Cookbook club- March- middle eastern and Mary berry

[whatareyoueatingNOW]

I hope it's okay that I set up the new thread for cookbook club.

So this month we are cooking from Mary berry online and family favourites, and our food travel option is the Middle East- any books any recipes.

Here's the Mary berry website
www.maryberry.co.uk
And lots of her recipes can be googled too- a wealth are in bbcgood food.

And for middle eastern inspiration here is king Ottolenghi website which offers lots of recipes www.ottolenghi.co.uk/#navigation

Bethan kedhy of jewelled kitchen bethanykehdy.com/category/recipes/

And here is a list of good blog options to peruse

stepfeed.com/8-lebanese-food-blogs-you-should-definitely-bookmark-and-follow-3873

Happy cooking everyone

My kinda food. Blatant placemark!

This sounds great!

If anyone has Jerusalem I'd highly recommend the chicken and freekah, it's my go to what to do with another chicken recipe.

Yesterday I made Mary berry's lemon drizzle cake and her pecan cinnamon cake. Both delicious, both impressively easy. I favoured the pecan, but the rest of the family preferred the lemon drizzle (which is written as a traybake but I used a 20cm round and it turned out fine. Recipes below)

www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2961504/Mary-Berry-s-Absolute-Favourites-Pecan-cinnamon-ripple-squares.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/lemondrizzleetraybake01890/amp

www.ottolenghi.co.uk/freekeh-pilaf-shop

I also made this pilav from plenty recently which is absolutely beautiful, aromatic and flavourful.

Hello 👋 I haven’t had to to look at Mary Berry yet but I have a few middle eastern dishes planned for next week. I’ve already cooked a lot from Jerusalem so I’ll be using Feasts this month - top of the list is Savoury Pork & Fennel Baklava, followed by Spiced Lamb Hotpot.
I’m also using Rick Steins Venice to Istanbul and I’ll be making the Turkish Spiced Cabbage and Lamb Stew. This cold weather is making all of the stews and pies look really tempting.

Recommendations from Jerusalem are Mejadra, cod cakes in Tomato and if you have kids that like to ‘help’ the Tahini Cookies are lovely and really easy.

Signing in.

Lamb shawarma is delicious from Jerusalem and the chicken with Jerusalem artichokes

Well I’ve taken advantage of the snow day to try out Mary Berry’s chocolate cake. A few changed to the recipe as I didn’t want to take the car out for ingredients so I used raspberry jam rather than apricot and the ganache was made with evaporated milk rather than double cream. I should also point out that it isn’t the best looking cake I’ve made as I’m out of parchment so it cake out a bit ragged! Really easy recipe - cake is lovely and moist but very rich (don’t think using evaporated milked helped!) so only a small slice needed. DS approved

Not sure why but I didn't get a notification that the Feb thread had been posted on again so didn't realise the new one had been set up.
I use Mary Berry recipes all the time so thats a nice easy one for me. Looking forward to trying something new for middle eastern.

My contribution to middle eastern... koshari (Egypt’s national dish) via yottam Ottolenghi. I had this in an Egyptian cafe years ago and loved it. This recipe was excellent, particularly the tomato sauce. I was a bit limited because of the snow so used brown lentils, garlic salt instead of salt and fresh garlic, a tin of tomatoes rather than fresh and vegan butter so the whole thing was vegan.

cookingbythebook.com/recipes/kosheri-rice-lentils-ottolenghi/
Ignore the heading “meat balls”, it should say “rice mix”.

Has anybody yet found the mother of all baba ganoush recipes?

May I join? It just so happens that I watched Nigel Slater in his recent programme about his travels in the Middle East and loved it. Up till then I can’t say I was inspired really of the food in this part of the world in the culinary sense. I also picked up a Claudia Roden book in a charity shop the other day called Favourite recipes from the Middle East and have had a browse. Not sure what I will try first. Will let you know.
Also, I was thinking earlier this afternoon about making a simnel cake for either Easter or for Mothering Sunday next weekend. Mary Berry has a recipe for one in the 100 cakes and bakes book I have, it’s a good book and the lemon drizzle traybake is a favourite of mine for making for a crowd. So will see how that works. I have all the ingredients for it except marzipan as I have dried fruit in the cupboard that needs using up from the Christmas cake I made!

thank you for this thread!

I have a Honey & Co book I want to try a few recipes from

Will also peruse MB online

I am cooking form Rick Steins's Venice to Istanbul this week,
Tried the Turkish spiced cabbage and minced lamb stew - served with bread, easy and surprisingly tasty, kids were a bit sceptical about cabbage being tasty but they were won over. Too much liquid though that needed to be cooked off, so recipe may require a bit of tweaking.
Lamb Tandir with Turkish Pilaf yesterday. Really easy. A family favourite I'll be making again - sauce was tasty, cinnamon & raisons in rice was popular and I served with a simple chopped salad.
Beef with Oxymeli tonight!

@Remus, we like the Ottelenghi Burnt aubergines with tahini - probably not strictly a Baba Ganoush

This Ottolenghi recipe is a family favourite Crushed-puy-lentils-with-tahini-and-cumin

I tried the mackerel sandwich from rick steins Venice to Istanbul for lunch today. It's only relation to middle eastern really is sumac on the onions and Turkish pickles if you choose to use them. That said- it's still a spectacular sandwich and well worth making, perhaps more so on a warm summers day rather than a cold wet one

Well I’ve got a Mary Berry Victoria sponge in the oven so I’ll let you know how that turns out!

Planning on some middle eastern recipes this weekend. We all love falafels but I’ve only made them with a packet mix before so this will be my first attempt making them from scratch...

Mackerel and sumac sandwich, yum might have to try that! Nice pics!

Thanks, Orange. Will have a look at the aubergine thing. I've had those lentils on my 'to cook' list for a while - they look delicious.

orange the cabbage stew is on my list for this month so I’ll tweak the recipe a little thanks.

I made the Pork & Fennel Baklava from Feasts today and it was amazing- gone down really well. Next time I’ll reduce the amount of syrup I put on the top as it was a bit too sweet, but having said that it was still really good and very unusual. Sorry the pictures don’t do it justice, i had what seemed like a pack of hungry wolves surrounding me trying to get their dinner

Sorry pictures didn’t work!

Beef with Oxymeli from Venice to Istanbul- very tasty but will go easy on the orange as I think I might have added too much and it dominated the flavour - but eaten by all.
I made it with chunks of brisket and cooked it for longer...will make again. Served it with carrots, broccoli and roast potatoes - I think mash would have worked better to absorb the lovely sauce.