Mad mezze, new books and bad news

Things are looking a bit grim, aren’t they? Rising cases, new restrictions, etc, etc. (And that’s before we get to Brexit, about which the least said the better.) I’m not surprised that it’s happening, but I thought down here in Kent we’d probably have a few more weeks of feeling relatively relaxed, and going out and doing things, but cases suddenly jumped this week. I’ve been trying to resign myself to a locked down winter by re-framing it in my mind as hibernation, which sounds so much nicer, and rather more voluntary. But it’s a bit hard to do that when we’re having lovely autumn weather. 


I’ve noticed in the past that nervous moments tend to induce slightly manic cooking for me, so with two new recipe books featuring Middle Eastern influenced food, I decided to surrender to it and make a mezze spread for dinner on Friday, supplemented with a few bits from the last Ocado delivery, in which I got slightly over excited about being able to get Marks & Spencer food delivered, having not had anything of theirs since lockdown started (it’s not really that exciting, but, nostalgia…).

The spread: with bonus glimpse of wine-guzzling husband.

The first of the new books is Simply by Sabrina Ghayour, from which I made lamb and mint koftas and spring onion salad. I really like this book – anyone who likes Persiana, this is also worth investing in.  And they are genuinely simple. For the koftas, mix minced lamb with finely chopped or minced onion (I did mine in my Kenwood chopper, which may have featured here before), dried mint, and an egg. Mix well with your hands, form into patties, and fry. Serve with yoghurt, ideally mixed with fresh mint. Simple, and genuinely delicious.

The spring onion salad is also dead easy. It’s chopped spring onions mixed with a dressing of sugar, rice vinegar (I used white wine vinegar instead), sesame oil, chilli flakes and sesame seeds.

The other new book is Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi. Whether you like this book will depend on how you feel about his style of cooking. I quite like it, despite the ridiculously long lists of (often obscure) ingredients and the complicated processes which require the use of every utensil and bowl you own. My husband (who tends to do a lot of the cleaning/tidying) does not approve, although he’ll still happily hoover up the food when it’s put in front of him. This book perhaps makes sense of why the recipes are so complicated, as it includes details of various techniques and flavour profiles he uses in his cooking. I wouldn’t have described myself as someone especially interested in the science/craft of cooking (I just like to eat) but these sections are interesting.


For the mezze meal, I made one of the hummus recipes from the book, because you can’t have mezze without hummus. It’s a relatively standard hummus recipe (chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice) apart from the addition of some grated ginger, which I haven’t seen before. The Ottolenghi twist is the aromatics you put on top – garlic, ginger, chilli and a cinnamon stick, fried in oil to release their flavour and crisp them up, then poured (along with the frying oil) over the hummus. I particularly liked the crispy garlic, and the idea certainly elevates the hummus out of the ordinary, without too much trouble. It’s something I’ll do in future with bought hummus as well, when I can’t be bothered to make my own (most of the time).

The final element of the meal was Jerusalem sesame bread (Ka’al Al Quds) from Falastin, written by Sami Tammini (co-founder of the Ottolenghi restaurants). It’s a fairly standard bread dough recipe, apart from the addition of skimmed milk powder (!) – I had to buy that specially, as it’s not something I usually have in my cupboard. Fortunately, I will be making these again – they are a bit of a faff, but no more than making ordinary bread rolls. The final result is a bit like a very good bagel, but lighter and more open textured.

So, here’s to a winter of hibernating, baking, reading, drinking wine – whatever gets us through it. With the Oxford vaccine trial re-starting after a worrying pause, I think if we can get to spring, we’ll be OK. We've just got to get there.