Dolmas

Every time my girls and I go to the Strip District in Pittsburgh, we stop at Labad's Middle Eastern Grocery. Here we find all sorts of yummy ingredients. For my daughter Zoë, this is the place to stock up on grape leaves. You can also find some somewhat-fresh stuffed grape leaves at our local grocery, but I have been wanting to give my Grandma Harvey's recipe a try. Actually, she had two recipes - one with rice and one without. One of her recipes is only a list of ingredients, and the other has some instructions. So I mushed them together a bit and made this from the combination of both.

Dolmas
1 jar of grape leaves, rinsed
1/2 pound ground lamb
1/2 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon parsley
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh ground black pepper
juice of two lemons
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Remove grape leaves from jar and rinse. Place them in a pot of boiling water for one minute, and then remove and put in cold water. When they have cooled, drain the water. Combine meat with carrots, rice, tomato paste, and seasonings. When ready to roll, place one teaspoon of the meat mixture on the back of one grape leaf and roll tightly. When the meat is gone and all leaves are rolled, place the remaining whole and broken leaves at the bottom of a heavy pot. Layer the stuffed grape leaves in snugly in the pot, making two or three layers as needed. Place a heatproof dish on top of the leaves to hold them down and then pour water in the pot to just cover the dish. Bake in the oven at 350 F for one hour. When cooled, drizzle leaves with lemon juice and olive oil. Serve warm or cold.

Tabbouleh

I have been searching for healthy and filling meals to pack in my little red lunch bag for work. Picking a recipe for lunch is an art in itself. Too heavy and I will be staring off into space instead of keeping production and using that brain. Too light and I will be furtively searching through my drawers for something chocolaty to tame the munchies. This tasty salad seemed to be the perfect choice.

Tabbouleh
1 cup water
1/2 cup whole grain bulgur
zest and juice of one lemon
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 scallions, sliced thinly
1/4 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 7-ounce can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 tomato, chopped
1/2 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped

Boil water and pour over bulgur and let sit until water is absorbed and bulgur is cooled. In a small bowl combine lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, garlic and seasonings mix. Pour over cool bulgur and add vegetables and toss. Serve on a bed of lettuce with a nice whole wheat pita.

Hummus

Who would have thought? The world's pickiest eater who never so much as touched a vegetable would like something with beans! I grew up thinking that beans were an alien life form spawned from deep space. Oh what anxiety I caused my poor Mother!  I can easily say that my pet dog Buttons was the very specimen of a healthy diet full of vegetables. I can recall the day I tried hummus. It was poetry on a pita. I can't stop eating this stuff.

One of my favorites is the hummus you can buy homemade at Labad's Middle Eastern Grocery in the Strip District of Pittsburgh. When hard up I might even buy a national brand from a supermarket but it doesn't come close to my recipe. Dunk veggies, pretzels and of course - pita.

Hummus
2 15-ounce cans of chickpeas (Garbanzo beans)
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
6 tablespoons tahini
4 cloves of garlic, crushed and peeled
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
paprika
extra virgin olive oil

Drain the canned chickpeas, reserving about 3/4 of a cup of the liquid in the can. Put the reserved liquid, water and chickpeas into a blender and blend until a smooth paste. Add lemon juice, garlic, tahini, cumin, salt and cayenne and continue to blend. Garnish with paprika and drizzle of olive oil.

Persian Chicken and Rice Pilav

(Morgh Polo)
My daughter Zoë has been known to pack some strange things for lunch. On our trips to the Strip District in Pittsburgh she has been known to purchase Crickettes - cheese and bacon flavored crickets and dried mackerel snack packs and take them to school in her lunch for their shock value. Grove City is a small town and things like that are pretty shocking. She also loves to pack rice and noodle dishes to school each day. The more exotic and spicy the better. This recipe was my response to her request for more rice dishes. I have been informed that when Zoë is away at school next term, I must bring some of this dish each time I visit. Even Mira, who is much pickier likes this dish.

I have used two sources in the creation of this dish. I have always used a steamer to make rice, so I turned to Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey Through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan by Sonia Uvezian for her detailed information on the proportions and mechanics of cooking rice and vermicelli. The book Extending the Table: A World Community Cookbook also provided inspiration.  

Morgh Polo

1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1/2 cup vermicelli, broken into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup long grain rice
6 tablespoon butter
1 cup almonds, blanched and slivered
2 cups chicken broth
1/4 cup dried currants
2 teaspoons baharat
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups cooked chicken, chunked 

In large pot, saute onions in 4 tablespoons of the butter until translucent and moisture from the onion has evaporated. Add uncooked vermicelli and saute until golden brown. Add rice and broth and simmer covered for approximately 20 minutes or until liquid is absorbed and rice is cooked.

In a skillet, melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and gently brown almonds until golden, making sure not to overcook them. When done, add almonds to the pot with the rice. Add baharat, currants and chicken and serve.

You can purchase Baharat from Amazon, Zamouri Spices and from DedeMed. You can also make your own. 

Baharat (Seven Spices)

Equal parts of:

Cinnamon

Paprika

Ground cumin

Ground cloves

Ground cardamom

Ground coriander

Nutmeg

Baked Kibbee

I have been searching for a good kibbee recipe for a while. I lie. Actually I would prefer to have a plane ticket to the Levant to try a homemade version made with love by a random grandma. Sigh. And so I perused cookbook after cookbook looking for a recipe that would be easy enough for a novice like me to do, and tasty enough to make me feel like I was relaxing by the Eastern Mediterranean. Lo and behold I found a recipe in my Grandma's collection. Was Grandma Harvey secretly wishing to travel the world too? Maybe! Perhaps this is the source of my wanderlust!

This makes a huge batch of kibbee - a full 9x14 pan. Next time, I am planning on dividing the recipe by half and hopefully getting something around 9x9.


Baked Kibbee
2 cups #1 fine bulgur
2 large sweet onions, chopped
1 1/2 sticks butter
1/4 pound pine nuts
2 1/2 pounds ground lamb (or mixture of ground lamb and beef)
fresh ground pepper
kosher salt
pinch mint leaves
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup corn oil


Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, cover bulgur wheat with hot water and soak for about 15-20 minutes. While bulgur is soaking, saute onions with one stick of butter in a skillet until onions are soft. Remove onions and set aside. In same skillet, brown pine nuts until golden brown and set aside with onions. Brown 1/2 pound of the ground lamb until cooked through, and then add to the onion and pine nut mixture. This is your filling. Season with salt and pepper and allow filling to cool slightly.

In a large bowl, combine remaining meat and bulgur wheat. Using hands, mix to combine. You can also run through a food processor using ice water to keep the meat-wheat mixture cold. Add salt, pepper mint and ground cloves to the mixture. Knead well until all of the seasonings are incorporated into the mixture.

Butter a large pan (13 x 9 or larger) with generous amount of softened butter. Divide the meat/wheat mixture in half, and cover the bottom of the pan with one portion of the meat - adding in small patties and pressing together to a 1/2 inch thick solid layer. Smooth the surface with hands dipped in cold water. Add filling layer and spread evenly. Take the remaining half of the meat/wheat mixture and cover the filling, using small patties of meat until the entire surface is covered in a 1/2 inch layer. Smooth and press together using hands dipped in cold water.

Using a sharp knife, cut around the sides of the pan, and then cut the kibbee into diamond shapes about 1 1/2 inches wide. Take your finger (dipped in cold water) and poke in the center of each diamond. Pour evenly with corn oil over the top of the meat and let the oil soak into the divisions. Bake for about 1 hour. Let cool for 5 or 10 minutes and remove from the pan and serve. Drizzle the hole with extra virgin olive oil and serve with pita bread and a salad of fresh cucumbers and yogurt. It's also delicious served cold the next day.