Warak enab | Vine leaves

It's been a very long time since I blogged about food or wrote about the things I have been cooking. So here I am writing about my latest achievement! Making and rolling warak enab! This morning while I was talking to my mum on the phone, I decided to make warak enab! Asked her about the ingredients and the preparation and it seemed super simple to make, and bit annoying to roll. Chaza and I (Chaza is staying at mine now for few weeks) head straight to Green Valley to get the ingredients and we found fresh vine leaves there! Yay!

Back home, we started preparing it, it took us 40min to roll and 30min to cook, it's not bad at all. It's a fun dish to make especially if you have friends to roll with you! If you haven't rolled before, start rolling, it's easier than sushi!

Exceptionally this time , I won't mention the ingredients or the preparation, just photos to show you process, and maybe you'll get excited to make it! It was delicious at the end !

Oh, and potential husbands are lining up outside the door!

Sachin's honey roasted parsnips with thyme and garlic

I have been obsessed lately with My Fitness Pal iphone app! The app monitors your weight and nutrition by logging in your food diary everyday and then it tells you how much you've eaten, what vitamins you still need to have for the day etc. It's really cool but yes it gets boring at the end maybe. I have been doing it for 3 weeks now and I have been very good with sweets and haven't had any for the past 2 weeks!! I even convinced my friend Shireen to get the app and now we share our food diaries and I can spy on her and see what she's eating ha!

Anyway, back to the main reason for this post, and it's to share with you Sachin's yummy yummy dish! Again this is not Lebanese, but has mediterranean ingredients ;)

Sachin was invited to his friend's house for a dinner party last weekend and he made this amazing dish which was very yummy and I couldn't but share it with you! It's very light and very delicious and most importantly, very easy!

Ingredients:

• 4 parsnips
• 10 twigs of thyme
• 12 unpeeled cloves of garlic
• 3 tablespoons of honey
• 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

sea salt and fresh pepper to taste

Cut parsnips longitudinally up to 1cm thin sticks. Lay them out on a baking tray, lightly tap the unpeeled garlic cloves and spread them on top of the parsnips, add thyme twigs between them, sprinkle salt and pepper and spread the honey evenly across the parsnips. and finish with olive oil.

Bake it on 180 degrees for 25min, until the parsnips are cooked and start becoming crispy.

Et Voila!

If you try it , please send me your feedback and a photo :)

Mon pot a cookies

                 

 



Amongst the several things that Tara got me on her way back from Paris to London is Mon pot a cookies. I simply love the idea of putting the ingredients in a jar, it also makes a perfect gift to someone. I have seen this only once before, when a friend of mine offered cookies ingredients in a jar to her friends during christmas and at the time I thought it was a brilliant idea!

I have been wanting to go for a swim today and de-stress from work and everything, but I ended up walking home from work in -2 degrees, and after arriving home freezing, there was no force that will make me leave my house :) , so I decided to cook.

What I like about cooking is that it is really relaxing and therapeutic and it was the best day for it, so I made myself some lamb liver (yummm) that I have been craving for a week, skyped with Rasha about our future blog (stay tuned!), and made the cookies (chocolat noir and caramel cookies)!

They don't look perfect but they are very delicious!! Merci Tooti!

Ingredients (sorry don't have the measurements!)

• Flour
• Baking powder
• Chocolate and caramel chips
• Sugar
• Aroma caramel
• Salt

Add an egg to the ingredients, 150g of melted butter, and mix well. Then form little round balls, put them on a tray for 20min in 180 degrees. The cookie balls will turn flat (mine didn't go flat much).

Sunday simple breakfast: Labneh

I have been eating out every day for the past two weeks and I generally don't like this habit. I miss simple 'homy' food, so this morning I decided to have a very simple breakfast. I had labneh in the fridge and some leftover multi grain bread from yesterday. I sprinkled some dried mint on top of the labneh (just to make it slightly fancier) and made some green tea and voila mon breakfast! Maybe some people find it boring but I like it :)
No olives this time, I love olives with labneh, anyway going soon to my local Lebanese grocers to get some, he makes yummy olives!

A confirmation of the yumminess of the grilled lettuce recipe!

Someone tried the grilled lettuce hearts recipe, and sent me a picture of the plate, with a small message saying "it was amazing!"

You know who you are :-) , a faithful Mac user and a talented chef to say the least.

Grilled lettuce hearts/ El Bulli style

It's been nearly a year since I have posted anything on this blog, however this doesn't mean that I wasn't cooking! I actually have been but I haven't had the time to write or post anything.
I received on 11.11.11 (my 'special' birthday) The Family Meal book by Ferran Adria from Nick. For those who don't know Ferran Adria, he is the legendary chef behind El Bulli.

Today I decided to make one of the recipes in this book, and although it's not Lebanese and my blog is all about Lebanese food, this post is an exception!

It is a very simple recipe and takes 25 min to make and it is perfect as a starter because it is very light and fresh.

Here are the ingredients for 2 people:

8 Sprigs fresh mint
1 tsp Wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp Sherry vinegar
1 Egg yolk
6 tbsp Olive oil and a bit extra for frying
2 Lettuce hearts

To make the dressing, put the mint leaves and mustard into a magimix. Add the sherry vinegar, and the egg yolk. Add the olive oil slowly while the mix is processing, until the mint is finely chopped. Season with salt. You could use a hand held blender, but I don't have it so I used a magimix instead.

Cut the lettuce hearts in half, heat a large frying pan over a medium heat and add a little oil. Season the lettuce with salt. Fry for about 5min until slightly golden on both sides.

Cut the fried lettuce hearts in half again, serve it on a plate and pour the mint vinaigrette!

I loved the dressing, so I added more for myself :-)

Okra and Pashley

I haven't posted anything in a very long time, and this is mainly because I decided to take a break from everything, including cooking. Alot has happened during this time, the highlight of that is getting promoted at work and buying a bicycle, and to be more specific, a Pashley bicycle! I am in love with my new bicycle.  The other exciting thing is that my bestfriend Rasha arrived from Dubai last Friday and she is staying in London for quite some time, I am very happy.

On Saturday we were sitting by Regent's Canal in Islington with Sachin and we were as usual hungry although we had lunch an hour ago. Then came the food brainstorming session, throwing ideas, talking about our cravings, and we surprisingly were in agreement! We were all craving Bemyeh, arabic word for Okra.

Today, Rasha and I decided that we're going to cook Okra in the evening to have it on Monday. Rasha coming from North of Lebanon, and me Beirut, we had to have a discussion on how the dish is made. Obviously there is a slight difference in the dish between the north and Beirut - although I am not sure if my way is the Beirut way. We finally settled that we will make both!


Here are the ingredients;

500g lamb cubes
Cinnamon sticks
Bay leaves
half a lemon

400g  Frozen Okra (it's very hard to find green okra in the supermarket in London)
a bunch of coriander chopped
5 cloves of garlic
3 tomatoes
tomato paste
Salt

Pomegranate molasses (For the Northern Lebanon version)

Boil the lamb cubes with half a lemon, cinnamon sticks and bays leaves for 20min or until the meat is cooked.

Meanwhile, chop the coriander very fine, crush the garlic and fry them together in a pot with sunflower oil. Peel and chop the tomatoes and add them to the mix and mix well together. Add the frozen okra and mix them well together. When the meat is cooked, pour the meat and the meat stock into the mix. Make sure you remove the lemon, the cinnamon sticks and the bay leaves. Add the tomato paste to the mixture until the colour of the mix becomes red. Add a pinch of salt to taste. Boil for 20min until the okra is cooked, slightly on the soft side. Voila!

For the Northern Lebanon recipe, do the same as above, but add pomegranate molasses to the mix and let it boil for 20min, until the okra is cooked. Delicious! Especially if you like 'lemony' taste.

Serve with rice on the side, add some lemon juice to taste, and cucumber or turnip pickles.