Recipes

Book Review: Levant – New Middle Eastern Flavours

- Alex Prichard Leave a comment

A gem of a book, written by the impossibly glamorous Rawia Bishara who is famed for Tanoreen, a middle eastern restaurant in Brooklyn, NY.

The book is absolutely beautifully photographed – it’s one of those where every single page you find yourself thinking “oh, that looks delicious”, “oh, I could make that for x, y, z occasion”, “oh, we should have that for dinner next week”. You get the idea. And then you see a photo of Rawia cooking, perfectly made up, bejewelled and wearing glittery clothing and you think … “yeah, but not like that!”

We made two recipes from the book and both were delicious and, in the case of the beans, her suggested ‘cheat’ worked perfectly well.

First up we made the “autumn fattoush” – although as we weren’t making it in autumn, we found radicchio tricky to come by (or was that just my lack of commitment) and substituted witlof instead, figuring it would have the same leafy texture and bitter flavour profile. Of course, it did mean that our finished dish wasn’t quite as colourful as that in the book but it was still delicious. And, of course, with this kind of salad, the bulk of the effort is in making the pita chips. She suggests cooking them in the oven but the Ottolenghi option of pan frying them will also work well.

Later in the piece, we tried the coriander green beans with toasted almonds. Another very simple dish although the recipe does suggest deep frying the green beans, with the option for roasting them. We went the roasting route and Andy felt we took the beans a bit far (I thought they were fine). As we now have an air fryer, it would be interesting to cook the beans in that and see how they turn out. It would be essential to use fresh green beans for this – yes, I know that topping & tailing them is more work than grabbing a bag of frozen, but you really want the crunch that you only properly get with a fresh bean.

Some recipes in the book do have a very hefty list of ingredients (although, quite often, if you have a well-stocked spice drawer you’ll be fine) but there is something for everyone in this book – from quick, simple side-dishes to more elaborate, heavily spiced mains. Not every recipe is illustrated, so you will have to use your imagination now and then, but you should definitely not let that put you off.

Sylvia Colloca’s Focaccia Pugliese

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Focaccia Pugliese

On Wednesday we went to lunch with some friends who asked us to bring bread. We had an early start anyway, so I knocked up a batch of milk rolls. I was thinking that at least some would come home with me but apparently that was not to be the case … Fortunately, on Wednesday night, we watched SBS Snacks (otherwise known by its more boring name, SBS Food) and saw Colloca put together a focaccia pugliese. I was actually going to make a different bread, but Andy liked the look of this AND we had some potatoes hanging about in the cupboard.

Yes, potatoes. Focaccia Pugliese (as in, ‘focaccia from Puglia’ or ‘Puglian focaccia’ – from the region of Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot) is distinguished from other focaccias by the inclusion of mashed potato in the dough. If you’ve done some bread making, you’ll know that including potato is a good way of adding moisture into the bread, and while the dough is softer, the crumb is slightly tighter. The topping is (apparently) traditionally tomatoes and oregano, which is what I stuck with – however, we discussed this and felt that sundried tomatoes & some red onion (and maybe some olives) would also work admirably. To be honest – just whack what you want on top unless you’re serving to bread purists or Italian food purists.

The mashed potato step does add time to the process so actually what I’d recommend is that next time you’re making mash, boil up loads of potato and separate out 300g of mash before you add your butter/cream/milk to the remainder. Or, in my case, boil up potatoes specifically, separate out your 300g of mash and then make the remainder into lunch for the starving child roving the house …

Pro tips … don’t be shy with the salt (either in the dough or on top) and definitely don’t be shy with the oregano. Also – I used my standard bread flour (I actually had 00 flour but read that part of the recipe too late and also wasn’t sure I had 500g). And, as the potato does mean a tighter crumb don’t be expecting a focaccia full of big airy holes!

Colloca’s original focaccia pugliese recipe is over on SBS.

Focaccia Pugliese

Ingredients

  • 500g flour (recipe calls for 00, I used Laucke’s Wallaby)
  • 7g dried yeast
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 150mL warm milk (warm in microwave)
  • 100mL tepid water
  • 300g mashed potatoes – cooled (this is potatoes, mashed, not potatoes mashed & then loaded with cream/butter/milk … for best results use a potato ricer)
  • salt, cherry tomatoes, extra olive oil and dried oregano

Directions

  1. Put all ingredient (bar cherry toms, extra oil & oregano) in a bowl and mix together well before turning out on a bench and kneading. The dough didn’t behave super well, so I gave it a brief knead, before putting back in the bowl for a 10 minute rest and then kneading again. A little rest always seems to improve things.
  2. Once dough is smooth, return to bowl, cover and let rise for maybe 2 hours or until roughly doubled in size.
  3. Pre-heat oven to 180C fan. Line a baking tray with edges (mine is about 20cm x 40cm) with baking paper.
  4. Oil your hands and then tip the dough from the bowl onto the baking tray, stretching the dough out to roughly 1cm thickness all round.
  5. Use your fingers to create the distinctive focaccia divots in the dough, sprinkle with the oregano (generously!), arrange the halved cherry toms & then drizzle with a little extra oil.
  6. Bake for about 20 minutes, until golden and puffed. (If you’re into these things, internal bread temperature you’re looking at 90+C – on this occasion mine was about 95C).

Danny’s Cookbook: Danny’s Bread

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The next cookbook off the shelf (and, in this case, next bread) is Danny’s Cookbook, which was given to me by my in-laws as a Christmas present in 2012 and … um … hasn’t been used.

This looks to be a (slick) self-published effort, written by Danny Moisan who was head chef (patron etc etc) at Danny’s at the Harbour View, St Aubin, Jersey. The restaurant seems to be no longer extant, which I guess is what happens if you take the best part of 10 years to use a cookbook. My in-laws pre-pre-covid used to visit Jersey for an annual holiday and, I believe had eaten at the restaurant.

On to the recipe … obviously bread baking being the order of the day (although I do like the look of the ‘wasabi potatoes’ recipe on the next page). This bread, unlike the brioche, is short work which I made even shorter work of by using the stand mixer. You’ll spend more time prepping the bits and bobs than doing anything else.

But here is where we hit a problem. The recipe (for 8 servings) uses a WHOPPING 2.5kg of flour. If you make bread as often as I do … some bells start ringing. One loaf is normally around 500g of flour … maybe the good people of Jersey really really like their bread.

We reduced the recipe by 5 to work with the more familiar 500g of flour. But then we hit weird things like 2/5 of a carrot and TWO (I kid you not) olives. So then I took the base recipe and took some liberties. As it was, I felt the flavour was still underpowered. In terms of general bread qualities, it was fine. It had a nice even crumb that was tight enough to make a sandwich out of, and it toasted well. But after the variety of ingredients that went into it I was left thinking … shouldn’t there be something more?!

Will I make this again? No. Will I make loaves of bread that incorporate rosemary, garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and olives (in varying combinations)? Definitely. Even though this was pretty good bread (and absolutely out-performed the brioche), the number of inclusions means I won’t revisit it as a plain bread because it would be just too hard.

Which leads me to conclude that it’s a good recipe but something got messed up in the translation from restaurant volumes to home volumes …

Perhaps if you make it & bump the up flavours you can let us all know.

A loaf of bread.

Danny’s Bread – heavily adapted

Serving Size:
8
Time:
1.5-2 hours
Difficulty:
Easy (but faffy)

Ingredients

  • 1.5 tsp dried yeast
  • 200mL water
  • 5g sugar
  • half a carrot – peeled & grated
  • 20g sun-dried tomatoes, cut into strips
  • 1 clove of garlic, crushed
  • 10 black olives, sliced
  • 1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • olive oil

Directions

  1. Mix the water, dried yeast and a bit of sugar in a small bowl (ramekin, cup …) and leave to activate.
  2. Put all the dry ingredients plus a healthy splash of the olive oil (so basically everything bar the yeast/water mix) in the bowl of a stand mixer and lightly mix together.
  3. Add the yeast & water mix and mix to a dough. You may need a little extra water.
  4. Knead the dough by hand for five or so minutes – until you have a springy, elastic dough.
  5. Return to the stand mixer bowl, cover and leave to prove for 30 minutes. It should roughly double in size.
  6. Tip the dough out, knock back, lightly knead and shape into a ball.
  7. Place the loaf on a non-stick tray (I use a silpain mat) and prove for another 30 minutes.
  8. Pre-heat oven to 160C (fan bake) and cook the bread for about 40-45 minutes.
  9. Cool on a rack.