Middle east Archives

Perfect tofu kofta (Turkish meatball) feast!

May 17, 2020May 17, 2020
by Jono

Perfect tofu kofta (Turkish / Lebanese meatballs) with all the trimmings, from scratch.

Is it possible to make a perfect vegetarian kofta with tofu? We’ve been puzzling over this idea for a while, and we finally cracked it! The texture is very important here, you want something with that semi-meaty bite, not too squishy but also not dry and starchy.

This is a feast recipe – how to do each element that you’ll need for a great, easy, Turkish themed dinner party! We go through making the perfect tofu kofta, yoghurt flatbreads, sumac pickled onions, chopped salad and tahini sauce, all from scratch.

This is a great spread for friends – messy and delicious!

These are about as close to perfect as you can get with household ingredients – some companies like Beyond Meat have made virtually indistinguishable meat alternatives, but you’re not going to be able to replicate that in your home kitchen from scratch.

Kofta is a skinless meatball eaten over an enormous area – literally from Eastern Europe to India – but the most famous are the Turkish and Lebanese ones. This is more along the lines of a Lebanese kofta simply because of how we put it together, but there’s loads of overlap between cuisines in the area.

This is such a fun food to eat with your hands – makes for a great dinner party! Grab a few friends, break out the Raki, and make your own flatbreads. Messy, healthy, delicious – this is our kind of eating! Perfect for a casual supper where you want to show off your plant based cooking skills 😉

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Fusion

Fluffy oat pilau with lentils and orange blossom

May 12, 2020May 12, 2020
by Jono

Fluffy oat pilau with lentils and orange blossom water

Can you make a fluffy, light dish out of oats? Absolutely! We’ve been eating tons of oats lately, in all sorts of things. Oats are an amazing grain, super versatile and ultra healthy! Loads of oat beta glucan and all 🙂

We’ve been in love with Persian style Pilau (or Pilaf, as some call it) since our trip to Morocco – layers of fragrant rice with vegetables, fruit, meat, nuts and all kinds of things in-between. Yummo. Steaming the rice allows it to get ultra fluffy and perfectly cooked!

Of course, the question popped up – can you oatify it?? And the answer is a big YES! But – you need to be careful, otherwise it can turn into a sticky lump. If this does happen, change track, add more liquid and call it a risotto or something – will still be delicious!

This base recipe is very versatile – as long as you understand the general principle of how the oats is cooked, you can apply different flavours and veggies to make everything from an Indian Upma, to moroccan style dishes with dried fruit and nuts.

We love orange blossom water, but understand that it’s not the easiest ingredient to find – you can pick it up in Indian and middle eastern grocers, and occasionally in spice shops, and it’s 100% worth getting hold of! If you can’t find it, try rose water, or just leaving it out.

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Fusion

Chilled cucumber, cauliflower and ginger soup

April 18, 2020April 18, 2020
by Jono

Another winner adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi’s fantastic book SIMPLE, this is our take on his chilled-out ginger, cucumber cauliflower soup.

This is actually a raw soup, more along the lines of a gazpacho – full of fresh flavours and exciting texture, it makes a fantastic light lunch on a warm day, or as a starter to a summer dinner outside.

I love how the texture plays together here – Yotam actually takes it to the next level by frying almond flakes in butter and using them for garnish, for even more texture contrast! We were lazy and so just used a sprinkle of sesame oil, but feel free to go all in, or substitute for some croutons.

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Middle east

Fresh vine leaf dolmades

January 25, 2020January 25, 2020
by Jono

Spring and early summer on the farm – a crazy abundance of vine leaves, and beautiful big ones too! This recipe details how to process your vine leaves from scratch, if you are lucky enough to have access to them.

You can use bought vine leaves, and the results will be similar, but if you really want your dolmades to sing, use them as fresh as possible.

If you happen to have driven past a vineyard, stolen a ton of leaves, and want to make a big batch of vine leaves for future use, once prepared the leaves can be frozen or brined and jarred for future use.

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Fusion

Grilled aubergine with tomato and orange blossom water.

December 6, 2019December 6, 2019
by Jono

Grilled aubergine with toppings is fairly high up on our list of best things ever, but its tricky when you’re trying to do it with no fat or oil whatsoever. Undercooked, it’s chewy and gross, and overcooked turns it into biltong.

The secret here is the microwaving! A fairly unconventional way of cooking aubergine, we use the microwave to do the majority of the work, then just finish on the grill.

There are a million ways to serve grilled aubergine, and we are constantly trying to find new ones! We popped this one out recently at a family gathering and it went down like a fat kid on a seesaw – looks gorgeous too. This also holds it’s own without the orange blossom water, if you can’t get your hands on it.

If you are really out to impress – put a little orange blossom water into your hand and sprinkle droplets over the table once the guests are seated – it fills the room with spring.

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Fusion

Smoked beetroot with toasted nuts

December 5, 2019December 6, 2019
by Jono

Beetroot is a divisive vegetable at the best of times, and I am well aware that smoking it will definitely raise a few eyebrows.

However, with that said, I think it’s one of the most delicious ways of serving beetroot, and can easily be an unusual and exciting starter to a fancy dinner party, as part of a mezze spread, or just as a fun side to whatever else you’re cooking!

The idea was more or less nabbed from a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s incredible book Plenty More, probably the best vegetarian cookbook out there and one of my favourite cookbooks of all time.

This is our stripped-down, low-fat version that’s seriously easy and involves mostly hands-off cooking! You can also take the beetroots and crush them, mix with basil, olive oil, lemon juice and salt to make a gorgeous dip.

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Fusion

Whole roasted smoked onions with tahini sauce

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019
by Jono

This is deceptively simple, and is a great crowd-pleaser. Whole roasted onions, without even peeling them? Genius. Smoking them first? Next level.

Never fear if you’ve never smoked anything in your kitchen before, this is surprisingly simple to do, and all you need is a pot, a stovetop and some tinfoil!

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Fusion

Cauliflower cake

April 30, 2019October 13, 2019
by Jono

This started as a recipe in probably our favourite recipe book ever, “Plenty More” by Yotam Ottolenghi. If you haven’t gotten your grubby paws on it yet, do so as soon as possible – it’s amazing.

This has become such a staple in our kitchen, I was horrified to discover that we hadn’t loaded up our version yet – so here it is 🙂

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Middle east

Baba ganoush

April 26, 2019October 13, 2019
by Jono

Aah the classic. There are millions of versions of this smoky, creamy aubergine mezze out there, with many regional variations all across the middle east.

This is our default recipe, but can be expanded in any number of ways – the only consistent feature across the board is the inclusion of tahini. Try shaved lemon rind and pomegranate seeds, or black garlic with toasted pine nuts.

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African

Patlican salata (braai slaai!)

April 23, 2019October 13, 2019
by Jono

It was a revelation for me when I realised that you can make fantastic, warm smokey salads on the braai. This earned a few odd looks from conservative Afrikaans family members, but they were converted very soon – this is undeniably delicious.

The inspiration for this came from our travels through Turkey, and a wonderful recipe book called Anatolia by Tyfun Arras, on Turkish cuisine.

This is an aubergine based cooked vegetable salad, Patlican meaning aubergine in Turkish, but the name Braai Slaai just rolls so nicely off the tongue, we can’t help calling it that 🙂

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Category: Middle east

Perfect tofu kofta (Turkish / Lebanese meatballs) with all the trimmings, from scratch.

Fluffy oat pilau with lentils and orange blossom water