Tonight I returned to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem and prepared the fattoush (pg. 29), mejadra (pg. 120), and swiss chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (p. 88).

My friend came over and was really hungry, so first I made the fattoush and we ate it as an appetizer.  The fattoush is quickly becoming one of my favorite dishes from Jerusalem! This was my third time making it – it is one of the simpler dishes to prepare in this book – there are not that many esoteric ingredients and it doesn’t require any cooking – and it is just so good! It is jam packed with herbs and so refreshing.

 

After energizing myself with an appetizer of fattoush, I made the yogurt and tahini sauce for the swiss chard dish before starting on the cooked ingredients.

 

Next I started making the Mejadra, which is a middle eastern dish consisting of basmatic rice, lentils, fried onions, and lots of flavorful spices. This was a little more complicated. It not only required thinly slicing 4 onions, but then I had to fry all of them in oil which I had to do in batches.

 

It was a lot of work! I’ve never fried onions before and it was hard to find the balance between making them crispy and brown and not burning them.

I fried the onions while boiling the lentils. I don’t know why I’ve never made lentils before – they are super simple, cheap, and healthy. After frying all the onions and cooking the lentils, I made the rice.

First I sauteed the cumin and coriander seeds in the pan. I got the seeds from the bulk bins at the Berkeley bowl – so much cheaper that way! It only cost me 6 and 18 cents to buy the spices this way! I can’t believe how much money I’ve been spending on buying non- bulk spices! So then I mixed in a bunch of other spices – cinnamon, sugar, salt, allspice, and turmeric in with the basmatic rice. It smelled so amazing! This dish was definitely a winner.

At this point I was getting pretty tired but luckily the next dish involved wine as an ingredient, so I opened up the bottle and served myself a glass :) Lauren and I took a bit of a dance break to shimmy around to my itunes shuffle before I started chopping the chard. I definitely need to get a larger pot – this recipe calls for a ton of swiss chard! How beautiful is the swiss chard though?

First I boiled the swiss chard then rinsed and drained it.  Then I put butter and oil in the dish and made the hot buttered pine nuts – I’ve never made anything like this before – so absurdly decadent. It smelled so buttery and delicious.  Not having a slotted spoon, I used a mixture of a spoon and a slatted spatula to remove the pine nuts from the butter before putting the garlic in the pan. The recipe states to carefully pour in the wine as it may spit – but this was an UNDERSTATEMENT. What followed was nothing short of a wine-splosion! My entire oven and surrounding kitchen were covered in splattered butter/wine mixture and I had to stay away for a while before it simmered down enough for me to turn down the temperature. Yotam is not kidding when he says be careful here!

While this was a bit of a hectic evening with so many dishes and the mild explosion, it was totally worth it – these dishes are amazing and go so well together! Something about mediterranean cooking just makes you feel so good – it is rich and filling but contains so many fresh, healthy ingredients and spices that don’t weigh you down. Lauren happily giggled while eating the food and claimed that the kitchen smelled like her grandmother (Lauren’s half Lebanese).  Thank you Yotam Ottolenghi for another inspired evening of meals!