Middle Eastern - Craig Cooks

Baked Spiced Cauliflower

May 29, 2018 by admin 1 Comment

Here’s my first attempt at baking a whole cauliflower and it was amazing. I looked online at some spice rubs and then made up my own.

Rub the cauliflower with a mix of the following:

2 tsp turmeric,
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garlic powder
black pepper
sea salt
1/4 cup olive oil (add a bit more if needed)

It needed some chilli powder, so add to your liking, but at least 1/2 tsp

Sauce was made from greek yoghurt, tahine, lemon juice and minced garlic. I just made up the proportions and it worked. Probably 1/4 cup tahine, 1 cup yoghurt, 1 tsp garlic, 1 tsp lemon juice, salt and pepper.

I served this with baked sweet potato wedges with cherry tomatoes and grapes (a really good combination so it turned out), and some coriander (yes, it was definitely the end of the bunch…)

Also

Baked beetroot from our garden

Couscous with barberries and orange blossom water

Eggplant and tomato tagine (recipe from the Moroccon Soup Bar cookbook)

Fig and pear and raisin jam which I adapted from a chutney recipe in Heston Blumenthal at Home.

It was a Wednesday night feast. When I go back to full-time work it will be a shock.

Sous Vide Moroccan Lamb

December 17, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

I cooked a half leg of lamb for 15 hours overnight in the souse vide water bath. I use an Anova Precision Cooker stick and a Trespade Vacuum Sealer.

The cooking time came from Dale Prentice’s excellent book “At Home with Souse Vide” (stunning photos by my friend Mike Emmett and his friend Bec at RedFishBlueFish Photo.

Dale is the talent behind Sous Vide Australia. I also bought my smoking gun from them.

The recipe was as follows:

3 tbsp Moroccan spice powder. (For once I used some from a jar.)
1 x 5 cm knob of fresh ginger sliced thinly
3 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
1 long red mild chilli, sliced and de-seeded
1/3cup white wine
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tbsp fig jam
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp sea salt

In hindsight I wish I had added juice of 1/2 lemon. Next timeI would stud the meat with the garlic.

After cooking it overnight, I finished it off on the BabyQ gas Weber.

It tastes really good, although next time I’ll use a home-made spice mix to give it more kick.

I’m going to serve it cut up with warm pita bread and accompaniments.

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Orange, Beetroot and Fig Salad

December 10, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Here’s the first of the summer salads.

3 beetroots baked with olive oil, salt and balsamic vinegar, sliced thinly
2 oranges, peeled and sliced
3 figs, each cut into 6 wedges
1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and crushed
1 1/2 tsp sumac
1 1/2 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
Pomegranate seeds
Goats chevre
Chopped parsley and coriander
Pomegranate syrup (drizzled on top after the photo was taken)

It’s colourful and tastes fantastic. You could substitute good quality dates for the figs.

Orange and Pomegranate Cake

May 20, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Today I’ve made this lovely looking Orange and Pomegranate cake from Diana Henry.

The recipe is on her website here. This explains the cake part. It is a fantastic cake.

My adapted recipe below is for the ice cream.

It is supposed to be very moist, like a pudding, so I’m serving it with some home-made lime, ginger and coconut ice cream. I took some inspiration from here, but I added and changed things. We had a bottle of wild lime syrup….