Basic Tahini-Lemon Sauce, with Fish

Looking to add a new flavor to some of your basic recipes?

This sauce balances the rich nuttiness of tahini against the acidity of fresh lemon - a classic Palestinian combination.  (Read about all of the nourishing benefits of tahini here).  I love this sauce because it is so very versatile.  Drizzle over fish or chicken, pour over vegetables, use as a dressing for a salad or a sandwich - Palestinians use this sauce in many ways.  You already may have tried this sauce over kefta, a Palestinian meatloaf, but if you haven't, you should.  Sometimes without the parsley, this also makes a simple stand-alone dip for Arabic bread.  It is also the base for other dips, such as hummus and baba ghanoush. 

Honeyed Date-Nut Muffins with Orange Cinnamon Honey Butter

I love to use dates in baking.  Dates have a sticky caramel-like sweetness that adds moist flavor to baked goods, and are a natural wholesome sweetener in their own right.  Dates with walnuts, dates with honey, dates with oranges, dates with spices . . . these are all traditional Palestinian flavors that have roots in the ancient land.

On a whim, I decided to try to create a muffin (mini-cake?)  that features some of these flavors.  The recipe that I hit upon is fairly sweet to my taste, to render it more of a dessert than a breakfast item, but I think it would be especially lovely on an Easter morning with a cup of hot tea.  The crumb is tender, moist,  and cake-like, and the flavor is mild with a hint of spice.  When made with sprouted flour, this muffin is also very satisfying and filling.

While perfectly delicious  by itself or just spread with some grassfed butter, if you want to take it up a notch for a holiday, try it with a flavored butter, like the Cinnamon Orange Honey Butter described in the recipe below. 

Hunger: A Benediction

As a mother of two little ones, I have a lot to say about hunger.

About how hunger can be a crisis, if we are delayed somewhere and the little one is suddenly hungry and I don't have something to give him.

About how hunger is a gift, because it allows my children to sit down at mealtimes and diligently eat the food that I worked so hard to prepare for them.

About how hunger can seem to be a curse, because no matter how many meals I prepare, serve, and clean up afterwards, there is still another meal coming, and another, and other. 

Why can't we survive on one meal a day?  Or one meal a week?  Why this constant emptying and filling?  It is exhausting.  It is annoying.  And it is unrelenting. 

Lemony Lentil Soup, or Shorabat Addas

Winter is flirting with spring here.  One day we need parkas, the next day my children are gleefully flinging off their mittens.  It is a good day to make this winter-meets-spring soup, with its warming heavy lentils and olive oil, lightened up by a burst of lemon. 

I am not shy about my love of lentils, and my love of soups, so I have eaten and made many different lentil soups.  This particular soup is so simple, so easy to pull together, and yet has such lovely flavor.   I love the play of smokey cumin against the fresh lemon, and the flavor of lentils simmered in broth.  Since married, I have grown used to the heavier sausage and lentil soups, with plenty of red wine and Parmesan, which is also tasty.  But this soup is lighter, fresher and put a smile on even my toddler's face. 

Vermicelli Rice

This is another one of those dishes that brings me back to my childhood, my toddlerhood, even, as I was served up bowls and bowls of this with fresh whole yogurt.  It's a soft and flavorful rice, fragrant with cinnamon and allspice, often topped with browned almonds or pine nuts.  The broken peices of noodles, sauteed in butter and then cooked along the rice, make this a dressed-up rice.  As soon as I could safely see over the rim of a pot, it became my job to saute the broken noodles in the butter, stirring diligently to prevent the noodles from burning.  Of course, I still remember the smell of those noodles burning, and my mother chidding me, and my defense:   I just turned away for a second! 

When we would have American friends over, they would point at this rice and declare, "Rice-a-Roni!"  My mother would always smile kindly and say, "Yes, very similar."  Except that it's not.  It's much, much better.

Spotlight on: Sesame Paste, or Tahini

  



Like any regional cuisine, the Middle East has a distinct flavor profile, cultivated by using a handful of ingredients over and over.  One of these ingredients is tahini.  To many non-Arabs, tahini is a slightly exotic ingredient, one that you have to hunt for in the grocery store. Thankfully, you will usually find it these days, sometimes in the natural foods section, sometimes by the peanut butter.

Nourishing Makeover: Salted Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Cookies

A few weeks ago, I posted a recipe for my mother's favorite cookie:  Salted Oatmeal Chocolate Coconut Cookie. 

I promised a more nourishing makeover, and here it is.  I grew up with lots of  "healthy cookies" because my mother used to replace oil for butter and add whole wheat whenever she could.  But this makeover is of the Weston A. Price variety: keep the butter, treat the grains, and use nutrient-rich natural sweeteners.

The result:

Yum. Yum.

They baked up perfectly. They are sweet, chewy and also slightly crunchy. The chocolate was gooey, the pecans were even more buttery due to soak-and-dehydrate method, and I once again enjoyed the salt-sweet play of these cookies.  Because of the sprouted flour, these cookies are hearty and filling, and even one cookie is very satisfying.  My toddler who is known to whine, Hungry!  Hungry! all afternoon ate one of these and was satisfied until dinner.  My husband said that they tasted a little like granola.  

The process may seem a little labor intensive, particularly preparing the pecans and the oats, but I found that while there were several steps, each step only took a minute or two and was very easy. I made a double batch of the oats and lots of pecans and crammed them all in my oven to let them dehydrate, so I can actually make another batch of these cookies sometime in the future with very little effort. Plus, I am happy to take a little extra time if it means that I can give my family delicious cookies that will nourish their little bodies while making them smile.

Eggplant Bake, or Mnezzali

Oh.  My. 

This is delicious. 

When I gave my husband a spoonful, his reply was:  Holy Cow. 

My kiddos each had to have a bite as soon as it came out of the oven. 

This is one of my very favorite Palestinian dishes, one that I requested whenever I came home from college, jet-lagged, with bags under my eyes and breaking out from the stress of exams and the less-than-nourishing cafeteria food.  One bowlful of this hearty, flavorful dish and I had a smile on my face again. 

Eggplant has since become one of my favorite vegetables.  It's smoky and rich flavor shines in this dish, and paired with tomatoes and beef, allspice and cinnamon, with the faint spicy taste of olive oil--this is one dish that you won't be able to stop sneaking spoonfuls. 

Fresh Herb Gaza Omelette, or Ijee

I would eat them in a boat, and I would eat them with a goat. 

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday, we are celebrating Palestinian style: 

Green eggs.

Hold the ham. 

From Gaza, with Love

I remember the first time I had this omelette.  My teta, my grandmother, was living with us in our home outside of Jerusalem and one evening we were having a simple supper of eggs and labani and bread and my grandmother made one of these omelettes for us. It is your father's favorite omelette, she said, I made this for him when your mother and father were newly wed.

Palestinian Meatloaf: Lamb Kefta, Two Ways

  

Kefta is meatloaf, really.  Ground meats, mixed with seasonings by hand, pressed into a dish, smothered in sauce.  There are differences, of course.  Instead of beef, pork and veal, we use lamb and beef.  Instead of bread crumbs, we use minced parsley.  The lamb is spiced with cinnamon and allspice.  On top, we skip the ketchup and pour a creamy tahini and lemon sauce, and sprinkle with pine nuts. Or, if you are in the mood for tomatoes, we pour a little tomato sauce and arrange sliced fresh tomatoes.

I remember the first time my mother explained kefta to an American family:  your loaves of bread are high, and so that is how you make meatloaf.  Our loaves of bread are flat, and so that is how we make meatloaf. 

Sourdough "Pita" Bread, or Khubiz Arabi

  

Bread is the staff of life in the Middle East.  Though we eat rice abundantly, rice is actually the new kid on the block, relatively speaking.  Our ancient fathers ate bread as their main sustenance and nourishment.  Give us this day our daily bread, Jesus taught his disciples how to pray.

Bread is the vehicle for all other foods - we scoop up vegetables, salads, meats, cheeses, eggs - everything can be folded into a piece of bread.  Bread is also the utensil, the way our food is carried to our mouths.  There is ceremony - how to tear off a piece, how much to tear off at a time, where to dip in the common bowl, how to hold the bread so that it doesn't drip.  And yet bread is so common place that it is rarely remarked upon, rarely experimented with, it is simply there every morning when you wake up, and at every table that you sit down to. 

How to Make Yogurt Cheese, or Labani

In the fridge, at the breakfast, lunch or dinner table, in any home in Palestine and you will find a bowl of this tangy spread made from two simple ingredients:  yogurt and salt. We always had bread and labani in the house.  Stores closed because of a political strike?  Bread and labani.  No time to cook?  Bread and labani for dinner.  In a hurry for breakfast?  Bread and labani and a cucumber.   

Simple as it is, it is delicious and nourishing.  This spread holds all of the goodness of yogurt, high in protein and probiotics, but it is even more concentrated and more portable. 

Labani (also labaneh, labneh, labane) is from the Arabic word laban, which means yogurt.  I have seen it described in English as "yogurt cheese."  Technically not a cheese, this is similar to Greek yogurt, but with the consistency of cream cheese.