Salads for the arayes

In this post, I described the amazing Lebanese sandwiches - arayes. To go with them we made a couple of salads. Water melons, tomatoes and local feta seemed to be the way to go. Home made yogurt, home grown mint made a good tzatziki. All in all pretty tasty. The dishes were:

Watermelon, watercress, feta and pistachio salad
Cucumber, tomato and onion salad
Tzatziki

The tzatziki quantities are approximate. Also, the tzatziki needs at least 2 hours in the refrigerator for the flavors to combine.

Ingredients - Watermelon salad

3 cups cubed watermelon (cubed like this)

1 bunch watercress

5 oz feta chopped into 1/4" cubes

1 cup pistachios, roughly chopped

Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

6T Extra Virgin Olive Oil (the best finishing oil you have)

Coarse salt to taste

Method

Combine everything except the salt. Add the coarse salt just before serving, so that the juices don't run out of the melon.

Ingredients - Cucumber, onion, tomato salad

A few lettuce leaves 

3 small cucumbers, peeled, seeded, 14" pieces

2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

1 slice of white onion, 14" thick chopped finely

juice of 1/2 lemon

4T Extra Virgin Olive Oil (again the best that you have)

Coarse sea salt added just before serving.

Method

Line a salad bowl with the lettuce leaves. Combine tomatoes, cucumber, onion in a bowl, add the lemon juice. Just before serving, toss in some coarse salt and stir. Add to the serving bowl that has the lettuce leaves liner.

Ingredients - Tzatziki

3 cloves garlic - mashed to a paste

1 1/2 cups strained (Greek) yogurt

Handful of mint leaves chopped finely

3T white wine vinegar

1t tahini

1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (the best you have)

salt to taste

Method

Mix the garlic into the yogurt. Add the mint leaves, vinegar, tahini and oil. Stir throughly and check the seasoning. You may need to add a little salt. Chill for at least 2 hours.

arayes - aka lamb-a-dillas

We saw a recipe for arayes in Cooks Illustrated this week. The idea looked so good that we just had to try it. When I described it to a dinner companion (a Texas Boy) on Friday evening, he said that just like quesadillas only with lamb. Hence the name.
The result is a really crispy, slightly smoky sandwich which can be eaten out of hand.  But it also makes a substantial meal. Because the recipe makes quite a few of these, we needed some victims (aka volunteers) to try them out. They came, they ate (and, I think, they liked). If not there was always the MacDonald's on the way home. Even though they are Kiwis, they are far too polite to tell me if they had to stop on the way.
We served them with a couple of salads and some tzatziki. They turned out ( the arayes, not the guests) as well as expected. And there are left overs!
The salads will be described in another post. Suffice it to say that the Coppell Farmers' Market was a source. And especially the la-ti-da farms feta.

Ingredients

1 large white onion cut into pieces

1 cup oregano (leaves and stalks)

1/2 cup lemon thyme (leaves and stalks)

zest and juice of one lemon

1T whole cumin seeds

1T whole coriander seeds

2t black pepper corns,

2t coarse sea salt

1t red pepper flakes

1/2" cinnamon stick

1/4 cup good (but not best) olive oil

1 T smokey paprika

2 lbs lamb leg, cut into 3/4" cubes. Chilled in the freezer for 30+ minutes.

6 x 6" pitas

Method

Pulse the onion, oregano and lemon time in the food processor until the onion is quite small. 8 or so pulses. You may need to scrape it down. Turn out into a bowl.

Grind the spices finely in the spice grinder, adding the coarse salt as that helps to grind them. Add the ground mixture, paprika, lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil to the onion/herb mixture.

Mince (grind for my American friends) the lamb twice using the coarse die. You need to do it twice because the lamb fat is unevenly distributed. The second grinding distributes it better.  I added a couple of table spoonfuls of the onion mixture to the grinder at the end to encourage all of the meat to come through.

Mix the lamb with the onion mixture until thoroughly incorporated. Use hands (mine are now really soft) or a silicone spatula.

Chill the lamb mixture for a while (at least an hour)

2 hours before cooking, slice the pitas in half (I use a serrated knife for this) horizontally. So for each pita you have two 6" disks of pita.

Mound the lamb mixture in the center of a pizza half, spread almost to the edge and top with the other half of the same pita.

Squeeze flat and wrap in cling wrap, refrigerate for a couple of hours. 

When ready to cook, fire up the grill (I used the Primo) with so that the coals have a nice ash coating. Grill the sandwiches directly over the coals until the pitas a crispy. Turn the pitas over and grill on the second side.  Time on the grill is about 7 minutes per side 

Remove from, slice into quarters and serve immediately.

We can serve this to chefdave

While on vacation with Dave Gilbert and friends this summer, he made a vegetable curry using Thai red curry paste. It was outstanding. Even better it was easy enough to add some kind of protein or filler to it and have a substantial meal. It was easy to do, so I thought a reprise would be in order.

Little did I know that there was an accolade from Madame that is even higher than "We can serve this to people". This dish garnered a "We can serve this to Chef Dave". So I figured it should be added here so I remember what we did.

Ingredients - Curry Base

1 can coconut cream (No, not sweetened coconut cream a la Coco Lopez)

2 small cans of Thai red curry paste

1 white onion, cut into spoon sized pieces pole to pole

2 cilantro bunches (stalks and leaves separate)

2" piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced very thinly

4 kaffir lime leaves sliced in to thin strips

1 can coconut milk

3T Fish sauce

2 lbs russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/3" cubes

2 lbs carrots cut into 1/3" cubes

2 large egg plants , peeled and diced into 1/3" cubes. Also dice the peeled trimmings into a very fine dice, they will thicken the dish.

Method - Curry Base

Skim the thickest cream from the can of coconut cream into a large Dutch oven. Heat over low heat until it breaks down and becomes oily. Immediately add the curry paste from the cans and stir while frying the paste. Add the onion, cilantro stalks, ginger, and kaffir lime leaves and sweat for about 10 minutes - until the onion has softened. add the remainder of the coconut cream can and all the coconut milk + the fish sauce. Stir until combined. Add the potatoes and the carrots and enough water just to cover. Simmer for about 10 minutes - until the potatoes are nearly cooked.

Meanwhile prepare the egg plant. After 10 minutes add the egg plant to the pot, stir to mix and simmer with the lid on for a few minutes (until the eggplant is cooked and the potatoes are soft, but not mushy). Some of the egg plant will disappear and thicken the liquid, while some will maintain integrity.

Serving/Finishing

Once the base is made,m it can be used to cook a variety of proteins. In the Bahamas, we used some of the fish that the guys caught in the afternoon. Also possible to use chicken, or if you want the full vegetarian experience, some soaked chick peas (garbanzo beans).

It is a matter of slicing the fish or chicken (about 4 oz per person) very thinly and immersing in the hot curry. The fish/chicken are cooked, by simmering in a matter of minutes.  If using chickpeas, the same approach is adopted, but no slicing. They take a little longer, especially if they are a bit firm to start with. No quantity is given here, but for 2 people, one small (14oz) can would work for 2 people.

Serve with a squeeze of lime juice and finely minced cilantro leaves.