A couple of years ago, I crashed and burned on one of my ‘cooking the book’ challenges with a ‘Middle Eastern Vegetarian’ cook book. (Largely due to the book and I have very different ideas about what makes a good soup.) So that poor book has been sitting neglected on a shelf ever since. In fact, including these two recipes on my 2023 ‘new recipes to try’ list was essentially a last chance saloon for the recipe book, so disappointed had I been by my previous adventures with it. However, the book is definitely getting a stay of exile from the recipe book shelf, because they both turned out to be wildly successful, ticking boxes, for tasty, straightforward to make and pleasing to look at!
Banirov pilav (baked cheese pilau)
This was a late contender for one of my favourite recipes of this challenge. It’s also a recipe I suspect I’m going to be making a lot, because its an excellent combination of a bit different, with very tasty and surprisingly straight forward to make. It’s basically just layers of cooked rice, shredded cheese – halloumi in this case, though the recipe suggests feta as alternative and that cheddar will do in a pinch – and breadcrumbs, baked in the oven until crisp and golden. (Rice, butter, salt, cheese and bread essentially.) I used panko breadcrumbs which are a delightful texture, but probably fairly different from the intended one, they were however what I had to hand. It was however, disproportionately tasty and surprisingly more-ish – my first reaction to having practically inhaled it was that I wanted to go straight back and have a second bowl of it. It made a decent sized casserole dish full of food, and I ate it with a variety of things – on it’s own, with cheesy empanadas, with tortilla chips and with the cauliflower dish below. Even if I don’t end up keeping this recipe book, I’m going to pinch this recipe from it, I can see it becoming a firm favourite.
Kharnabit emforakeh (cauliflower in tomato sauce)
There aren’t a lot of vegetables that benefit from being twice cooked, in my opinion, but the humble cauliflower is definitely one of them. For this dish, it gets par-boiled and then fried twice, once on it’s own in a little oil the get the edges crispy and then again to get it covered in and fully heated by the sauce. I worried it was going to be a total faff, one of those dishes that requires a bunch of fiddly task for little reward, but no, it was simple – it’s essentially cauliflower, spring onions, garlic and tomato paste – but delicious.
It’s very rare for me to find this kind of dish these days, without it having some variant of ‘and now add a ridculous amount of chilli’ so it was a relief to make something without it. To my own mild annoyance though, I did feel like it could have done with a bit of spice – just not the chilli kind. Looking at the recipes just now, I note that I’d forgotten I was supposed to sprinkle sumac over the banirov pilav, which it absolutely didn’t need, but I do wonder if actually the cauliflower would have benefited from that instead. (It definitely benefited from my using smoked garlic rather than the bog standard variety.) Something to experiment with next time I make it.
I’m significantly more likely to cook this again because of how well it goes with the Banirov pilav above, but I suspect it’ll be one I keep for when I’m serving that dish to other people, as while it’s fine reheated, it’s so much better fresh from the frying pan.
Cupboard Life 