The Australian Women’s Weekly middle eastern (not sure why they went with lower case for a place name, but who am I to ask such questions) was the book I cooked for when I had a friend visiting and the vegetarian who lives with us was away for the weekend. I was going to cook a dessert, but we filled up on the two dishes I made, and dessert was not something we could manage, so we skipped it.
This book doesn’t have a lot in the range of vegetarian dishes that aren’t salads, and as I was cooking dishes in winter, salad was not very appealing. Being a relatively recent AWW book, it’s triple tested, with clear instructions, and the dishes I made were tasty. Overall I give this 3 out of 5 stars (I wanted to be more inspired).
hummus
Ingredients:
- 2 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 2 x 400g cans chickpeas, rinsed, drained
- 1/2 cup tahini
- 1/2 cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon fresh coriander leaves
- 1 teaspoon ground hot paprika
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
Method:
- Heat the oil in a pan, add onion and garlic, cook, stirring, until the onion is soft. Add cumin, cook, stirring,until fragrant; cool for 5 minutes.
- Blend or process onion mixture, chickpeas, tahini, juice, coriander, paprika and buttermilk until smooth. Spoon into serving bowl, drizzle with a little extra olive oil, if desired. Serve with bread.
(makes about 1 litre)
Notes on this recipe:
- It was good, though it was way too much. Next time I’ll halve the recipe. I served this with toasted naan that I had left over from earlier in the week because I forgot to buy flatbread. It still worked.
chicken, cinnamon and prune stew
Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2kg chicken thigh fillets
- 3 teaspoons cumin seeds
- 3 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
- 3 teaspoons ground cumin
- 4 cinnamon sticks
- 4 medium onions, sliced thinly
- 8 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 litre chicken stock
- 1 cup pitted prunes
- 1/2 cup roasted blanched almonds
- 1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Method:
- Heat half the oil in a large saucepan; cook chicken, in batches, until browned
- Meanwhile, dry-fry spices in a small heated frying pan, stirring, until fragrant.
- Heat remaining oil in same saucepan; cook the onion and garlic, stirring, until onion softens. Return chicken to pan with spices and stock; bring to the boil. SImmer, covered, for 40 minutes.
- Stir in prunes; simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, or until chicken is tender. Stir in nuts and parsley.
(serves 8)
Notes on this recipe:
- It was very delicious. I served it with pearl couscous which didn’t do a good enough job of soaking up all the liquid. I kept the left overs and froze them, for a meal sometime in the future when I am too busy to cook.
- You could make it less liquidy by reducing the amount of chicken stock you add, however, the liquid in this recipe is what makes the chicken very very tender.
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