Spiced Baked Fish
Spiced Baked Fish – Perfectly seasoned to enhance the flavours of the beautifully moist flesh.
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Prawns in Spicy Tomato Sauce
Prawns in spicy sauce is bursting with flavour: laced with garlic, a dash of lemon and a zing of chilli that just makes music on your taste buds. A must try recipe, Delicious!
Lamb with Black-Eyed Beans
Lamb with Black-Eyed Beans.
Lamb with black-eyed beans is a wonderfully hearty meal. It’s one of my favourite ways to have lamb. The meat is slow cooked so it’s perfectly tender. The rich tomato sauce is packed with flavour from the herbs and spices and the beans soak up the flavours from the sauce. Absolutely delicious.
There are several different ways to eat Lamb with Black-Eyed Beans
Lamb with black-eyed beans can be served with rice. It’s also perfect just to have on its own with some really good bread.
Another alternative for this recipe is to use half the quantity of meat and make an excellent soup.
It’s even better on Day 2
This recipe for Lamb with black-eyed Beans can be made a day in advance. In fact, it’s actually better the second day because the beans have had the chance to bathe in the meat juices and glorious spices and soak up even more sumptuous flavours.
The quantities for this recipe will serve about 6 people
Ingredients
- 1k lamb cut into cubes This could be ½ a leg, cut and cubed and then cooked with the bone (to give extra flavour)
- a little vegetable oil for frying
- 2 onions – finely chopped
- 6 large tomatoes – chopped / or 2 cans of chopped tomatoes
- 6 cloves garlic – chopped
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1tbsp freshly ground cumin
- 4 stock cubes – crumbled finely
- a good pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 2 cans of black-eyed beans
- a handful of fresh coriander leaves – roughly chopped
- wedges of lemon to offer when serving
Method
First let’s cook the lamb
Heat a frying pan, and use just enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan.
When the oil is sizzling, sear (brown) the lamb cubes, just a few at a time.
* If you put too many cubes of meat in at a time the temperature of the pan will be reduced and the meat won’t brown.
Make sure you brown the meat on all sides. Then put them into a large pan.
Carry on seering the batches of meat until they are all browned.
Put a little water into the frying pan to deglaze the pan – this makes sure you get all the tasty morsels from the lamb which may have stuck to the sides. Then add that to the seered lamb.
Using the frying pan again put in a little more vegetable oil and fry the onions until they become translucent and begin to brown. Then add the onions to the lamb.
Put all the remaining ingredients except the black-eyed beans and the fresh coriander into the pan with the lamb and pour over enough water to completely cover everything.
Put the pan on to the heat and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat down to a gentle simmer.
Reduce the heat and simmer for about 2 hours
Cook the lamb over a low heat for about 2 hours (when the lamb is cooked you should be able to simply cut through it with a spoon).
Add the black-eyed beans for the last 20 minutes of cooking to allow them to absorb the wonderful flavours from the meat.
Just before you serve your Lamb with Black-Eyed Beans
Stir in the coriander leaves just before serving.
This is such a tasty recipe, I do hope you’ll try it.
Let me know how you get on with it.
Send your photos, I love receiving them.
Mulukhiyah soup
Mulukhiya Soup – learn to easily make this quintessential Egyptian soup. The comfort food of a nation, that’s packed with nutrients.
Baba Ghanoush
Baba Ghanoush – smoky aubergine dip
Baba Ghanoush is a truly moreish dip with a seductive, smoky flavour laced with garlic and tahini and just enough lemon to make it sing. I can’t fault it. This recipe will show you how to make the very best, gorgeous, Baba Ghanoush you will ever taste.
It just makes you keep coming back for more
Baba Ghanoush is just one of those dishes that makes everyone come back for more. It’s great as part of a mezze or as snacks for a gathering.
Where did Baba Ghanoush originate from?
The story goes that it was first made for a priest who was so overwhelmed by its wonderful flavours that he simply fainted. It then became known as the Father’s indulgence and translated that becomes Baba (Father) Ghanoush..
Charing the skins gives you that wonderfully, seductive, smoky flavour.
Traditionally the aubergine is cooked directly on the flame of the cooker. But the juices tend to run out as it cooks and this can leave a bit of a clean up job. So you can to cook them under a hot grill which still chars the skins if you choose. I personally think giving the cooker a bit of a clean is a small price to pay for the wonderful smoky flavour you get charrng the aubergines directly on the flame.
You could cook them just in the cooker if you prefer. But but you won’t get a smoky flavour using this cooking method.
Ingredients
- 2 large aubergine
- 6 cloves of garlic peeled
- juice of 2 lemons
- 4 tbsp tahini
- 1 tsp ground cumin seeds
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 4 tbsp fresh coriander finely chopped
- sea salt
- olive oil
Method
This is how to make Baba Ghanoush
Rinse the aubergine. Don’t cut off the stalks or the leafy bits – this is what you will use to turn them as they cook over the flame.
Slit the skins
Cut 3 deep slits in the skins of each of the aubergine . This serves 2 purposes. It ensures that steam doesn’t build up in the aubergine as it’s roasting, resulting in it exploding. It also allows the garlic to be cooked.
Pop in the garlic
Push the garlic cloves deep into the slits – this allows them to be cooked at the same time as the aubergine without any danger of being burned. – A hit of raw garlic in a dip isn’t good.
Massage with a little oil
Pour about 1/2 tsp of the oil into the palm of your hands and then rub it onto the skin of the aubergine. This will help with the charing.
Turn on 2 gas hob burners and set them to a high flame
Put the aubergines directly onto the flames. You need to keep an eye on them constantly and keep turning them.
The skin of the aubergines needs to char and blacken all over. The flesh inside needs to go lovely and soft, as it roasts over the flame and begin to collapse, this makes the very best Baba Ghanoush.
Let them sweat
When you’re satisfied that they are fully chared, remove the aubergine from the flame. Put them into a small plastic bag for a couple of minutes whilst they cool down. This allows them to sweat, which will make it easier to remove the skin.
Peel off the blackened skin.
When they’re cool, peel as much of the skin off as you can – if little slithers of the blackened skin remain don’t worry too much, this will just add to the flavour..
Never be tempted to rinse them.
*Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to rinse the aubergines under water, because this will wash away the lovely smoky flavour you’ve spent time building up.
Look out for the garlic.
Pay special attention that the garlic cloves, which you inserted into the slits and were roasted in the cooking process, are taken out. Take them out and mash them well before adding them back to the aubergine.
Mash them with a fork.
Put the peeled, cooked aubergine into a bowl and mash it with a fork.
You could do it in the food processor but Baba Ghanoush is meant to have a slightly chunky texture which would be lost if it was processed.
Add the other ingredients
Add the lemon juice, tahini, ground cumin, smoked paprika, mashed garlic and fresh coriander and mix well.
Season your Baba Ghanoush
Season with the sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add extra lemon juice if necessary.
Drizzle olive oil over your Baba Ghanoush before serving
Spoon your Baba Ghanoush into a wide, shallow serving dish. Then, using the back of a spoon form a groove in a spiral pattern on the surface. Drizzle olive oil over the top. This will then settle in the groove that you’ve just formed.
Serve your deliciously smoky Baba Ghanoush with warm flat breads
Baba Ghanoush and warm, flat breads are a marriage made in heaven. Flat bread is perfect for scooping up this wonderful dip and it just keeps you coming back for more.
Obviously there are alternatives. You could serve it with bread sticks or crackers. A selection of crudités , such as cucumber, carrot, tomato and cauliflower would also be really good, if you choose.
I hope you enjoy this recipe. I look forward to hearing about how you got on with it.
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Herb salad
Herb Salad – Egyptian salata Baladi
Herb Salad – Egyptian salata baladi is wonderfully fresh. It’s made with herbs, salad vegetables and red onions. Using fresh herbs instead of lettuce brings so much additional flavour. It also has many health benefits.
Fully ripened by the sun – the flavours are incredible
Fruit and vegetables are generally seasonal in Egypt. They are allowed to fully mature in the fields, ripened by the sun and arrive at the market within hours. As a result, the flavours are incredible.
Do yourself a favour
I would suggest that buying the best tomatoes you possibly can, makes all the difference when it comes to this salad. If you buy ecconomy tomatoes which have been grown in a greenhouse, in artificial conditions, that have never felt the warmth of the sun and never even had their roots in the soil and have just been fed on liquid fertilizer, then they’re not going to have any real flavour. So, please do yourself a favour buy the best you can.
Salads are served with EVERY meal
Salads are an important part of Egyptian cuisine. And this herb salad is served with just about every meal in Egypt; breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Salad is served in small individual bowls and eaten with a teaspoon. Everything needs to be very finely chopped, so you get a mixture of all the ingredients when you take a mouthful. The red onion is the exception for this rule. The onion is slices finely into half moons and the individual layers, seperated.
Ingredients
- ½ red onion – cut in half and thinly sliced into 1/2 moons
- 3 ripe red tomatoes – finely chopped
- 1 Arabic cucumber or ½ English cucumber – finely chopped
- 1 bunch of fresh mixed herbs – flat leaf parsley, coriander, mint & dill – finely chopped
For seasoning
- White vinegar
- Lemon juice
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil
Making this herb salad – Egyptian Salata Baladi couldn’t be simpler
Marinate the onion in a little white vinegar for 10 minutes to reduce the harshness of its flavour.
Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl just before serving. Season at the same time with
lemon juice, salt, pepper and a little olive oil.
Serve in small individual bowls.
This herb salad is packed with flavour and it’s incredibly good for you.
In recent years I have become a fan of The Doctor’s Kitchen. Dr Rupy Aujla educates us in the benefits of eating food which promotes good health and healing. He talks about ” eating the rainbow”. Telling us how the vibrant colours in fruits and vegetables signify high levels of nutrients that can improve our health and increase our energy levels. This salad does just that. I do hope you enjoy it.
Minted Lime Cooler
Minted Lime Cooler A Minted Lime Cooler is just what’s needed when the sun’s high and the temperature begins to soar. It’s such a wonderfully refreshing drink great for hot day, especially served with lots of ice. The special quality of this Cooler is the …