Monday, September 17, 2012

Middle Eastern Food Magic!

Along with Italian and Asian, I adore Middle Eastern food.
There is nothing complicated or faffy, just simple ingredients cooked and prepared to perfection. I first discovered real Middle Eastern food when I traveled to Jordan with my family a few years ago (It's an amazing place, if you ever get the chance to go I completely recommend it!) and fell in love with the beauty of the country and of course their cuisine! We would normally only order mezze and pick our way through an array of delicious and colourful dishes.

Like many of the best cuisines in the world their food would be described as "peasant food", using easily livable and inexpensive ingredients. Some of my favourite mezze dishes from our time there have to be mujaddara (a lentil, onion and rice dish), moutabel (like babba ghanoush), foul (a crushed broad bean dip) and of course hummus and falafel...YUM!

Recently for dinner I craved some of these flavours and decided that a Middle Eastern feast for dinner was in order..yey!



One of the most important parts of any Middle Eastern meal is bread..flat bread! However I'd seen the week previously a recipe by Nigel Slater about aubergine stuffed flat breads and there was just no way I could resist! They did take a good bit longer than usual flat breads to make however they were 100% worth it! I love how the aubergine burst out a little from the sides!


To go with our flat breads I made tabbouleh made with parsley from our garden, beautiful Spanish tomatoes (brought home by my father) and organic bulgar wheat. Stuffed inside the cavity with the soft cooked aubergine, it worked out a treat!



We also had a delicious warm chickpea and quinoa salad (forgot to take a picture..woops!), with lots of cumin, coriander and lemon juice. Barely a morsel was left and we spent the rest of the evening vegged out on the couch with fresh mint tea from the garden to ease our full bellies.



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9 comments:

  1. It was really really good, would have that again any day. Will have to go travel around and sample it some day from the natives!

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    Replies
    1. We definitely have to, go exploring around the world and fill our bellies!

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  2. My boyfriend is Jordanian! He would have loved this. I am still working on my arabic cooking skills--this looks delish! Well done you :)

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