Rice and Vegetable Pilaf

serves 8

1/4       cup olive oil

1            small onion, chopped

1            clove garlic, mashed

2            cups frozen sweet peas, thawed

1            cup diced carrots

1            cup dried cranberries

1            cup boiled wild rice

2            cups Basmati rice

1            teaspoon allspice

1/4        teaspoon ginger

salt and pepper to taste

1/2        cup slivered almonds, toasted

1/2        cup pine nuts, toasted

-In a large heavy pot, heat the olive oil and saute the onion over medium heat for couple of minutes.  Add the garlic, the carrots and the dried cranberries.  Stir and add four and half cups of water to the vegetables.  Add the allspice, the ginger, the salt and the pepper and bring water to boil.

-Add the sweet peas, the wild rice and the Basmati rice.  Stir and bring back to a boil.  Cover and cook over very low heat for 15 minutes.  Turn off the heat.

-Allow the rice to rest for five minutes, and then spoon into large serving platter.  Sprinkle with the toasted almonds and pine nuts.

serves 4-6

1/4      cup olive oil

2          medium onion, Julienne

2          cup lentils

1 1/2   cups coarse bulgur #3

salt to taste

-Heat the olive oil in a heavy pot. Sprinkle the onion with 1/8 teaspoon salt, toss well, and drop in the oil.  Cook the onion until caramelized but not burned.  Remove the pot from the fire, and with slotted spoon, remove the onion and place on tray lined with paper towel.  Set aside.

-Wait until the oil cool down, add 8 cups water and the lentils, and then place back on the fire.  Bring back to a boil and cook the lentil until done but not mushy.  Add salt and the bulgur.  Stir and bring back to a boil.  Cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let the bulgur pilaf rest, covered, for 10 minutes.  Spoon the pilaf into shallow serving platter and sprinkle with the caramelized onions.  Serve with tomato cucumber salad.

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

serves 4

2       medium tomato, diced

3       small cucumber, diced

6       scallion, chopped

1       punch of parsley, chopped

4      tablespoons lemon juice

4      tablespoons olive oil

salt to taste

-Toss the vegetables in a salad bowl.

-Mix the olive oil, the lemon juice and the salt.  Drizzle over the vegetable and toss gently.

Boiling the wheat to make bulgur

One of the great inventions of cooks in the Levant is bulgur wheat.  Buglur is made by bar-boiling wheat, which is defined first as boiling the wheat, then drying it.  Bulgur is an ingredient that adds such a great deal do dishes from that part of the world. It gives body as well as flavor to anything to which one adds it.  Bulgur is called several names, it all depend on the translation of the ward.  Sometime you find it as bulgar, or bulgur and sometimes especially the Middle Eastern Stores it will be called burghoul.One can find bulgur wheat in most stores because it has become a major health food ingredient.  It has more fiber and nutrients than rice.  Bulgur also does not effect the blood sugar as white rice do which make it a good grain option for diabetic.Bulgur is being produced on a mass scale nowadays because of that. In villages in the Levant, bulgur is dried on the roofs of houses.  Generally a village will own only one huge pot in which wheat is parboiled, and the village women will get together to prepare the bulgur, much the same as a quilting bee is conducted here in America.  The women get together usually in August because of the availability of the sun for drying the wheat.  The pot moves from house to house, according to a mutually agreed upon schedule.  At four o’clock in the morning the women taking part will show up at the house of the woman designated for that day’s work, carrying the pot.  The women from the designated household know she must have coffee ready, as well as the wood for the fire outside where the pot will be placed.  It is a pot enough to hold about 110 pound of wheat.  It is filled with water and allowed to cook.  During the cooking phase of the project, everyone in the village can hear the gossiping and the giggling of the collective cooks.  The men, of course, don’t mind his noised because their wives doing this job instead of them.

Using two large stones to grind the par-boiled wheat to make bulgur

Once cooked, the wheat is poured into a large basket to get rid of the water.  The Wheat is then carried to the roof of the house-always flat–where it is spread on bed sheets for drying.  They also erect scare crow to keep the birds away from it.  Every morning the village’s children, usually those under six years of age, will be sent barefooted up to the rood to stir up and re-spread the wheat.  After one week of drying the bulgur is carried to the village grinding mill and cracked according to the desire of the woman bringing the wheat.  Although grinding is done by machine in modern times, it was not too long ago that it was cracked y donkey power, and, at times, by the women themselves using not so small stone mills.  Once cracked, it is taken to the roof once again for further drying.

If you are buying bulgur in a store, be careful not to confuse real bulgur with what is labeled “cracked wheat” or “cracked roasted wheat.”  Bulgur gives recipes a nutty flavor, and cook much more quickly than cracked wheat, which does not have the same flavor.

Bulgur Tomato Pilaf

serves 4

4        tablespoons olive oil

1        medium onion, chopped

6        very ripe tomatoes, chopped finely or 1   16-ounce can diced tomato

2        cups water

1        tablespoon tomato paste

2        cups cooked garbanzo beans

1         cup coarse bulgur or #3

salt and pepper to taste

-In a heavy pot, heat the olive oil and saute the onion for few minutes.

-Add the tomatoes and saute for additional 5 minutes.

-Add the water, tomato paste and the seasoning, bring to a boil.

-Stir in the bulgur and the beans.  Cover and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes.  Remove from the heat and allow the pilaf to rest, covered, for additional 10 minutes.  Serve with mixed green salad.

Serves 6

6      cups cauliflower floret

1/4 cup olive oil

1      medium onion, chopped

2      large baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

1      32-ounces can diced tomato or crushed tomato with juice

1      16-ounce can cooked garbanzo beans, drained

4      cloves garlic, mashed

1      teaspoon freshly ground coriander

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

-Place the florets in bowl, drizzle with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, toss well, and then place the florets on a cookie sheet and broil until golden.  Remove from the oven and set aside.

-In a heavy pot, heat the olive oil and saute the onion for few minutes.  Add the garlic and the ground coriander.  Stir and cook for one minute. 

-Add the diced tomatoes, 4 cups of water, salt and pepper and bring to a boil.

-Drop the diced potatoes, stir, bring back to a boil.  Cover and cook over medium heat until the potatoes are done but not mushy.

-Add the garbanzo beans and the cauliflower, stir gently and continue to cook over low heat for 5 minutes.

-Add the cilantro, stir and turn the heat off.  Serve with rice.

Rice with Vermicelli Noodles

serves 6

4      tablespoons olive oil

1      cup broken vermicelli noodles

2      cup rice

4 1/2 cup water

salt to taste

-In heavy pot, heat the olive oil and saute the noodles, stirring often, until golden.

-Carefully, pour the water over the noodles.  Bring to a boil.

-Add the salt and the rice.  Stir and bring back to a boil.

-Cover and cook the rice over very low heat for ten minutes.

-Turn off the heat, keep the lid on, and allow the rice to continue to cook with it own heat, for another ten minutes.  Remove the lid and serve.

http://www.youtube.com/user/sanaacooks#p/u/1/bx-O57YdKU8

Ingredients:

6        large baking potatoes

6        cloves garlic, mashed

1/2    teaspoon paprika

2        olive oil

1/2    cup lemon juice

zest of one lemon

1/2    cup tahini*

1         teaspoon freshly ground cumin

1/4    teaspoon freshly ground ginger

1         cup water

salt to taste

1/4    cup capers

1        cup chopped roasted red bell pepper

1        cup chopped scallions

1/2  cup toasted slivered almond, optional

-To make the potatoes: Peel the potatoes and cut them into 1-inch cubes.  Place 1/4 th of the mashed garlic, the paprika and the olive oil.  Toss well, place in baking dish and bake in a 375F. oven for 25 minutes.  The potatoes should be done but not dry.  Remove from the oven and set aside.

-To make the sauce: Whisk the rest of the garlic with the lemon juice, tahini, water, lemon zest, cumin, fresh ginger, salt and cumin. 

-To make the dish: Place the sauce in heavy pot and warm the tahini sauce.  Bring to a boil, add the capers and the roasted bell pepper. Stir and remove from the heat.  Pour this sauce over the potatoes.  Sprinkle the potatoes with the scallion and the toasted almond.

People in the Middle East invented a coring tool to core the zucchini and eggplant.  They picked grape leaves off the vines and wrapped them around rice and meat.  They even used cabbage as wrapper, probably copied from a similar Norwegian dish.  If something could be cored, then it could be stuffed.  If something could be wrapped, then it was wrapped.

Recently, when I was spending a Saturday morning carving the core out of a couple dozen small, gray zucchini, I thought of my sister, who is a medical doctor in Syria, an endocrinologist by specialty.  She has no interest in cooking, but she’s obsessed with cleaning houses-hers, mine, our parents-she doesn’t care.  When my parents came to visit me a couple years ago, my sister was obliged to prepare a meal for my brothers left behind in Syria.  I have no idea way, but she decided to make stuffed zucchini for them.  She cored about 30 zucchini for stuffing, thinking they would be sufficient for the next week.  It was painful for her to do the kind of work she detested doing, but she felt a sense of accomplishment when she finished cooking them.  Turning the fire off under the pot, she went to her clinic for couple of hours.  Upon her return, she found that our two brothers had eaten all 30 stuffed zucchini, leaving her not even one for herself.  She told me that she cried for a full hour.  That was her last effort at fancy cooking. She has since refused to even to boil an egg.

Although the Moors had taught the Spanish how to stuff vegetables when they conquered them a few centuries ago, the Spanish were too smart to undergo the kind of obsessive work required to core small zucchini.  So when Columbus brought back to Spain sweet peppers from the new world, their national dish became stuffed sweet peppers, which are much easier to prepare because one only needs to pull out the seeds.  There is no need to core a pepper.

Stuffed grape leaves are more known around the world because they are offered in Greek, Turkish and Eastern Mediterranean restaurants.  Grape leaves are somewhat easy, and because of my sister’s pain, I’ve found a new way to stuff zucchini.  I cut them in half lengthwise before coring and stuffing them.

By the way,the word hummous does not mean spread as everyone think, and as such, you find pepper hummous, avocado hommous and so on. Hummous is what garbanzo bean are called in Arabic.

http://www.youtube.com/user/sanaacooks#p/u/0/3MYt_XyjNcc

Here is my or my mom’s recipe done my way.

Hummous

makes 3 cups

6      cloves garlic

3      cups cooked garbanzo beans with 1 cup of the cooking water

1/2  cup tahini

1/2  cup lemon juice

1/2  teaspoon freshly ground cumin

salt to taste

-In a food processor, place the garlic, the garbanzo beans and the cooking water.  Processes for couple minutes or until the beans are very soft.

-Add the rest of the ingredients and belend well until the hummous is well mixed.

-Chill over night and serve with pita bread, crackers or pita chips.