The importance of a VERY crispy salad
plus some beautiful things to watch and stuffed cabbage rolls for everyone
DEAREST PEOPLE!
It has been a running around week and it seems the end of year always pops up with no warning. Unpractical things happened, after a great meeting with all kind of Italian sweets involved my laptop of half a year old got cracks in the screen without any incident whatsoever. Out of the blue! I rushed to the Apple shop, and there she and i got the message she needed to be hospitalised for a week. A week without my extended brain.
I not only lost almost a whole afternoon of working with pending deadlines, (and could only publish my waiting Substack of last week inside the apple store on a huge screen) But also i had to and thankfully was able to take off some urgent pieces i was working on. Ufff. Another moment of realisation: our lives and electronics are way too intertwined! We are too dependent. Second realisation: EXTREMELY happy i didn’t throw out my old laptop. I just got it back btw (wrapped in a white sheet for more hospital feelings!). Now that i think about it, the word hospitality must share the seem root, to welcome and receive people! Well give me the -ity at the end!
KIDS AND COOKIES
Next day: no catching up on work but baking Christmas cookies at school. I did bake bread in Anaroz’ class before, on another occasion we made soup and this time room for cookies. It is always a breath of fresh air to work with kids. Enthusiastic, eager, and diving full into it. Just amazing. I let them smell spices: cinnamon, ginger and cardamom and they used the pestle and mortar like monsters. We flavoured the cookies with the blend they crushed (more like pulverised with a lot of noise). Of course they buried the cookies under a layer of coloured sprinkles.
ROLLLING SARMA FOR 75 PAX
Another promise: to help my friend Mina, designer and cook, with a monstrous gigantic catering. While also having to attend the opening of her design collection One Square Metre Berber bought by Centraal Museum in Utrecht on that very same day. Go see it, it’s beautiful. She asked me to roll 75 cabbage rolls (sarma, dolma however you wanna call it) with a stuffing of lentils and rice from Café Mazahar (still on a huge Christmas discount for all you Dutchies!) and it was just super nice to cook together again. Those (haphazardly vegan) rolls are just amazing, melting in your mouth. And by coincidence this week my befriended collegue Emma de Thouars (this is her newsletter, in Dutch) with who i share an obsession for soft and crispy, made the same sarma from my book in her insta stories. All signs i need to be sharing the recipe below as a little holiday present for you.
CAFE MAZAHAR’S MELTING CABBAGE DOLMA/SARMA
serves 4-6
1 large flat white cabbage (Turkish store) or 2 pointed cabbage
1 bunch of parsley
200 g of red lentils
150 g of risotto rice
3 medium onions, peeled
olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2-3 tbsp. tatli biber paprika paste (Turkish sweet paprika paste)
2-3 tsp. dried mint
1-2 tsp. cinnamon powder
aleppo pepper, to taste
2 ripe tomatoes
sumac
300-500 ml of water
1 Separate the leaves from the cabbage and blanch them in a pan for a few minutes in salted boiling water until soft. Remove and let them drain.
2 Chop the parsley very finely.
3 Cook the red lentils with the risotto rice in boiling water for 10 min. until soft but not yet a puree. Leave in a colander for some minutes to remove the liquid: it should not stay wet.
4 Cut the onions brunoise and fry in a generous dash of olive oil until golden brown.
5 Grate the garlic and mix with the onions, parsley, tatli biber paprika paste, dried mint, cinnamon and the rice-lentil mixture. Taste and season well with some salt and aleppo pepper.
5 Remove the core from the cabbage leaves. Halve them if they are very large. Lay them in front of you on a clean work surface. Spoon 2 to 3 teaspoons of rice mixture on bottom halve, make a snake and roll up the sheet as you would roll up a sleeping bag: it really works like that! The sides remain open. Repeat with the rest of the leaves and filling.
6 Slice the tomatoes and place in the bottom of a large saucepan. Arrange the rolls in a nice circle on top, tuck them in next to each other. Sprinkle with some sumac, some salt and a generous dash of olive oil. You can add some sliced garlic too. Add the water or until they are ¾ covered: depends on how big your pan is. Put a plate on top that is cookable and press it a bit. Cook the dolma/sarma with the plate on top in 45 min. -1 hour until soft and melting. delicious hot or cold, and even better the next day. And with some yoghurt on the side.
OLIVE OIL, A FILM AND FADI
But before turning to the subject of this week’s recipe, a film tip: i went to a Palestinian dinner last night with film screening. A beautiful film about olive oil and the meaning of olive trees and olive oil especially for Palestine and Palestinians and the whole Mediterranean. It’s called The Golden Harvest, by Alia Younes. She visits olive farmers in Palestine, Italy, Greece and Spain, and if you love olive oil, you need to see it. Even only the trailer, because you will probably need a arthouse cinema to screen it.
And there was food inspired by Fadi Kattan, the famous chef from Bethlehem, who recently opened this amazing restaurant in London Akub: modern Palestinian cuisine. I’m drooling over the menu especially i cannot stop thinking about the short ribs fatteh with garlic yoghurt, pomegranate and focaccia And if you love Middle Eastern food, you should definitely take a look at Fadi’s video’s Teta’s kitchen (grandma’s kitchen) where he cooks with amazing Palestinian ladies.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A VERY CRISPY SALAD
And because days of cooking are coming for many of us with Christmas ahead, i like to talk about salads. With full Christmas tables and extended menu’s i really love and need a good salad as a side dish. A salad full of flavour, with different textures and A LOT OF crispiness and A LOT A LOT of freshness. A real palate cleanser. Not a filling salad but a pick me up salad, giving us some air to breathe. For me that’s all about the crispiest (does this strange word even exist?) salad leaves, crispy veggies, tons of fresh herbs and quick pickles to mix in. And some fruit. A voluptuous dressing: It should be real party in your mouth, with a lot going on.
Read on if you share my table at Cooking the Med and wishing you days full of light…..for all human beings
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