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!

Fried Rice Kibbi-Kubbat Halab. كبة حلب

Have you thought of what you could do with leftover cooked rice? This is a traditional appetizer recipe that we make with boiled long grain rice, and we add saffron or turmeric to it while rice is boiling to give it a yellow color. We also add golden raisins and almonds to the filling. Sometimes, we add chopped parsley to the filling when cooled.

I was able to alter the recipe a little since I am using leftover rice, and the result was very delicious and successful.

Dough:

3 cups cooked rice, leftover, room temperature

2 eggs

Filling:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

½ pond ground lamb or beef

½ cup onion, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon Arabian spice (bahar)

¼ cup pine nuts, toasted

2 cups vegetable oil for frying

Heat oil in a sauté pan, and add the meat. Cook the meat for 5 minutes and add the onions, salt and spices and stir. Lower the heat to simmer and cook until onions are soft. Add the pine nuts and set the meat filling aside to cool.

Put rice and one egg in a food processor and process for a few minutes until rice becomes a soft dough. If the rice is still hard, add the second egg and pulse to make nice smooth dough. If dough has a lot of moisture, add cornstarch to the dough and mix.

To form the kubba, or kibbi, have a small bowl with vegetable oil to wet your hand for shaping the bubba.  Take a small piece of the dough the size of small egg. Roll it in your hands and make a hole in the middle to form a cup. Fill the hole with one teaspoon of the filling and seal it. Shape it like a football.

Heat 2 cups of oil in a small deep pot.  Drop 4 kubba in oil, and fry for about 3 minutes. Remove them with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

Serve them with pickles. You can freeze them, and reheat them in the oven when needed to serve.
For a vegetarian filling, saute onions and add peas and chopped mushrooms. Add salt and spices.
Cool before filling the dough. Drain the filling from any liquid.

Tahini Pistachio Halva-Halawat Tahini bil Fistuq حلاوة بالطحينة

Halva is candy that resembles fudge.  Growing up in Iraq, my mother made a variety of halva, and we used to snack on it. We serve halva with a cup of Arabic coffee too. In order to serve it with coffee, I decided to stuff pitted dates with halva, and serve them as candy.

This halva is made with sugar syrup, but I prefer to use honey. You can use any type of nuts. Walnuts and pistachios are preferred for this recipe.

½  cup tahini

½ cup honey

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

¼  cup whole pistachios, shelled

½ cup toasted sesame seeds

Pout the tahini and honey into a bowl. Whip it for 3 minutes. Add cardamom, sesame and pistachios and stir with a wooden spoon. Remove it from the bowl and plate it on a fruit dish. Decorate with pistachios. You can refrigerate it and serve it when ready.

For the date halva candy, take one teaspoon of halva and fill the pitted date. You can arrange the dates on a plate. When done, I decided to arrange a few pieces in a foil container to give to friends.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Cheese Bourek- Bourek Bil Jibin بورك بالجبن

This is my mother’s recipe that she used to make very often to serve with afternoon tea. You can use any type of cheese, but feta cheese is very close to the farmers cheese we had.

Bourek is simply a turnover that is savory or sweet filled with cheese, vegetables or meat. You can use the same dough recipe to fill them with apricot or fig jam.
Traditionally, we use the following dough recipe, but for convenience, you could use puff pastry or phyllo dough. You can fill the bourek and bake them or freeze them and bake them when needed. We usually fry the bourek, but I prefer to bake them, and serve them warm, or put them in a freezer bag, and when you need to serve them, put them in a toaster oven for 10 minutes.

Dough:

2 cups all purpose flour

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup water

1 teaspoon yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 egg, whisked

In a bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt and set aside. Measure ½ cup of warm water, and add the sugar and yeast and stir. Set aside to activate the yeast for 5 minutes

Add the oil and the yeast mixture to the flour and kneed it by hand for 5 minutes. You could use a food processor for the dough. Add a few tablespoons of water if you find the dough a little hard. (some flours absorb more water). When the dough feels smooth put it in an oiled bowl, cover it with a towel and leave it to rise for 30 minutes.

Prepare the Filling:

½ cup feta cheese, crumbled

1 egg, whisked

1 teaspoon dry mint

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Assembly:

Roll out the dough on a floured board. Use a glass or a wide round cookie cutter to cut circles. Put one teaspoon of the filling in the center of the circle. Fold the circle to make half moon. Crimp the edges by twisting the edges, or use a fork to press down the edges to seal the dough. 

Arrange on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and brush the top with egg wash. Bake for 20 minutes.

Make 18 turnovers.