to the sauce and cook for 5 more minutes. Make six depressions in the top of the sauce with the back of a soup spoon. Break the eggs gently into the depressions, place the lid over the sauce and eggs and cook for a further 5 minutes, until the eggs are set but yolks are still runny. Sprinkle the fresh herbs over ands serve straight from the pot.

Homemade Pitas, Hummus and Fatouche

Cakes and I both love Middle Eastern food. Our favourite restaurant (well, one of the many favourites really) before we left Melbourne was Bedouin Kitchen which served kind of a Lebanese/Greek/Egyptian/Persian style of food, primarily in  small dishes for sharing: Mezze. It was fantastic, a great place to meet and spend time with friends. Despite the fact that we love this style of food so much, and the fact that I have owned , for quite some time, several great cookbooks from Melbourne’s top Lebanese chef, Greg Malouf, other than one memorable foray while we still lived in Melbourne (Yikes! Was that really three years ago?), I rarely seem to cook anything even remotely middle eastern.

Last week Cakes and I went to a great little Lebanese restaurant fairly close to our house, the Parkallen. I wrote about it when we first moved to Edmonton and on Wednesday morning I reviewed it for CBC.

I particularly love their hummus and their fatouche salad and it seems, every time we are there that is part of what we order.

We love it so much in fact that even after stuffing ourselves silly there, and having enough leftovers for a whole other complete meal, the next day I was consumed by the need to make my own hummus and pitas and fatouche. Coincidentally, if your friends and neighbours don’t mind that you stink of garlic in the afternoon, it makes a great lunch!

For the Pitas, I used Farmgirl’s recipe, replacing all the flour with whole wheat flour. These pitas turned out lovely and soft, perfect for cutting in wedges and dipping in homemade hummus. This hummus recipe is very lemony and perhaps a bit garlicky as well, which is just fine with me. It’s also got a bit of kick from the red pepper, which, although not traditional, is my preference. I like hummus that bites back. The fatouche recipe is really an amalgam of the variations on it that I have tasted. There are several restaurants in Edmonton that do a version of this salad and they are all pretty good. I keep a canister of toasted seasoned pitas in my cupboard so I can make this whenever I want.

Spicy hummus
1 14-ounce tin of organic chickpeas
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tablespoons organic tahini
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Juice of 2 lemons
¼ teaspoon grated lemon zest
Salt
Pepper
Water, as needed for processing
¼ teaspoon baking soda
Process chickpeas, garlic, tahini, red pepper, lemon juice and zest in a food processor. Dribble in water by the spoonful until the mixture is smooth and the consistency of a dip. Stir in as much salt and pepper as you like. Stir through the baking soda. Allow to sit for several minutes. This can be made ahead several days and gets spicier and more flavourful after 24 hours or so. Makes just shy of 2 cups.

Fatouche

1 large pita
Salt, pepper
Spray on olive oil
½ head romaine lettuce, shredded
½ cup minced fresh Italian parsley
½ English cucumber quartered lengthwise and sliced
½ a small red onion, sliced in paper thin half rounds
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), chopped
3 ripe romas chopped (or a half pint of cherry tomatoes, halved)
Juice of 1 lemon
¼ teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
Olive oil
1/3 cup coarsely grated hard Greek cheese such as Keflalotyri or Kefalograviera (optional)

Open pita and split along side seams so that you have 2 rounds. Spray the front and back of each round with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Bake on a cookie sheet at 325F until dried and toasted. Remove from oven and let cool. Crush into pieces about 1-2 cm (1/2”-1”) square.

Meanwhile, combine the vegetables in a bowl. Mix well. Drizzle over 2 Tablespoons of olive oil and pour on lemon juice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss the salad well to combine the dressing ingredients and coat the vegetables. Mix in toasted pita chips and cheese, if using. Serve immediately

Le Dizzy - part II

It's a good thing my blog is not my day job, because I'd have been fired from it by now! As it is, I've been a blog truant for coming on 3 weeks now because I have been spending every waking moment (and some sleeping) at the job that pays the bills. Montreal is a distant memory, as is the feeling of relaxation that comes from vacation, no matter how brief. Luckily, I was able to whip up a batch of really yummy soup that tastes just as I remember Le Dizzy. So, for 15 minutes the other night, I was transported back to Montreal, three weeks in the past, before all the craziness at work. Just the smell of the tangy steam coming off the bowl is enough for me at the moment.

This meal is also pretty timely for me because, as winter rolls around I invariably move away from fresh and crisp things towards steaming bowls of stewy, soupy, saucy things. I also love to do things in the slow cooker on a dreary weekend afternoon and have the house gradually fill with  steam. I'm sure that a traditionalist would never dream of making le dizzy in a slow cooker, but you know what? It works just dandy thanks.

You can use just about any cut of lamb if you are willing to give it 6 or more hours in the slow cooker - even the toughest bits with fall apart on your fork when cooked like that. Which is a really good thing as I am slowly getting to the end of the "Mary's Little Lamb" in my freezer, and all I seem to have left are the random "don't quite know what part of the lamb that is" bits which, when grilled are to tough for my liking.

Le Dizzy is actually pretty simple to make and you could either serve it the way they do at Byblos - that is drain off the broth for a first course of soup and then puree the remaining meat and pea mixture to eat sepatarately with soft pita - or you can just serve it as-is. It makes a nice chunky, rivhly flavoured soup which is great with fresh parsely and broken toasted pita crumbled on top.

Aab-Goosht

Serves 6

• 600 grams stewing lamb
• 1 Tablespoon Canola oil
• scant 1 cup (about 200 grams) split yellow peas
• 1 large (or 3 medium) yellow onion
• 4 medium red skinned potatoes
• 1 - 398ml tin crushed or diced tomatoes
• rind of 1/2 lime
• 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• Water to cover
• juice of two (smallish) limes

Cut lamb into small cubes. Heat oil in a large stirfy pan or frying pan over very high heat. Cook lamb on all sides until richly browned - about 10 minutes. Remove lamb from pan and place intide 5 quart slow cooker. Turn slow cooker on to low. Reduce heat under frying pan and fry onions and split peas together until onions begin to colour and start softening. Transfer onions and peas to slow cooker.

Chop potatoes into small cubes and transfer to slow cooker. Add all remaining ingredients, except lime juice. Make sure moat and vegetables are covered with water and allow to cook for 6 to 8 hours. Just before serving, stir in the lime juice and taste for seasoning. Serve with toasted pita chips and freshly minced flat leaf parsley.

IMBB 17: Green Tea and Jasmine Turkish Delight

I've been on a tea kick lately, so when Clement announced the theme for this IMBB would be tea...I was happy to oblige! I've also been on an organic kick as well and bought stack of beautiful organic teas. I can honestly say, they have turned out to be far superior to any teas I've tried to date. The Earl Grey especially! When I peeled the cellophane back on the box of tea, I was hit with a wave of deep, fermented, bergamot-y perfume I have never, ever before smelled when I've opened a tea packet. I am flabbergasted that there could be such a difference in teas!

I originally wanted to make a green tea and jasmine fondant centred chocolate for this month's IMBB, but it is clear to me that fondant hates me. A lot. I gave it up as a bad job after three goes. I reckon if I couldn't make friends with fondant after three tries, then I did not deserve to be able to make the green tea and jasmine fondant chocolates. As much as it pains me to admit it. I am afraid I am the anti-fondant.

Fortuitously, as much as I am fondantily challenged, I have been blessed with an extremely good Turkish Delight recipe that really, really loves me. And I love it. It is perfect. The green jasmine tea flavour is a perfect variation on the more usual rosewater and pistachio. It really is totally easy to make and would make a divine small sweet to finish of an Asian inspired meal. The fragrance is divine, and the flavour delicate and sweet without being cloying, which I sometimes find is the trouble with traditional Turkish delight.

This recipe will make about 35 one inch cubes of sweet and tender, aromatic candy

Ingredients:

• 1 + 2/3 cup water
• 6 green/jasmine tea bags
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch

Boil the first portion of water in a large saucepan. Once it comes to the boil, remove from heat, add tea bags and allow to steep for 10 minutes. Remove tea bags and squeeze into the pot. Put pot aside to cool.

Combine sugar, lemon juice and second portion of water in medium saucepan over medium-high heat and stir until sugar is dissolved and liquid starts to bubble. Allow mixture to boil, without stirring, until it registers 240F on a candy thermometer (about 15 minutes). While the sugar mix is coming to temperature, sift the first portion of cornstarch and cream of tartar into the cooled tea. Whisk until all lumps are dissolved. It is imperative that the tea be cool when you do this, or the lumps will be impossible to dissolve. If your tea isn't cool enough, pop it in the frezzer for a few minutes. Once the cornstarch is thoroughly incorporated, cook the tea mixture over medium heat, whisking constantly, until it becomes very thick and clear looking. Reduce the heat to low and continue stirring, with a wooden spatula.

The sugar mixture should be very near ready by this time. As soon at the candy thermometer registers 240f, remove the sugar from the stove. Pour the melted sugar mix slowly into the cornstarch mixture, stirring, or whisking, vigorously to combine. After the two mixtures are thoroughly incorporated and have formed a thick sticky paste, continue to cook, stirring over low heat for 45 minutes longer. The paste will continue to thicken during this time.

After 45 minutes, remove the paste from the heat and use a wooden spatula to scoop the paste and press it into a well oiled, non-stick pan approximately 8 by 4 inches (the size of a jumbo loaf tin). Place the tin in the fridge to cool for 2 hours.

Mix the remaining portions of cornstarch and icing sugar. Remove tin from fridge, the bottom of the tin should be cool to the touch. If it is still warm, return the tin to the fridge until it is cool.

Spread a 1/4 cup of the icing sugar mixture over a sheet of waxed paper laid on the counter. You should be able to lift the Turkish delight out of the tin with your hands. Place the slab of Turkish delight on the spread-out icing sugar and spread more mix over the top of the slab using your hands. Once the slab is covered on all sides with a layer of sugar, use a sharp knife to cut the slab into 1 inch squares. Toss the squares into more sugar mixture to coat them on all sides. Store in an airtight container.

Yes I really ate nothing but mushrooms for supper.

But MAN were they good mushrooms.

One of my favourite appetizers to make for dinner parties is also one of the simplest things in the world... portobello mushrooms topped with fresh dill, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and feta cheese and broiled until golden. I was inspired to make these a year or two ago after I had a similar dish at one of my favourite Melbourne Restaurants, Bedouin Kitchen. They are absolutely divine.

I didn't have any portobellos, but I did have about 4 pints (punnets) of creminis (which really are just young portobellos) and was in need of a side dish to go along with the gorgeous bison rib eye Cakes bought yesterday afternoon. The recipe I've given here is creminis, which work well as a side dish, but you can substitute portobellos if you want to serve them as appetizers.

We ended up not eating the bison as we were too full after scarfing down the mushrooms. It's official. We are pigs.

Feta and dill baked mushrooms
(serves four normal people as a side dish - or two pigs if that's all they're eating)

4 pints/punnets cremini mushrooms (about  1.5 pounds) (if you're doing portobellos, this will do for 6 to eight large ones)
3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
3 teaspoons chopped dill
2 Tablespoons lemon juice (about one lemon)
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 cup good feta, crumbled
salt and fresh cracked pepper

Layer the mushrooms in a 9 x 14 glass baking dish (a cookie sheet is better if you're doing portobellos). Sprinkle over dill and garlic. Drizzle over olive oil, lemon. Top with crumbled feta and salt and pepper.

Bake in a 350F oven for 15 minutes then move to the top rack and broil until the mushrooms look cooked and the cheese has begun to get brown.

Morroccan buttermilk chicken with date and toasted almond stuffing

Thanks to A finger in every pie for judging paper chef this month. When Owen announced the ingredient list for Paper Chef 7: buttermilk, dates, egg and honey, I did at first think of a dessert. I buried that desire, lest it result in yet another panna cotta, after having promised myself no more gelatin for the foreseeable future!

Owen was right. This combination of ingredients lends itself very well to a savoury dish, and in particular a Middle-Eastern inspired one. Since having attended a lecture by Dr. David Suzuki, I've been on an all out organic kick. So much so that Cakes and I are seriously considering going into business producing an organic food product locally... more on that much later. Like after we find out whether the bank agrees with us that this venture is a good idea and wants to give us lots of money that we never have to pay back. The point is, everything in this recipe (other than the dried spices) is organic and I think it all tastes so much better for it.

The buttermilk  marinade makes the chicken unbelievably moist and the honey in the glaze makes a lovely burnished crispy skin, reminiscent of Chinese barbecued chicken. The result is a steamy-moist and crispy chicken full of spice and flavour and a sultry Middle-Eastern sweetness!

Sadly, the batteries on my camera pooped out at the exact same time as the chicken was coming out of the oven so I was unable to get a photos before the skin started to wrinkle! Cakes very sweetly offered to rush out to the corner store to procure new batteries! He is so the best husband ever! The corner store must have got their last shipment of fresh batteries in the late 90's because the new batteries pooped out after 1 photo. Ergo, I apologies for the less than stellar photo of the chicken! It tasted much better than the photo would have you believe it looks!

Ingredients:

For the Chicken
Roasting chicken ( I routinely use 1.5 kilograms, which is enough for me and Cakes for supper and leftovers for the next day and would probably feed four with no leftovers)
1 litre buttermilk
1/3 cup honey
2 pieces lemon rind (1 cm by 3 cm each)

For the stuffing
1/4 cup butter
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1/2 cup whole almonds
6 medjool dates, pitted and chopped
1 cup couscous
1 - 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
juice of one lemon
1/4 teaspoon zested lemon peel
1 large egg

For glaze
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon pepper

For sauce
2.5 cups stock
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
juice of half a lemon

Method:

To prepare chicken:

Marinate clean, rinsed chicken at least 24 hours in buttermilk, honey and lemon peel. Drain chicken and discard marinade. Place chicken in roasting pan ready for stuffing. Pre-heat oven to 400 Fahrenheit or 200 Celsius.

To prepare stuffing:

Melt butter in large stir-fry pan. Add sliced onions, garlic, almonds and dried spices. Cook and stir over medium heat until onions are translucent and almonds have begun to toast, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add the couscous and stir for 2 minutes more. Add all the remaining stuffing ingredients except the egg, stir until bubbly, cover and remove from heat. Allow to sit, covered, for 5 minutes. Remove cover and allow to cool slightly, for 10 minutes. Prepare the glaze while the stuffing is cooling.

To prepare glaze:
Place all glaze ingredients in a small microwave safe bowl and microwave on high for 1 minute. Stir together to combine, set aside until required.

Stir the egg through the cooled stuffing. Spoon the stuffing mixture loosely into the chicken's cavity. skewer cavity closed. Heap remaining stuffing (if any) into a small glass or metal loaf tin. mix all the sauce ingredients except the lemon, and pour them in the bottom of the roasting pan.

Brush chicken with glaze mixture and pop chicken and extra stuffing into oven.

Use the glaze mixture to baste the chicken once every 20 minutes until the glaze is used up.

Roast the chicken for 30 minutes plus 20 minutes for each 500 grams. This should include the weight of the stuffing. This stuffing is relatively light so I cook a 1.5 kilogram chicken for 100 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow chicken to rest under foil. Use a fork to squash garlic cloves into sauce in bottom of the roasting pan. Scrape pan and pour juice through a sieve into a medium saucepan. Heat the juice until it is reduced in volume to about 1/2. Add the lemon juice and stir. Alter the seasoning for your own taste

Scoop out stuffing on to the centre of a platter. Slice chicken and place slices around the stuffing. Drizzle a bit of the sauce over both chicken and stuffing and serve the rest of the sauce on the side.

Luscious Labanya

From the post: A Perfect Winter's Eve Supper

Make this beautiful spicy, soft mediterannean cheese ahead and keep it in the fridge for company or just for a delicious snack of an evening.

I suppose you can do this with store bought yogurt, although I prefer to make my own. It’s always creamier and milder than the sometimes gelatinous and too-tart stuff from the dairy case. If you must use store-bought yogurt, please buy full-fat and organic if you can find it.

Ingredients

1 litre creamy, mild yogurt

3 garlic cloves, peeled and partly crushed

1 small hot red pepper

a few peppercorns

a few good-sized pieces of lemon or lime rind

sea salt

olive oil

Line a sterilized colander with fresh and impeccably clean cheesecloth or butter muslin and dump in the yogurt. Let it drain, over a bowl for 6-12 hours, scraping the yogurt from the cheesecloth and stirring it up every two or so hours so that it drains properly. The yogurt on the outside will become firmer and less liquidy as it drains and it is important to allow the softer yogurt on the inside to drain as well. When the consistency is quite creamy, rather like room-temperature mascarpone, bring up the sides of the cloth and tie into a bundle. Suspend the cheese-filled cloth (I tie mine to a cabinet handle) over the colander and bowl and allow to it drain for a further 12 hours, taking it down occasionally, untying it and redistributing the yogurt as before. It should achieve a solid, creamy consistency similar to that of a thick butter icing. The firmer your yogurt was to start with, the less time it will take to drain to the right consistency.

Scrape out the yogurt into a clean, sterile bowl and mix up with a bit of sea salt and, if you like a few dashes of fresh ground cumin.

Pour olive oil into a sterilized jar until it is 3 or 4 inches deep. Add in the garlic, peppers, and rind. Drop spoonfuls of the yogurt into the oil in the same way (and same size) you would for drop cookies. When the dollops start poking through the oil at the top, add more oil so they remain covered. Continue until all the yogurt has been dolloped into the jar and the whole lot is covered with enough oil that it is a centimeter or so above the yogurt balls.

You can keep this in the fridge for a few weeks. If your fridge is pretty cold the olive oil will go all opaque and sludgy, so take the whole jar out and sit it on the benchtop for an hour or so before you want to use it. Then, use a fork to carefully scoop out some cheese blobs and put them in a little dish and spread the yummy oily cheese over nice bread or biscuits.