Again no recipe cooking: something about salad
plus an easy pastry with Moroccan bkoula (yes with a recipe)
welcome to COOKING THE MED
You are here with me Merijn Tol, food writer, cookbook author and cook from Amsterdam, but my heart is beating for the Med. If you love food from the Mediterranean too, from east to west from Palermo to Beirut, you came to the right place. Be at home in Café Mazahar’s COOKING THE MED. I serve you my Mediterranean recipes with a twist!
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Yalla let’s go to this week’s recipe….and no recipe
WHAT IS A SALAD ANYWAY?
Before i tell you more about those cute little pastries some salad talk.
I eat salads all the time (lunch, dinner, side dish or whenever i’m hungry). But i’m not sure if the veggie dishes i cook are really always worthy of the name. Often they are spontaneous gatherings of veggies in different forms. Most of the time they are hybrid, inspired by the day and by what i have in the fridge (basically how i live my life not really planning anything). Improvisation means the pleasure of creativity! The challenge of making something with limited resources i find it very addictive. And also salads SHOULD BE different if you ask me, as long as they the follow some important salad rules (DIFFERENT TEXTURES! DIFFERENT FLAVOURS! SOUR SWEET, SALTY!). We want them to be different, enticing, exiting! I got so bored in my Italian ski restaurants where the salad was always green salad with tomato and grated carrot (although we can always forgive Italians).
I thought to share a bit more of my salad and veg musing here, because we have to eat as much veg as we can and we álways need new ideas. Tell me if this is true.
Time again for some freestyling aka no recipe cooking (the best).
I got a purple carrot, a pink big radish/turnip, a normal carrot and some bright radicchio leaves. I sliced the carrots, radish thinly on the mandoline, stacked them into a bowl of cold water to crisp up. Stirred some tahina loose with a dash of water, some salt. I arranged all on a plate, added big dollops of salty labneh on top (you can subsitute with thick Greek yoghurt with some salt), drizzled with the tahina sauce, some pomegranate molasses: and you are done. It’s so crispy, it has many textures, sweetness of the carrots and pomegranate molasses, nuttiness of the tahina, bitter hints of the salad leafs, sourness, salty creaminess of the labneh: it’s all there! It was so satisfying and packed with protein too. The other good thing? You stir it up in minutes.
The next day i repeated the whole thing while i was preparing 100+ pastries with a friend for an event of my long time friend Mina. Our lunch while working. Same kind of thing, though now i smeared out the labneh on the plate, arranged the veg on top and added roasted sliced yellow beetroot i had thrown in a hot oven the night before.
Some sumac on top, and after the pic i drizzled the pomegranate molasses. One of the best salad condiments i think! It gave us a real pick me up this salad as we still had to finish many many pastries!
BKOULA PASTRIES
Enough with salad now time for the real subject of this newletter. Which is Bkoula or bakoula. Now that maybe needs some explananation.
It is a well known Moroccan veg stew made with wild mallow which grows abundantly from cracks in the wall or between paving stones or in road verges. Even here in European cities you see it a lot. I’m sure you recognize it when you see it! Well this green is used for bakoula (the name for this plant). Other names are Gobeize or Khobeize or Khobiza. It’s called like that mostly in the Middle East, where it is used in stuffings for fatayer, little pastries. That inspired me for this bkoula recipe to honour the wonderful = craft work in textile and weaving of my friend Mina and the Morrocan female weavers.
So this is it: mallow, bkoula or khobeize…and? I bet it does it look familiar to you
Sometimes i find bunches of mallow at my Turkish supermarket in spring and summer. Maybe you will find it too! This time, i subbed with Turkish spinach and wild spinach because i needed a good quantity. And it’s common to use it as sub as not many people pick wild shrubs anymore (a pity if you ask me!). But there is one people who do now: of course the Palestinians in Gaza. With food shortage and hunger it’s logical wild shrubs come to your rescue. See how that looks here where Nisreen from Gaza still make shift cooks in Rafah. That’s what true resistance looks like. She makes a bright green soup with it, with garlic and spice. One that i definitely will try as soon i find it again!
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?
Moroccan bkoula or bakoula (transcripted from Arabic so it’s always fonetic) is always stir fried green veg in olive oil with spices like cumin and ginger, some garlic and maybe preserved lemon. It will never be your prettiest dish, as it’s dark greenish, but for sure it will become a favorite as it has so much flavour. It’s a beautiful example how Moroccans use their spices to give tons of flavour to vegetables.
WHAT DID I DO WITH IT?
I wanted it to be a stuffing for my pastry (inspired by sambusek and fatayer) and for that i had to give it more body and more umami. So i added a lot of spice, lots of sweet onions and the secret to some boldness: chopped kalamata olives. Irresistible as a stuffing (and on it’s own): so much flavour.
THE DOUGH
I made the dough with a bit of milk, a bit of baking powder, water and oil. The milk gives a creamy flavour to the dough and the baking powder makes it crispy.
HARISSA
Served with harissa it’s really a great marriage. Buy a nice spicy good one like ours or make it yourself like i did here. Recipe below (expect a highly addictive harissa with a subtle twist)
they are huge umami bombs these little fellows, a great vega snack and if you use almond milk they will suit your vegan needs too.
BKOULA PASTRIES served with harissa
serves 4-6
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