Elenia

simply-soul-food:

Ma’amoul

These delicious middle eastern biscuits are a bit like short bread, a bit like macaroons, and utterly delicious. My dad always makes them as gifts or for dinner parties; and I’ve only just learned how to make them after an intensive lesson with him. They are totally worth it though. This recipe includes instructions for three different fillings- pistachio, walnut and date.

A note on equipment

We went to the effort of getting special wooden moulds for these, but you can just form them into shapes and use a fork for the patterns. The moulds come in three shapes- a domed one for walnut, a long thin oval for pistachio, and a flatter circular one for date (ours has a sun pattern on it). The moulds should be oiled and wiped, then dusted with flour before use (and after every three to four balls, to prevent sticking).

If you are planning to make these a lot I really reccomend you buy moulds, they are so much easier to use than individually decorating biscuits

Ingredients

For the pastry
500 g plain white flour (up to a quarter of the flour may be replaced with fine semolina)
2 tbsp white sugar
250 g unsalted butter (Normandy butter is best)
1-2 tbsp. rose water or orange flower water
2 tbsp. water or milk
icing sugar
pinch of salt (optional)
baking powder (optional)

Pistachio filling
Mix 250 g finely chopped pistachios with a somewhat smaller weight of sugar and 1 tbsp rose water. (Some people use ground almonds, with or without green food colouring, instead of pistachios.)
Walnut filling
Mix 250 g finely chopped walnuts with a somewhat smaller weight of sugar and 1 tbsp cinnamon.
Date filling
Chop 500 g stoneless dates, and bring to the boil with half a teacup of water, squashing the mixture against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon until approximately uniform in consistency. Blend with an electric chopper if desired. One variant is to add some butter to the mixture as it cooks. Allow to cool. The date filling is my favourite, and the result is a bit like the middle eastern version of mince pies.


Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Mix with 2 tablespoons white sugar, and a pinch of salt if desired. Some people add a very small pinch of baking powder.
Work in the butter until the consistency is as uniform as possible; one way is to heat the butter in the microwave first until it is nearly melted, and then mix it with the flour into a sort of crumble. Cover and leave for some hours or overnight (not in the fridge, or it will go rock hard).
Break up the dough with your fingers and add the rose water or orange flower water and 2 tbsp. water or milk until it is malleable, and knead the whole lot into a smooth ball.
Take a walnut-sized ball of the dough, stick your thumb into it and shaping it around the thumb, hollow out into empty sausage shape, with one end open.
Insert filling to about three-quarters full, and pinch the aperture closed. Pat gently into a ball, not letting the walls break.
Decorate the ball on top with the prongs of a fork. Alternatively, pat it into a wooden mould and flatten the exposed bottom surface, then bang the mould face down on the work surface to extract the moulded pastry.
Repeat the last three steps until all the dough and the filling is used. If at any stage the remaining dough shows signs of drying out, knead in a little more water or milk.
Place the pastries on a baking sheet (not greased, as the dough is already very buttery) and bake in a preheated oven (180°C) for 20 minutes: they must not be allowed to become hard or at all brown. In fact they should look a little moist and underdone when removed from the oven: they will steam off and harden as they cool.
Leave the pastries to cool, and dust with icing sugar when cold. Keep in a sealed plastic box or biscuit tin.

simply-soul-food:

Dolma/Wara Einab/ Yaprak- Stuffed Vine Leaves

This is a recipe from Claudia Roden’s The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. My dad’s side of the family came from Syria, so we always had a lot of middle eastern food, most of it meat. Since I became vegetarian, I love finding dishes that were Syrian, but didn’t have to substitute meat with quorn or whatever. This dish, cold stuffed vine leaves, is intentionally without meat, and so is often called yalancı dolma or lying/fake dolma. I found that quite funny. 

The flavours here are so distinctively middle eastern, they are another one of those nostalgia foods for me. We call it yaprak, meaning leaf, but anything stuffed really is dolma. You could also call it yaprak sarma meaning wrapped up leaves, and  suppose that would be more accurate. But enough of the etymology, on to the food!

Ingredients

250g rice

250g vine leaves

2 large tomatoes, finely chopped

1 large onion, finely chopped

60g pine nuts

2 tbsp chopped mint

2 tbsp chopped parsley

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1 head garlic

2 lemons

1 tsp sugar

150 ml olive oil

150 ml water

salt, pepper

If the vine leaves are in brine, then start by pouring boiling water over them and soaking for 20 mins. Try and separate them out a bit so water gets between the layers. Then pour out the water, and repeat this. Finally rinse them in cold water.

If they are fresh, plunge them in boiling water for a few seconds then remove them.

Soak the rice in boiling water for 10 minutes, then wash it in cold water. Fry the onions and pine nuts for a few minutes, then combine with the copped herbs, chopped tomato, rice, cinnamon, allspice, salt and pepper.

Lay out a vine leaf with the prominant vein side upwards. Put a heaped teaspoon of filling near the stem. Fold over the stem top, then either side of the lea. Finally roll the whole thing towards you, tucking it under itself. Gently squeeze it. Repeat this until you run out of filling/ vine leaves.

Use the damaged leaves or sliced tomato to cover the bottom of a large pan. Place the dolma tighly packed together, and layer them up. Insert cloves of garlic at intervals.

Mix the lemon, sugar, olive oil and water, and pour it over the dolma. Place a swall plate over the dolma to stop them moving and unrolling. Simmer or 2 hours or so, adding a cup of water whenever the liquid is absorbed.

Allow to cool, then turn out onto a plate.

Serve cold with greek yoghurt/garlicky yoghurt.

huffingtonpost:

zachdionne:

How I spent yesterday afternoon. BOOK SPINE POETRY.

We are HUGE fans of book spine poetry. 

(via coverspy)

andylese:

When you need to smile but you can’t afford it.

When the corridors & all of the stairs are making you tired.

When the floor is more familiar than the ceiling…

TAKING STEPS BUT YOU NEED TO MOVE FASTER.

follow me

           i’ll be your river

FOLLOW ME… I’ll keep you floating…

I’ll never stop breaking the law for you…

WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET WHAT YOU NEED,

IGNORE THE ALARMS, IGNORE THE POLICE…

To: You, I will give the world & more…

To: You, I will NEVER be cold…

SURRENDER

FOLLOW ME

28/02/twentytwelve