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 too love food from the Mediterranean, from east to west from Palermo to Beirut, you came to the right place! Be at home in Café Mazahar’s COOKING THE MED. Where i serve you my Mediterranean recipes with a twist.
Cafe Mazahar is the name of one of my latest cookbooks, and my travelling popup.
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You know i was never planning to write about anything else than food culture and people here. But as the world is in such a terrible mess i can’t talk only birds and bees. My work about (often eastern) Mediterranean food culture became entangled with the fate of people i love so deeply. I have been trying to fit it in subtle here and there in this space, but it’s hard really! You might not want to read all this, but please, bear with me. Because if you are up to celebrate humanity and equal rights for every person, come let's spread the word. It is so needed. This is my passionate plea.
Today i’m cooking out of despair and hope at the same time. Despair for what is happening to the trapped people in Rafah. Despair because it remains incomprehensible all of this still goes on and on with support for a regime that doesn’t acknowledge equal human rights and feels superior to others. At the same time i feel hope running through my veins (and isn’t hope our biggest weapon). Change is going to come, and we can feel it coming. Injustice never wins in the end, history shows. Many people are realising it right now for the sake of our humanity. There is no other way to live for us people than in equal rights and harmony. No one is safe when the other is not safe. And when you look each other in the eye and share a meal, no wall can ever separate us.
Let’s cook this meal, let’s look beyond the believes we maybe have learned in the past, and let’s focus on what unites us: a beating heart, compassion, love: we are people for god’s sake! Let’s take the wall down.
Hope is something to cherish, to give attention too, and i want to cherish this dish too. A beautiful recipe from a rich culture to bring hope: the chicken dish musakhan. Roasted succulent chicken with spices paired with freshly baked bread, slow braised onions with sumac and almonds, all doused with olive oil to celebrate the new harvest. My first bite was on the West Bank with a very peasant style musakhan with delicious taboon style flatbread and sweet generous people. I will not forget.
Few years back I made another musakhan inspired recipe rolled in Lebanese bread on the go in my book Cafe Mazahar, inspired by the mushakan rolls they do in Lebanon, that serve almost as a snack. Of course the rolls in Lebanon are tiny and elegant so Lebanese, rolled in thin mar’ouk bread, unlike my sandwhiched ones. But all soo good!
Today i make it again with a free mind, full of love and flavour. A free musakhan for a free Palestine, for free people with no fear. For all the people living on that land.
The musakhan dish is originally from Tulkarem and Jenin in West Bank and it’s a dish that is very Palestinian at heart. At the same time it’s such a versatile dish that everyone loves it: you will fall in love with it, guaranteed.
Let’s fall in love instead of hate
HOW IS MY VERSION
I’m braising the marinated spicy garlicky chicken in orange juice, as they are growing abundantly there, and this gives an amazing sweet tart caramelised flavour. The roasted cauliflower is so classic too and it makes it into a full meal. And i serve it with tiny little pita/flatbreads that you use like a taco (as Anaroz said oh we are having taco’s!).
Some Gazan minty shatta with extra power to honour the brave Gazan people. Beyond bravery.
THIS ONE IS FOR SHARING
The best way to serve it is too make all the items apart: the onions, the chicken (pull the meat), the shatta, the herbs and put them all on the table, so each can make their own. Exactly the Mexican taco way. So why not invite friends and family and talk about Palestine and how to move forward with love! Maybe pair it with a showing of the film Israelism, a very hopeful sign too. Unite over pita.
FRESH PITA WITH BRAISED CHICKEN IN ORANGE JUICE AND SPICES, SUMAC ONIONS & ROASTED CAULIFLOWER WITH A GREEN MINTED SHATTA
serves 3-4
FOR THE SHATTA
2-3 green peppers
hint of garlic
small handful of mint leaves
3 tsp lime/lemon juice
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