A Middle-Eastern Feast for Eurovision 2016

Every year, Tom and I enjoy assembling or cooking up a feast for Eurovision song contest and then graze through the evening on it. This year, I decided to surprise Tom will a lebanese/middle-eastern/north-african feast. It was a delight! This is how we did it!

We’d recently enjoyed eating a great meal at Palmyra’s in Kew. This gave an idea for ful (pronounced as full apparently). I went on to find this recipe.

Ful Recipe

• 1 can 400g cortas fava beans (you can also soak dried beans and then cook them yourself)
• 5 medium onions chopped
• 4 medium garlic cloves chopped
• 2 teaspoons freshly grounded cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon salt and half teaspoon black pepper

Chuck some oil in the saucepan.
Cook onions until translucent and then add garlic, cumin and cook for a bit then add fava beans with 1 Tall glass of water.  Cook for half an hour, or until the water is almost gone. Mash half of the fava beans to add texture. I served this with raw onion rings, chopped tomato and quarter red pepper chopped

Baba Ghanoush Recipe

We also had some ready made baba ganoush from Cortas too
While serving I added olive oil, lemon and garlic (half a clove)

North African Stew Recipe

This recipe was bit of an afterthought and more with the intention to finish up fresh 9 tomatoes and spinach from the fridge. I used this recipe as an inspiration.
So here you go –

• 9 Med tomatoes
• 300-400 gm scrucned up spinach
• 1 quarter red pepper (that’s what I had left – you can add more?)
• 1 onion
• 1 garlic
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Half teaspoon
• 4 heaped tablespoons of Crunchy peanut butter

Chop about 9 medium sized tomatoes quarter red pepper, and throw in the pot with 300 gym of roughly chopped spinach to stew for 10 mins.

In the meantime sautéed 1 chopped onion and one sliced garlic clove and added this in the mix after it is cooked. Then added salt, pepper and 4-5 heaped tablespoons of whole earth crunchy peanut butter.
Stew for another 15 minutes until you are happy with the consistency

Sumac Courgettes Recipe

One courgette
Half red pepper
One garlic clove sliced

Garlic & oil in pan, then add courgette (sliced), red peppers (diced) and then salt and 1teaspoon sumac powder. Cook until caramelised ( for 25 minutes or so)
Serve with pita brown and toasted and lemon juice on the side which can be added as per taste.

Heaven!

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Posted by Vineeta on 15 May 2016