May 30, 2015 by Marios

Marinated Sweet and Sour Fish

The words “sweet and sour” have a special place in my heart. Sweet and sour chicken was one of the first Chinese dishes I ever tasted. It was when I was a kid and my parents splurged one night to take us to the only Chinese restaurant in our town. It was an upscale place, with lazy suzan tables that my sister and I couldn’t get enough of.

The combination of sweet and sour is not found in Greek savory dishes. So, for us, sweet and sour chicken was incredibly exotic. It was a main dish and a dessert all in one! Eventually, my mom found a recipe for a version of it and she would make it often enough that it became a little less exotic, though it still remained a favorite.

When I came to the U.S. to study, there were several food trucks on campus, and one of them was Chinese. At least once a week, I would pay them $5 and they would hand me a white styrofoam clamshell container, heavy and warm. I would open it as soon as I could find a place to sit. Inside it, waiting for me, was some white rice, topped with battered and deep fried nuggets of chicken, and smothered with that golden syrup, of sweet and sour fame. It was divine.

So, when Steve and I were going through the Jerusalem cookbook for a recipe to try out a couple of weeks ago, we were intrigued when we saw the name of this particular one. The colorful photo didn’t hurt either. So we gave it a try and, as with everything in this cookbook, we were not disappointed. The dish really is better after it sits in the fridge for a day or two, and is best eaten at room temperature. I did make one change though. I reduced the amount of coriander. It overpowered the dish and took away from that perfect combination: sweet and sour.Marinated Sweet and Sour Fish – Slightly adapted from Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium onions, cut into 1/2 inch slices (350 g)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed in mortar and pestle
2 bell peppers (one red and one yellow or orange), cored, seeded, and cut into 1/2 inch strips (300 g)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or grated on microplane
3 bay leaves
1 1/2 tablespoon curry powder
2 cups (320 g) of dice tomatoes in juice (from two 14.5 oz cans, some will be left over)
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons cider vinegar (or sherry vinegar)
1 lb (500 g) white fish fillets (such as cod, halibut, pollock, etc.)
all purpose flour for dusting
2 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375º F.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large ovenproof deep pan or dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onions and crushed coriander seeds. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add peppers and cook for another 10 minutes. Add garlic, bay leaves, curry powder, and tomatoes and cook for another 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add sugar, vinegar, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and some black pepper and cook for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a separate frying pan over medium high heat. Sprinkle fish with some salt, dip in the flour, then in the eggs, and fry for about 3 minutes, turning once. Transfer fish to paper towels to absorb excess oil. When all fish is cooked, add to pan with the peppers and onions, pushing the vegetables aside so that the fish is at the bottom of pan. Add enough water just to immerse the fish in the liquid.

Place the pan in the oven for 10-12 minutes until the fish is cooked. Remove from oven and let it cool to room temperature. The fish can be served now or put in the fridge, covered, for a day or two to let the flavors combine. Before service add salt and pepper, if needed.

August 30, 2014 by Marios

Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts

There are some dishes that just don’t photograph well. This is one of them. No matter how much I tried to make it pretty, it comes out like a brown and black mess when I take its picture. I guess I could have sprinkled some fresh parsley on it or nestled a few lemon wedges between the eggplant pieces in order to give it some color. But I decided not to. It’s not necessary. Because no matter what the photos look like, this is one of the best dishes you will ever taste. It is, by far, my favorite recipe out of Jerusalem: A Cookbook. And that says a lot. I love just about every recipe in that book.

For starters, it’s an easy eggplant recipe. I don’t know why, but as soon as I see a recipe that calls for salting eggplant pieces and letting them drain in a colander before cooking them, I have an instant reaction of “no way!” I just don’t have the patience for that. The great thing about this recipe is that it simply calls for cutting the eggplant down the middle, scoring the flesh and brushing it with olive oil. From that point on, it just cooks in the oven for a long time, at first on its own and then covered with the ground meat mixture, until it becomes melt-in-your-mouth soft.

If I’ve learned one thing out of this amazing cookbook (and I’ve learned a lot), it is the power of the holy trinity of Middle Eastern spices: cumin, paprika, and cinnamon. When combined, they produce an intoxicating mix that is sweet (from the paprika), earthy (from the cumin), and spicy (from the cinnamon), all at the same time. Along with onions, pine nuts, and parsley, they turn the ground lamb “stuffing” of this dish into something entirely exotic but wonderfully comforting as well.

Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb and Pine Nuts – From Jerusalem: A Cookbook

Ingredients:

4 medium eggplants  (about 2 pounds/1.2 kg), halved lengthwise
6 tablespoons/90 ml olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 medium onions (12 ounces/340 grams in total), finely chopped
1 pound/500 grams ground lamb
7 tablespoons/50 grams pine nuts
2/3 ounces/20 grams flat-leaf parsley, chopped
2 teaspoons tomato paste
3 teaspoons superfine sugar
2/3 cup/150 ml water
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
4 cinnamon sticks
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Place the eggplant halves, skin side down, in a roasting pan large enough to accommodate them snugly. Brush the flesh with 4 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with 1 teaspoon salt and plenty of black pepper. Roast for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

While the eggplants are cooking, you can start making the stuffing by heating the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large frying pan. Mix together the cumin, paprika, and ground cinnamon and add half of this spice mix to the pan, along with the onions. Cook over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes, stirring often, before adding the lamb, pine nuts, parsley, tomato paste, 1 teaspoon of the sugar, 1 teaspoon salt, and some black pepper. Continue to cook and stir for another 8 minutes, until the meat is cooked.

Place the remaining spice mix in a bowl and add the water, lemon juice, tamarind, the remaining 2 teaspoons sugar, the cinnamon sticks, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; mix well.

Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F/195°C. Pour the spice mix into the bottom of the eggplant roasting pan. Spoon the lamb mixture on top of each eggplant. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, return to the oven, and roast for 1 1/2 hours, by which point the eggplants should be completely soft and the sauce thick; twice during the cooking, remove the foil and baste the eggplants with the sauce, adding some water if the sauce dries out. Serve warm, not hot, or at room temperature.

March 16, 2014 by Marios

Lamb Stir-Fry with Pomegranate and Yogurt

I wasn’t especially close to my grandparents. My maternal grandfather died when I was really young and my dad’s parents lived far away so we saw them rarely. The only grandparent I saw fairly often was my maternal grandmother. For as long as I can remember, she lived in a little house behind my aunt’s house. She was a refugee, having lost her home in the war of 74, and a widow. We saw her a few times a year when we would go and visit.

My grandmother looked like a typical old Greek woman from the movies. Always dressed in black (perpetually in mourning for her husband, as old customs required), her hair always covered in a large black headscarf. It was a source of great mystery to me, her hair, when I was little. The couple of times I caught a glimpse of her without the headscarf, I could see a torrent of white hair cascading down her black-clad back. It seemed magical somehow.

I have few memories of the times I spent with her. I remember that my sister and I, influenced by American movies and cartoons we watched on TV, always wanted her to tell us stories and fairytales. When she would tell us that she didn’t know any stories (she was a farmer’s wife who raised nine children in hard, village conditions) we would explain to her that she must, she was a grandmother after all, and all grandmothers know all kinds of fables. Inevitably, she would give in and tell us the same one or two stories she knew, none of which satisfied our hunger for fantastical beings. One of those stories involved a cockroach who convinced a cow to let it ride on its back to cross a muddy field, but then somehow fell in the deep impression that the cow’s hoof left in the mud, at which point the cow, unaware of the cockroach’s fall, started to pee, filling the impression with pee and drowning the unfortunate cockroach to death.

Yeah, she wasn’t kidding when she said that she really didn’t know any fairytales.

One fond memory I have with her involves pomegranates. There was a small pomegranate tree growing in her front yard and when the fruit was ripe, she would pick one and painstakingly peel and deseed it for us. My sister and I loved receiving our small bowls filled with the sweet-tart fuchsia-colored seeds, eating them with a spoon, feeling their juices burst in our mouths, always wary of eating too many lest they make us constipated as the adults always warned us.

Pomegranates always make me think of my grandmother. I didn’t often eat them, however, because I hated the process of picking the tiny seeds from their intricate web of pith. It was only recently that I discovered a much easier way to deseed a pomegranate by whacking it with a wooden spoon. So, when I saw this recipe for a lamb stir-fry with pomegranate and yogurt in Bon Appétit, I bought a pomegranate and tried it. It turned out to be fantastic. The lamb is intensely fragrant with cumin and coriander, while the yogurt and pomegranate add a buoyant and sweet coolness to the dish.

Lamb Stir-Fry with Pomegranate and Yogurt – Adapted from Bon Appétit

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground coriander
1 pound boneless leg of lamb, thinly sliced against the grain
1 teaspoon paprika
3 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1½ tablespoons olive oil
½ cup plain Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon water
zest from half a lemon, finely chopped
1 medium red onion, cut into ½” wedges
½ cup water
¼ cup pomegranate seeds
2 tablespoons chopped pistachios
Fresh oregano and mint leaves (for serving)

Directions:

In a medium bowl, mix together cumin, coriander, paprika, garlic, vinegar, salt, pepper, and 1½ Tbsp. oil in a large bowl. Add lamb and toss to coat. Cover and let it marinade in the fridge for at least two hours, or up to 24 hours.

Whisk yogurt, lemon zest, and 1 Tbsp. water in a small bowl; season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Working in batches, cook lamb (do not overcrowd in pan), tossing occasionally, until browned, about 3 minutes per batch; transfer to a plate with a slotted spoon.

Add onion to skillet and cook, stirring often, until beginning to brown and soften, about 4 minutes. Add ½ cup water; season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is tender and water is almost completely evaporated, about 4 minutes. Return lamb to skillet and toss to combine.

Serve lamb topped with yogurt, pomegranate seeds, pistachios, and herbs.