Tag Archives: tahini

Puréed beets with yogurt and za’atar and butternut squash and tahini dip

These are the dishes that started my love affair with Yotam Ottolenghi and inspired me to start writing this blog. Last year at Christmas, Meera’s roommate invited me to their house and she made these dishes. Quite frankly, they blew my mind.

Puréed beets with yogurt and za’atar

A year later, when I was invited to Christmas dinner at Patrick’s house, I made these dishes again. It was a commemoration of the past year, going back to where it all started. I’ve come a long way in the last year in terms of my cooking. As my sister Reva likes to say, a year ago I barely knew how to open a can. She exaggerates, but it’s true – I’m much more comfortable in the kitchen now than I was then! Of course, another exciting thing about this year is that it’s been raining a ton in Berkeley this past month, and there are mushrooms galore! This fungi foodie is very happy about that :)

Here I am super excited to be picking mushrooms on Berkeley's campus this year

Here I am super excited to be picking mushrooms on Berkeley’s campus this month

I’ve already blogged about the butternut squash and tahini dip, in a previous post. Briefly, peel and chop a large butternut squash into chunks, sprinkle with cinnamon, salt, and olive oil, and roast in the oven for 70 minutes. Next, put it in the blender with greek yogurt, tahini, and garlic. When ready to serve, sprinkle with black and white sesame seeds and date syrup. That’s it! I got my date syrup at the airport in Tel Aviv right before I hopped on the plane back to San Francisco, but I imagine you could find it at any Middle Eastern specialty store. Don’t forget the date syrup – it makes the dip pop! The date syrup is also necessary for the beet dip, which is a savory contrast to this sweet spread.

Butternut squash and tahini dip before date syrup is added

While I personally prefer the sweeter butternut squash and tahini spread, the beet dip seemed to be a bigger hit with the men at the party. I’ve been on a bit of a beet kick lately. I’ve even been adding them to my morning smoothies! The first step of this dish is to roast 2 lbs of beets in the oven at 400 degrees F for a very very long time. Ottolenghi suggests roasting them for about an hour, but I had to roast them for nearly 1.5 hours to get them to the point where a knife can easily slide into the beet. In the meanwhile, assemble the rest of the ingredients, as pictured below. I found this recipe on pg. 53 of Jerusalem, but it was also featured online here.

Ingredients for the beet dip: hazelnuts, green onions, red chili, Greek yogurt, za’atar, date syrup, salt

Once the beets are soft enough, take them out of the oven and let them cool. Then peel them with your fingers and cut them into pieces and place them in the blender. This part is really really messy so arm yourself with reinforcements. Patrick was a great help with peeling the beets :) Blend them with 2 cloves of garlic, 1 small red chile, and 1 cup Greek yogurt.

Greek yogurt, seeded and chopped red chile, garlic

Blending in the beets

Once the yogurt, chile, garlic, and beets are blended, place them in a bowl.

Beets are so pretty!

Next spoon in 3 tbsp olive oil, 1.5 tbsp date syrup, 1 tbsp za’atar, and 1 tsp salt.

Puréed beets with olive oil, za’atar, date syrup, and salt

Mix with a spoon. Then chop up 2 tbsp of roasted hazelnuts, and slice two green onions, and spread them on top. Ottolenghi also calls for 2 oz of goat’s cheese on top, but I am not a huge fan of goat’s cheese, so I refrained.

Beet dip with roasted hazelnuts and green onion garnish

Both dips are unexpected and delicious, and are great with pita, crackers, carrots, jicama, or peppers. Middle Eastern mezze on Christmas, a new tradition?

Marinated mushrooms with walnut and tahini yogurt, chermoula eggplant with bulgur and yogurt, and butternut squash and tahini dip

I know you’ve all been anxious to hear about the meals that I made with my mushrooms from Gourmet Mushrooms, Inc :P No fear, here is the first installation :) For this meal I looked to my main man Yotam Ottolenghi for inspiration and found an awesome recipe in Plenty featuring the brown clamshell mushroom. I was so inspired that I decided to make 2 other dishes to accompany it. Admittedly, this meal was a bit ambitious. It took 3 hours + to make all this stuff. There were many extended periods of roasting things in the oven and letting things marinade, so plan accordingly. The butternut squash and tahini dip is just an amazing mezze (AKA a middle eastern small plate or appetizer) that goes well as a spread for pita or carrots on any occasion. It’s really just an unexpected and spectacular dish that is sure to be a crowd pleaser. It is also relatively simple to make and makes a huge batch that presumably could be frozen or used as an appetizer at a large party. The chermoula eggplant with bulgur and yogurt is a bit of an involved recipe, but it went really well with the marinated mushrooms with tahini and walnuts dish, which was fortunately super easy to make.

The first dish I made on Saturday, was the Butternut squash and tahini dip from Jerusalem because the butternut squash needs to be roasted in the oven for over an hour. This happens to be the first dish that I made from Jerusalem back in December, and is the dish that inspired me to buy the book! This dip is seriously the bomb. Also, I was really excited to finally get an excuse to use the date syrup that I bought in Israel at the duty free store with my last shekels right before I hopped on the plane back to the US :)

Date syrup is an essential ingredient for the butternut squash and tahini dip

This to-die-for dip is actually pretty simple to make. Basically, you peel and chop up a huge butternut squash, cover it in 3 tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp cinnamon and 0.5 tsp salt, then roast it in the oven at 400 F for a really long time until it gets soft (70-80 min). Once it’s soft, add 0.5 cup Greek yogurt, 5 tbsp tahini, and 2 garlic cloves, crushed. Then the hard part is finding a tool to blend it with. I don’t have a food processor, but fortunately my hand held immersion blender worked really well for this. I seriously recommend buying an immersion blender. They are super useful and versatile!

This dip is so good and really unexpected. You expect hummus and then get this sweet butternut squash concoction. What really sets this dish apart and raises it to the next level is the addition of date syrup. It’s really not optional here; the dish simply isn’t as good without it! So find yourself a middle eastern market or fly to Israel, but get yourself some decadent date syrup to add to this dish :) Then sprinkle with white and black sesame seeds for the finishing touches. It’s really good with pita and carrots, and this week I will learn how it tastes as an accompaniment to matzah :)

The second dish I made was the Chermoula eggplant with bulgur and yogurt from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem. Luckily, my oven was already pre-heated to 400 F from the butternut squash, so I just added the eggplant to the oven with the squash for efficiency. Before sticking them in the oven, cut the eggplants in half and cut deep criss crosses into them with a knife:

Scored eggplant with deep criss crosses

Next, make the chermoula by mixing together 2 crushed cloves of garlic (if you don’t have one, go out and buy yourself a garlic press, they are great!), 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp chilli flakes, 1 tsp paprika, approximately half a cup of olive oil, 0.5 tsp salt and 2 tbsp of finely chopped preserved lemon peel. So the lemon peel for me was too much of a hassle to make (it involves canning and storing the peel for over a week), and I just could not find it in any store, so I just added some lemon zest to the chermoula. Then you have to carefully spoon the chermoula over the scored eggplant halves:

Scored eggplant with chermoula

Next, leave the eggplant in the oven for a long time. It took way more than 40 minutes to get the eggplant to the desired soft texture for me. I think it’s best when it’s fully cooked through and mushy and the color changes from white to a greenish wet looking hue. For me this took closer to 50-60 minutes. My advice is to keep checking on it and better to leave it longer than risk eating undercooked eggplant, which is really not great.

While the eggplant is cooking, add 2/3 cup of boiling water to 1 cup of bulgur and soak 1/3 cup golden raisins in warm water for 10 minutes. Next add herbs (I didn’t happen to have cilantro and some of my friends hate it so I just stuck to mint for this one), 1/3 cup halved pitted green olives, 1/3 cup slivered almonds (thank you, Berkeley bowl bulk aisle!), 3 chopped spring onions, 1.5 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a pinch of salt to the bulgur and raisins.

Bulgur with slivered almonds, golden raisins, herbs, green olives, and lemon juice

When the eggplant is fully cooked it will look something like this:

Add a scoop of the yummy bulgur mixture:

For the final touch, add a dollop of Greek yogurt and some sprigs of mint (I just got a potted mint plant and I’m so excited about it!). Isn’t that beautiful? It also served as a beautiful complement to the marinated mushrooms, which I’m sure you’ve all been patiently waiting to read about :)

I found this recipe for Marinated mushrooms with walnut and tahini yogurt while perusing Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty and Jerusalem for recipe ideas for my mushrooms. This sounded like a great use for my brown clamshell AKA shimeji mushrooms. For this one you also have to do some advanced preparations, which unfortunately I did not realize until the last minute. You need to mix up the marinade and pour it over the mushrooms and let them marinade for up to an hour before serving. Since I did not realize this at first, I only let them sit for 30 minutes before eating them for dinner because it was already so late. Luckily, they had tons of time to marinate over night and were way better the next day when I brought the majority of the mushrooms to a lab pot luck party :) The marinade consists of 1/3 cup olive oil, 1 tbsp white wine vinegar, 1 tbsp maple syrup (I always only use pure maple syrup – I lived on a farm for 4 months in high school and we made maple syrup ourselves from maple trees and now I could never go back to the fake stuff!), juice of one lemon, and 0.5 tsp salt. After the mushrooms have marinated, add 3 cups of fava beans and 2/3 cup walnuts. I’ve found fava beans super hard to find, so I just used the canned version. I also did not bother removing the skins, because really, who has time for that? Besides, all the nutrients are in the skins anyway :)

Marinated mushrooms with walnuts and fava beans

To complete the dish, whisk together 0.5 cup Greek yogurt with 2.5 tbsp tahini, 1 small garlic clove, juice of another lemon, and some salt. Then add a dollop of that to the mushrooms and sprinkle with dill and oregano. This dish goes really well with the chermoula eggplant dish. They complement each other very nicely :)

I cooked this huge feast on Saturday evening, and then I invited over my friend Meera to enjoy the dishes on Sunday early afternoon before I brought the rest of the mushrooms to the lab potluck party. Meera is the one who inspired me to get Jerusalem in the first place, and I love inviting her over because she always very enthusiastically enjoys all of my dishes :) So thanks, Meera, for inspiring me to buy Yotam Ottolenghi’s books in the first place, and for enthusiastically taste testing all three of my mushroom themed feasts this week!

Eating my way through Israel: Part 1

So as many of you already know, I accompanied my advisor on a trip to Israel to help out some Israeli researchers with our fungal expertise. So of course the purpose of this trip was for research, but you all know my ulterior motives already – FOOD :) As I fanatically took photos of all the delicious food we ate, Hagai, one of the Israel researchers, asked my advisor Tom if all of his American students were crazy like that. Nope, I think it’s just me! I had an amazing time in Israel and really did not feel quite ready to return to the States after my brief 10 day trip, but I can take solace in the awesome spices and treats I brought in tow.

My stash from Israel – rosewater, spice mixes for red and green zhug, and sumac

I spent my last shekels on date syrup at the duty free shop at the airport and I bought rosewater, sumac, and spice mixes to make red and green zhug at the Arab shuk in Jerusalem. I also couldn’t help myself and bought some gorgeous Armenian pottery to highlight my future cooking.

Buying Armenian pottery in the old city. Can you see me with my purchases?

Tom and I spent the first part of the week in Beer Sheva hanging out with Ofer Ovadia and his grad student Stav at the Ben Gurion University in the Negev. We ate at an amazing Moroccan restaurant but unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera for that meal! Tom, however, brought his camera and sent me this picture from the menu, which he insisted that I include in my blog post. Internal organs anyone?

Restaurant from Moroccan restaurant featuring internal organs

While I lack photos of the delicious unadventurous non organ meat meal that we did end up eating, I did remember to bring my camera for our travels through the north of Israel so you get pictures of our meals in the north instead! I like to joke that I took the anti-touristic tour of Israel – I saw a lot of places that most tourists and probably most Israelis too have never been! We took a hike in the Negev searching for the Terfezia desert truffles, which unfortunately we did not find. We also spent a bunch of time trekking through pine forests in the mountains near Jerusalem and the mountains in the north trying to find mushrooms. Alas, we were not so successful with mushroom foraging, and the only edible mushroom we found is Suillus collinitus. This is not known to be a prized edible and I have not yet tried it, but Russians apparently love it.

Suillus granulatus. Would you want to eat it?

Suillus collinitus. Would you want to eat it?

Stav and I took a train from Beer Sheva to Akko, which is a city in the northern tip of Israel. Hagai and Tom met us there and took us for an awesome picnic in the woods. I was too hungry to stop and take a picture of the pita, hummus, and burrekas that we ate for lunch, but I did capture the lovely baklavas that they brought for dessert. The orange thing is called kenafe, which is made of sweetened goat cheese soaked in honey and covered in orange crispy things:

Baklava pastries

Enjoying coffee and baklava in the Israeli pine forests.

Stav, Hagai, and Tom enjoying a picnic in the pine forests

We even took time to do some science!

Tom using a traveling dissecting scope to look for mycorrhizal root tips in the woods

After science we got hungry again and Hagai took us to this amazing restaurant up in the hills called el Arisa located in the town of Rama. I would return to this place for the view alone, which was truly spectacular:

View from El Arisa in Rama

And how awesome is the interior?

interior of the El Arisa

The view was just incredible, and luckily the food was amazing too! We ordered a bunch of “salatim” to share. Here is the hummus:

Hummus

We also got fattoush, which you know how much I love:

Fattoush

My favorite though was this eggplant, chickpea, and tomato dish, called Manzala, which I had never tried before but was so savory and delicious:

Manzala – eggplant dish with chick peas and tomatoes and parsley

Here is my plate all loaded up!

Hummus, fattoush, tabouli, eggplant dish

I also got my first taste of limonada, which is a super refreshing lemonade drink made with crushed ice and mint. I cannot wait to make it at home!

Limonada

This was definitely one of my favorite meals in Israel. Arab food is soo good! I love all the fresh herbs. Everything just makes you feel good while eating it. After stuffing our faces with pita and hummus and salatim I was so full, but Hagai ordered a dessert called Sachleb so I had to try that. It’s sort of hard to describe but it’s similar to a pudding. It is vegan and made of coconut and corn meal and flavored with flowers.

Sachleb for dessert

After this amazing meal Stav and I went to Hagai’s house in Kamon, which is a bit like a garden oasis out in the mountains. Off the mountain there is a view of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) to the left and the Mediterranean to the right and it is just breathtaking. He has 2 adorable children, 2 spunky dogs, and 13 chickens.

Hagai’s chickens

Incredibly, they made 24 eggs, which were some of the freshest and best tasting eggs of my life. Who wants to help me build a chicken coop?

Fresh out of the chicken’s butt!

For dinner Stav made us some Shakshuka, which is a traditional Israeli dish of eggs on a sauce of tomatoes and peppers. Shakshuka always seemed intimidating to me but Stav says it’s super simple and you can make the sauce from whatever vegetables you have lying around. We used carrots, sweet potato, peppers, tomatoes, and tomato sauce.

Shakshuka sauce made with carrots, peppers, sweet potato, and tomato sauce

When all the vegetables are super well cooked and you’ve added all the spices, you dig little holes and place the eggs in them. It is so fun! I can’t wait to try making this at home.

Shakshuka with fresh eggs

The day after our visit at Hagai’s house we hiked through some more pine forests and looked for mushrooms in the morning. While again we were not super successful with finding mushrooms, we did find the remains of a lower jaw of a wild boar, which Tom graciously modeled for us:

Tom modeling the wild boar jaw

Before meeting up with another of our Israeli collaborators, Yohay Carmel, at his lab at the Technion University in Haifa, Hagai took us to enjoy another utterly delicious Arab meal. We went to this restaurant in the hills in the north of Israel located in a town called Um-el Fachem called El Babour, which did not disappoint! Also, super excitingly, I found out that Yotam Ottolenghi himself loves this restaurant because he replied to one of my tweets about it :) They brought out plates and plates of different salatim. Eggplant covered in tahini and tomatoes covered in tahini, and stewed carrots and all sorts of things I couldn’t tell you what they are but they tasted fabulous.

Salatim at El babour in town in the north of Israel called Um-el fachem. Ottolenghi himself loves this place!

How gorgeous is this hummus?

Hummus from El babour

I couldn’t prevent myself from breaking into the pita before taking a picture:

pita at el babour

We also got tabbouli and an amazing salad made of mustard greens and red peppers:

salad of mustard greens and red pepper

How vibrant are those colors? As you can see, we enjoyed the food:

As you can see, we enjoyed the food.

Tom and I were super stuffed after all the salads but Hagai told us this place is known for their meat so of course we had to order more dishes. Tom got the kefta with tahini:

Lamb and beef kefta with tahini

And I got the chicken kebabs:

Chicken kebabs from El babour

I was so full at this point but they tasted delicious, and I got to keep the leftovers and eat them for dinner on the train ride from Haifa back south to Beer Sheva. Stav took me to a really cool funk show out at a pub in the middle of the Negev that evening and we saw an awesome Israeli funk band called Bintel Funk perform. After my last night in Beer sheva I took a bus to Jerusalem on Friday morning where Yohay took Tom and me on an awesome tour of the old city.

Spice shop in the old city in Jerusalem

Pretty rocks in the old city in Jerusalem

Menorah shop in the old city in Jerusalem

Jewish husbands everywhere can appreciate this t-shirt

We also got to climb up the towers of this Lutheran church and see a 360 degree view of Jerusalem.

View of the dome of the rock from the towers of the Lutheran church in Jerusalem

Roman ruins in the Jewish quarter of the old city of Jerusalem

Of course we stopped for lunch in the old city as well :)

Hummus in the old city in Jerusalem

I’m sure you’ve had enough for now, so I will stop here! But stay tuned for Part 2 where I will post about my visit to meet my Israeli cousins in Beit-El and more of my eating adventures through Jerusalem with my cousin Geula!

Roasted butternut squash & red onion with tahini & za’atar with couscous and tomato and onion, asparagus, and sauteed porcinis

I know that you have all been waiting with baited breath to see what I’ve done with my porcini haul. I’ve made a porcini and leek frittata which I will feature in a later post, and today I’m going to tell you about one of the best meals I’ve ever cooked in my life. It was so incredibly amazing that all I wanted to do this week was stay home from work and cook all day and eat my food. This was my second time cooking this butternut squash dish – the first time I made it was that fateful night before Christmas where I discovered Jerusalem at my friend Meera’s house. This dish is freaking delicious. It is not that complicated but it is so insanely flavorful and fulfilling that I think you have to go home and cook it like right now! The hardest part of cooking this dish is cutting up the butternut squash, which admittedly, requires guns. This recipe can be found on pg. 36 of Jerusalem and is featured online here and on another Ottolenghi admirer’s blog here. Before embarking on the arduous task of cubing the squash, remember to preheat your oven to 475 degrees F.

Cubed butternut squash

After cubing the squash, you can congratulate yourself, because the hardest part is now over! Next roughly slice 2 red onions and add them to the squash, then add 3.5 tbsp of olive oil and some salt and pepper before sticking it in the oven for 40 minutes.

Butternut squash with red onions

While it’s in the oven you can make the tahini sauce, which is super simple. Whisk together 3.5 tbsp light tahini paste, 2 tbsp water, 1 small crushed garlic clove, and 1/4 tsp salt.

Ingredients for tahini sauce

You can also saute the pine nuts in 1.5 tsp olive oil with 0.5 tsp salt for 2 minutes. Once they are golden brown, remove them from heat and transfer them to a small bowl while you wait for the squash. After 40 minutes, the squash and onions should be nice and soft.

Roasted butternut squash and red onions with olive oil, salt, and pepper

Once it’s cooled down a bit, toss the squash and onions with the tahini sauce, add in the pine nuts with their oil, and top with 1 tbsp za’atar. This dish is just so so good. I really cannot emphasize enough how much I love this dish!

Roasted butternut squash & red onions with tahini & za’atar

I decided to try my hand again at the couscous with tomato and onion that I made the other night with my friend Dan and featured here.

Couscous with tomatoes and onion in pan

It accompanied the butternut squash & red onions with tahini dish really well and I have to say I was really pleased with myself that I managed to get the crust right this time :) I got a really crispy crust on the edge (I just had to let it sit in the pan a bit longer) and I managed to flip it over onto the plate completely in tact! I didn’t spill any couscous on the floor this time! The only plate that I had that was large enough for this task was a orange flower platter that I had from the 99 cents store when I first started grad school. Perhaps not my classiest dish, but it was big enough that I got the couscous flipped onto it without dropping any, so it definitely did the job. I am very proud of this dish :) Definitely proof that practice makes perfect!

Couscous with tomato and onion

I know what you are thinking – where are the mushrooms? Don’t worry – I definitely made them! They were so meaty and delicious and added so much depth to the experience of this meal. Asparagus is in season now and was on sale at the Berkeley bowl so I added that to my pan with with the mushrooms.

Sauteed porcinis

Here’s my crispy couscous with the asparagus and porcinis.

Sauteed porcinis and asparagus with crispy couscous

How beautiful do those porcinis look? This is how you want them – nice and browned.

Porcinis with asparagus and couscous

Ok, let’s get a close up of my star ingredient.

Sautteed porcinis

And here is the completed meal! My friend Simone, who is another biology graduate student and a talented artist as well who makes really cool biological themed mythical paintings, came over to enjoy the meal with me. Maybe I can convince Simone to make some beautiful mushroom themed paintings for me!

Roasted butternut squash & red onions with tahini & za’atar with couscous, tomato and onion, and sauteed porcinis and asparagus

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad and Brussels sprouts and tofu

So for the last Saturday of January I prepared the broccolini and sweet sesame salad from p. 94 of Plenty and also featured online here, and the brussels sprouts and tofu dish from p. 105 of Plenty and featured here. I’ve been totally obsessed with Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty and these two asian inspired meals captured my attention. After cooking and eating them I realized that everything I had made was vegan, except some might want to swap agave for the honey in the broccolini sauce. So here you go, a healthy, delicious, and an unintentionally vegan feast :)

Me showing off the unintentionally vegan feast

As any reader of Plenty will know, some of the ingredients are seriously difficult to source. There’s no quick dash to the grocery store when it comes to these recipes. I looked all over and let me tell you, as far as I’m concerned, nigella seeds don’t exist in grocery stores. I even looked up alternative names on Wikipedia such as black caraway, and Roman coriander, but the Safeway spice guy was at a loss. It appears that the internet is the way for these supposedly delectable seeds (I wouldn’t know quite yet) and here is a nice cheap version of the seeds.

Me checking in with Ottolenghi to make sure I’m getting everything right!

So the first step of the broccolini and sweet sesame salad is to make the sauce, which involves whisking together tahini paste (I bought this from the Middle eastern store down on San Pablo and University but I’m sure regular grocery stores have it too), water, a garlic clove, tamari soy sauce (not sure exactly why tamari soy sauce is specified here, but I took his word for it and bought it), honey (substitute agave if you are vegan), cider vinegar, and salt. Next, you have to blanche the vegetables. So as you’ve probably figured out by now by my tales of bumbling around the kitchen, I’m a total novice at this. I’m sure many more could manage to blanche broccolini, grab it out of bowling water and rinse it off and boil the snow peas and green beans in the same water more adeptly than I, but basically I used a plastic tong to grab the vegetables out of the boiling water and dumped them into a colander in the sink. I think I need to buy one of those scoopable colanders if I’m going to keep up with this! So basically you blanch the vegetables then rinse and dry them, add some oil and sesame seeds, and then mix in the sauce, and voila, delicious hearty salad! It’s really a very tasty and hearty salad and you can see I had a lot of fun making it despite the difficulties blanching the vegetables :)

Mixing in the tahini and sweet sesame sauce with the broccolini, green beans, and snow peas

And here is the completed dish!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad

Next I put some white rice in my handy rice cooker, and started onto the brussels sprouts and tofu dish. I must say, this is one of the most delicious ways I’ve ever had tofu or brussels sprouts before. Bravo, Ottolenghi! This dish is pretty easy too. I had never bothered to marinate and sear tofu in this way before (usually I just throw it into a stir fry and add teriyaki sauce or soy vay) but the marinade on this dish is so good. It definitely takes an investment into buying a lot of asian sauces (see below), but hopefully I will find a use for my giant bottle of sweet chilli sauce! I’d actually never used sunflower or peanut oils before so I had to buy those for this dish as well, but less than a month later and I’m already almost out of my sunflower oil so it’s definitely a useful oil to have on hand!

Ingredients for brussels sprouts and tofu dish

You have to whisk together 2tbsp of sweet chilli sauce (I bought this at Safeway in a ginormous bottle for under $3), 1.5 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sesame oil (this stuff is really really good, definitely worth buying), 1 tsp rice vinegar, and 1 tbsp maple syrup. I learned the importance of real maple syrup while living on a farm in Vermont in high school (it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup! Tapping trees is hard! Real maple syrup is wayyyy better than the fake stuff!) so I always happen to have real maple syrup on hand. So whisk together the ingredients for the marinade, place the tofu in it, and set aside.

Making the brussels sprouts and tofu dish

Sauteeing shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and chile

This dish actually called for mushrooms, so of course I loved that :) After sauteeing the brussels sprouts in a ton of sunflower oil and getting them super crispy in one dish, I had to chop up onion, a red chile, and mushrooms to saute in a different pan. I was super nervous chopping up the red chile so I was a nerd and put plastic bags on my hand. I’ve heard enough horror stories of friends cutting chiles with their bare hands and then burning their eyes while taking out their contacts to know to be careful! Next, add the tofu to the pan and let it caramelize.

Brussels sprouts with tofu and mushrooms

These dishes complemented each other really well and resulted in a hearty, substantial, tasty, healthy, vegetarian dish. It was the kind of food that just made you feel healthy and good about yourself eating it!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad, brussels sprouts and tofu, and white rice vegetarian meal

Fattoush, Mejadra, and Swiss Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts

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.

Fattoush – middle eastern salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, pita, buttermilk, and herbs

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.

tahini and yogurt sauce for the swiss chard dish

All of the ingredients for the mejadra!

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.

4 medium sliced onions with flour and salt – getting ready to fry!

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.

frying the onions in sunflower oil

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.

rice with cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, sugar, allspice, and salt

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.

rice and lentils and spice before adding the fried onions

mejadra with frid onions on top!

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?

swiss chard

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!

unfortunately no pictures of the WINEsplosion, but here is the final dish with the hot buttered pine nuts on top

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!

Final meal: mejadra, fattoush, and swiss chard with yogurt, tahini, and buttered pine nuts

Lauren super excited to eat our feast!

getting ready to dig in!