Don't Be a Follower

I have a vivid memory of an incident that occurred when I was a freshman at UC Berkeley, waiting in line to buy books at the student union. There were four sorority girls in line in front of me, complaining about how they'd been maligned by a caustic person who claimed they were all replicas of each other (we didn't call them clones back then), with their uniformity of dress, hair, and personality.  The most vocal of the girls went on and on about how they each were so unique!  Why, she was wearing a pink polo shirt with white shorts and had a brown bob,  while her sister was wearing a blue polo shirt with white shorts and a blond bob.  The other two had blue shorts on with green and peach colored polo shirts, and their brown bobs had different lengths of bangs, so if anyone thought they were "Identical" then they were blind fools!

Why do I bring this up now?  Because April 6th was Nowrux - the Persian New Year - and all the food blogs had posts for the perfect Middle Eastern feast.  But did I follow the crowd and make hummus and baba ganoush on April 6th? No! I bucked the trend.  I am the kind of person who bucks the trend. And also the kind of person who lets her foodie email newsletters get out of control and doesn't realize there was even such a thing as Persian New Year.  

This past weekend I was catching up on that email and came across a slide show from Saveur magazine titled the Best Middle Eastern Recipes, containing, in their words, 45 Essential Middle Eastern Recipes:  http://www.saveur.com/best-middle-eastern-recipes

Everything in this slide show looked delicious, and there were a lot of paleo-friendly and vegetarian offerings which work well given all the diet restrictions going on in my household.  I decided I am going to try to make every recipe in the slideshow this month.

Broiling rose petals to dry them out for the recipe

Tonight I started out with the Persian Kuku Sabzi, which I am told translates to roughly Herb Fritatta. I had all the ingredients on hand except dried rose petals - and those are easy enough to make by taking the most fragrant rose from your organic garden and toasting it under the broiler for a few minutes until it releases a beautiful fragrance throughout your kitchen. The addition of ground walnuts, an assortment of chopped fresh herbs, and the lack of cheese give this fritatta a unique and delicious flavor.  It was quick and simple to make, low cal, and healthy.  Eggs. They're what's for dinner - definitely!

Herbs minced and ready to go

The recipe can be found here:  http://www.saveur.com/perrsian-kuku-sabzi-eggs-rose-recipe  However, as I was researching about Persian New Year, I came across another version of Kuku Sabzi from the New York Times which looks even better because it contains an even larger assortment of herbs and spices: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018062-fresh-herb-kuku    I am going to try to make this version in another week or so and I'll let you know how it turns out.

The finished fritatta - garnished with rose petals, chopped parsley and nasturtiums

I also made some sumac flatbread (m'sakhan) found in the recipe for Roast Chicken with Sumac Flatbead (http://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/roast-chicken-with-sumac-flatbread)  and was inspired by the slideshow's Tahini - Beet dip recipe (http://www.saveur.com/tahini-beet-dip-recipe) although I modified it slightly to use up some spicy Peruvian beet salad I'd made over the weekend, and because I didn't have all the ingredients called for in the recipe. Both the bread and the dip were a hit with the hubby and some friends who dropped by.

The whole meal - we ate the flatbread faster than I could photograph it! 

For the beet salad, I had previosly roasted, peeled and diced six medium beets.  I tossed them with a small handful of finely chopped parsley, two tablespoons of Vegennaise, and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt, pepper, and ghost pepper sauce (I use Diabo Sauce from Fat Rice restaurant in Chicago; while you could use sriracha or tabasco style sauce, the ghost pepper adds a different and better kind of flavor, and if you don't use too much, the heat can be the perfect foil for the bland sweetness of the beets).  I put about 1 cup of this salad into the blender.  The Saveur recipe calls for tahini but I didn't have any on hand, so I added 1/3 cup of toasted black and white sesame seeds, and the rest of the ingredients called for in the recipe, except the ice:  3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice, 3 medium cloves of garlic, a drizzle of olive oil to get a creamy texture, and a little more salt and pepper. I blended this all on high speed until the sesame seeds were pulverized, then served it with the flatbread.