Lamb Shanks with Potatoes

2 pounds lamb shanks

3 cups boiling water

1 cup tomato sauce

1 medium onion, chopped

5 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Arabian Spice(combination of cinnamon,allspice,cardamom,black pepper)

3 potatoes, peeled and sliced in ½ inch slices

Place lamb shanks in a deep pot. Sauté for 5 minutes and turn on both sides. Add onions, garlic, salt and spices and stir. Add tomato sauce and bring to a boil. Add water and stir. Cover pot and simmer on medium low heat for 90 minutes. When shanks are tender, add the potatoes and adjust the salt and spices. Simmer for 30 more minutes until potatoes are tender.

Serve with saffron rice, and salad.

Wheat Berry Salad

This salad is very filling and you can enjoy it as a vegetarian dish or as side dish with grilled meat.

You can purchase this wheat from Middle Eastern grocery stores or Health Food stores. We usually cook this wheat as a pilaf with meat stock and serve it warm with lamb shanks or chicken. I wanted to make a salad to serve with crab cakes and decided to boil the berries and mix with veggies.

Wheat berries take at least one hour to cook. I try to soak them in water overnight or for a few hours before I boil them. They will cook faster within 20 minutes.

2 cups wheat berries, soaked in water for 6 hours

4 cups water

1 tablespoon salt

1 Persian cucumber chopped

5 radishes, chopped

½ cup parsley, chopped

1 sprig of scallions, chopped

½ cup black olives

Juice of 1 lemon

¼ cup wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

Dash of black pepper

¼ cup olive oil

In a deep pot, bring water to a boil. Strain the wheat berries and put them in boiling water. Cover the pot halfway and leave it to cook for 30 minutes. When the berries are soft, put the wheat berries in a strainer and rinse with cold water. Transfer the berries to a salad bowl and drizzle the vinegar and olive oil, and lemon juice over the berries. Season with salt and pepper and stir. Add olives, cucumbers, scallions, parsley and radishes, and stir. Cover and refrigerate for an hour for the flavors to blend.

You can add chopped tomatoes and celery if you wish.

Serve it with grilled chicken, or fish.

Eggplant Omelet

This is a very filling and satisfying omelet. I grilled vegetables on an outdoor grill. I had leftover eggplants and decided to make this dish for a brunch, or a light dinner. Traditionally, we dice the eggplants and sauté them in oil until soft. In this recipe, I used grilled eggplants.

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to drizzle over eggplants

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper, or Arabian spice

1 large American eggplant

½ cup scallions, chopped

½ cup leek, sliced

½ cup green pepper, chopped

4 large eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon Italian parsley, chopped

Slice the eggplant in half an inch thick. Sprinkle salt over the slices. Put eggplant in a colander to drain for 30 minutes.

Pat the slices with paper towel to remove moisture, and spread on a baking sheet.  Drizzle extra olive oil over the slices. Put the slices under the broiler for 5 minutes on each side, until lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and set aside.

In a sauté pan, heat the oil and sauté the onions, leeks and green peppers for 5 minutes.  Season with salt and spices.  Arrange a layer eggplant over the onion mixture.

Crack the eggs in a bowl, and scramble them. Pour the eggs over the eggplants. Cover and cook on top of the stove for 5 minutes until eggs are set.  Sprinkle the parsley over the omelet and place under the broiler for 5 minutes.

Remove from oven and serve with bread.

Vegetarian Bulgur with Peasالبلغر مع البزالية

When my friends invited me for grilled kabob, I decided to make this dish to take with me. It is perfect to serve with meat kabob or vegetable kabob.

1 ½ cup coarse bulgur

1 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

12 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 teaspoon Arabian spice (bahar)

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup frozen peas

½ cup pitted black olives

¼ cup water

In a pot, bring water to a boil. Add salt, and drop the bulgur in the water. Leave it to boil for 10 minutes.

Remove the pot from the stove and pour the bulgur into a colander to drain.

In a deep pan, heat the oil and sauté the onions. Season with salt and spices. Add the peas and stir. Simmer for 5 minutes and add the black olives. Add the bulgur to the onion and peas mixture and add ¼ cup of water. Cover the pan and leave it to simmer on low heat for 15 more minutes until bulgur is soft. Check if it needs more salt.

Serve it with cucumber yogurt salad and pickles.

If you cook this recipe as a side dish, you can serve it with grilled kabob, or grilled chicken.

Phyllo Cheese Roll

These rolls are very delicious. You can serve them for a brunch or as an appetizer. You can prepare these rolls and freeze them. Bake them when you are ready to serve them.

Makes 2 rolls

1 pound feta cheese, crumbled

½ cup ricotta cheese

1 egg

½ cup parsley, chopped

1 teaspoon dried mint

½ cup fresh dill, chopped

1 pound phyllo

Olive oil

Put the feta cheese, ricotta cheese and egg in a mixing bowl and stir. Add parsley, dill and mint and stir to combine, and set aside

Use 5 phyllo sheets for each roll. Roll out the sheet of phyllo and brush with olive oil. Place another sheet on top and brush with oil. When 5 sheets are stacked and covered with oil, spread the cheese mixture along one side of the phyllo stack to make 2 inches wide filling.

Roll up the phyllo to the end of the stack. Place the roll on an oiled tray with the seam down. Score the top of the roll into 8-10 sections.

Bake in 350 F oven for 35 minutes. Leave to cool and cut it through the scores.

You can keep the roll uncut. Wrap it with foil and freeze it. When ready to serve, place it on 300 degrees F oven for 10-15 minutes. Do not microwave it. Phyllo will become soggy.

Iraqi Cucumber Pickles-Turshi Khiyar طرشي خيار

While making my weekly visit to the farmers market, I picked a few pounds of crispy crunchy Persian cucumbers, plus other vegetables for the week. I decided to make some pickles.

Pickles are served with every meal in Iraq. We prepare big jars of seasonal vegetables. In the winter, we pickle beets, turnips, cauliflower and cabbage. During the summer, we pickle green peppers, small eggplants, a variety of cucumbers, and green beans. When growing up in Iraq, we used to buy bushels of these vegetables, and spend hours in the kitchen poking these vegetables with a knife and sprinkling salt over them to drain some of their liquid. We had the whole family, including children, and grandparents participating in this process.

We use two methods: salt brine or vinegar. You could use quart (32-oz) mason jars or Pint (16-oz) mason jars.

Salt Brine Method

4 pounds small cucumbers

¾ cup Kosher salt (not iodized, or fine salt)

4-6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Rinse the cucumbers and place in the colander to drain. Poke each cucumber with a knife. Place in the colander and sprinkle ¼ cup of salt over them. Leave to drain in the sink for a few hours.

In the meantime, Bring 3 cups of water, and ½ cup of sat to a boil. Turn off the heat and leave it to cool.

Stack the cucumbers in clean sterilized jars. Pour the brine over to top jar. Add 2 cloves of crushed garlic and one tablespoon of chopped parsley to each jar and seal. When cucumbers change color, in 10 days, they are done. Refrigerate the jars after opening.

 Sometimes, we used to put the jars under the heat of the sun to speed the pickling process.

Another method is to pour the boiling liquid over the cucumbers and seal the top. This will speed the pickling process.

Vinegar Method

You could use white, or any light color vinegar. You could use apple cider vinegar but will change the color of the vegetables.

4 pound Persian cucumbers, or pickling cucumbers

4 cups vinegar

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1/3 cup salt

2 teaspoons ground coriander

1 teaspoon curry powder

1 teaspoon sugar

In a pot, bring the vinegar, salt, garlic and spices to a boil. Remove from heat and pour over the cucumber to top jar. Seal the jar. Pickles will be ready within a week.

If you find the vinegar too strong, you can measure 3 cups vinegar and 1 cup water and follow the above recipe.

You could use these methods for other vegetables.

Lamb with Chickpeas Soup- Tashreeb Laham باللبلبي تشريب

Chickpeas is a very popular legume that we add to a large variety of dishes. We add it to bulgur pilaf, a stew, or for salad. Street vendors sell a bowl of lablabi with a slice of lemon. It is a very satisfying and delicious snack.

For this recipe, you can use canned chickpeas, but traditionally we soak the dry chickpeas in a bowl of water overnight.  The following day, we cook them in a pot of water for an hour until the chickpeas are soft. Then add salt and sometimes we add turmeric and Arabian spices.

1 pound lamb shoulder, cubed with bones

4 cups water

1 onion, sliced

1 (15-ounce can) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bahar (Arabian spice)

Tannour bread or Nan for serving

Rinse the lamb, and put in a pot with water. Bring to a boil. Add the onions, salt and spices and cook for 45 minutes until meat is tender. Add the chickpeas and simmer for 10 more minutes.

To serve this soup, put a few pieces of tanour bread in a bowl and scoop the soup over it. Serve slices of lemon and scallions with the soup.

Sometimes we add Noomi Basra (dried lime) to this soup to give it a sour flavor. If you are using whole dried lime, make sure to remove the seeds before adding them to the soup as they give a bitter flavor.

Enjoy!