Winter moods & My Mum’s Kabab Batates

Winter it seems, has finally decided to grace us here in Egypt…its getting cold and chilly and windy…

Sure there’s still a few hours (minutes?) of sunshine…but for me it’s the mood of staying in bed late under the warm covers with a nice hot coffee or cacao in hand…
With the winter mood comes my wintery cravings for food that is homely and comforting…something cozy that makes me feel all warm inside…something hearty to tuck into…

A dish that does that for me is my mums Kabab Batates (Pot Kebab with Potatoes). My mum is a great cook!

She just doesn’t like to admit it, nor does she really like to cook that much, oddly enough…

She would always make this for us and its delicious and deceptively simple and easy to make!

Kabab batates is a play on the more traditional Egyptian Kabab Halla (literally Kebab in a Pot).

Beef cubes, seared and cooked with onions & garlic, braised slowly till the meat is almost falling apart creating a thick gravy sauce with chunks of meat in it. Yummyyyyyy…..

Most recipes don’t include spices, however my mums does, which makes it in my opinion, all the more tasty. Cinnamon, a fav spice of mine along with eastern mixed spice add a lovely dimension to the kebab. The potatoes making it more filling. Served with rice, its a perfect winter meal!

Another plus for this dish is that by tweaking the cooking methods slightly you can avoid it becoming heavy with fats. And that’s something important to me. You see for the past 6 or 7 months now (less trip times of course!) I have been changing our food lifestyle…that means, while we are not on a diet, we pay attention to our calories and portion sizes. And that’s reflected in how I cook our meals. Roasting instead of frying, steamed rather than fried rice and downsizing portions. I was amazed actually that downsizing portions slightly helped us lose weight and at the same time we don’t feel hungry after eating! We eat whatever we want including sweets, desserts & chocolates yet by having smaller portions we don’t pack on kilos 🙂

In that spirit, I’ll always include tips & alternative cooking methods to help you cut down on calories if you are so inclined. Soon I’ll also start adding the calorie count for the dishes I post.

Kabab Batates for example, if cooked using alternative methods and served with steamed basmati rice, gives an approx. 700 calories, per portion. In my book that’s great for a main dish.

I calculate my calories on Weight Loss Resources which is a great database of food items and corresponding calories and lets you create your own recipes and calculate the calories per meal and per portion. Cool right? 🙂

kabab batates profile*

* The calorie count above is based on 1 portion Kabab plus 140gms steamed basmati rice. Potatoes fried with 2 tsps oil in an Acti-fry.

Well, back to the food and regardless of whether or not you are calorie counting, I hope you enjoy this winter fav it as much as I do!

Follow the link for the recipe: My Mums Kabab Batates

Cheers!

Banoffee Pie…the perfect solution for a sweet tooth!

I don’t usually like to make desserts. They take too much time, they’re fiddly and pack a punch on the waist line. But every once in a while I get that urge and nothing to me is as satisfying or gratifying as much as a simple Banoffee!

A Banoffee pie is the ultimate sweet treat for me…a delicious combination of banana, cream and caramel with a crunchy biscuit base…and its silly easy to make and doesn’t need an oven, just the fridge! What’s not to like???

Hubby and the family love it, so actually I’ve made 3 in the past 10 days!!! And for some odd reason, I didn’t take step by step pics! So, I will soon make a fourth to add to the recipe page! Till then, if you attempt to make it, I hope you enjoy!

Banoffee Pie Recipe

Cheers!

I AM BACK!!!!!!

I have been so lazy with this blog, its unbelievable! Somehow with winter now really here, its awakened my passion to write and share! So here goes!

After falling off the edge of the world for the past months I would like to say I was not being lazy in the kitchen or otherwise!
We went on amazing trip to Australia and Singapore…the food…oooooohhhhhhhhhhhh….. I can’t begin to describe it!
The seafood on the Gold Coast was amazing…I’ve never eaten fresh seafood like that before! The calamari was almost melt in your mouth! Not the rubbery stuff usually served! I tasted baby octopus to die for, literally! Little baby octopuses marinated in thyme, oregano, olive oil and other amazing herbs, softened then pan-seared and served crispy on the outside and melting soft on the inside! Omeros Bros, I will never ever forget you!

And then to discover cherry ripe! To those of you who have never tried it, it’s an amazing dark chocolate, filled with coconut and cherry pieces and somehow only found in Australia!

Whyyyyyyyyyy? Your only other option is to order it from Amazon probably….here in Egypt, that’s just way too darn expensive 😦 😦 😦 and then there was Max…………
I am a chocoholic and Max only serves chocolate….
You do the math! Chocolate nuggets filled with raspberry…melted chocolate with strawberrys….hot chocolate with salted caramel….i could go on forever…my waistline? Let’s say I ignored that issue completely….

I really wish I’d taken pics of the amazing food here…but honestly, I was too busy scoffing it all! Maybe next time???

Enough of memory lane for now…I’ll share more in my next post…

How to de-pip kalamata olives in a few minutes!

Taking olives wa7da wa7da to cut open with a knife is boring and tiresome! And if you have 1/2 a kilo or a kilo to do its just terrible!!! So here’s a quick and easy way to get you done in minutes!

1. Place the olives in a plastic bag – 2 or 3 handfuls – and tie up. Pat them down into a single layer. (If you are doing a big quantity then just repeat this process 2 or 3 times – my half kilo was done in 2) 
2. Get something heavy like a meat pounder, 2eed hon (mortar), rolling pin and bash the olives lightly, you want to open them, not make a puree! Go around the bag feeling with your finger tips to make sure they are all bashed. 
3. This is how they look when you open the bag:

Finished product! I did this half kilo in less than 10 minutes!

Friends For Dinner & Amazing Pizza

I love having friends over and the Ashry clan are great friends! Their kids are wonderful and their 3.5yr old is amazing and hopefully she’ll teach my boy some manners..heheheeee

We made 4 lovely pizzas for lunch using the same Real Crusty Bread dough. It comes out almost like a Neapolitan pizza…I say almost since I don’t have a 500C wood burning oven nor do I have a pizza stone! So for me, a home cook, it was great! Puffy crust, thin crisp base and lovely toppings.

The pizza recipe if you are interested is here.

We also made a lovely Nicoise Salad and I will post its recipe soon.

Have a lovely day!

Welcome to Riham’s Messy Kitchen!

Welcome to my messy kitchen!

And as you can see from my pic, it really is a mess! Fo2 ba3do as we would say! and that’s me on a good day! 😉 I try to cook at least 3 or 4 times a week. I love to have family and friends over and I love to explore new dishes and techniques. And I would like to share all my experiences with you!

For the past few weeks hubby has been on a diet and I really hate boiled and diet food and it suddenly clicked….Asian! A lot of recipes have very little fats and while the sauces do have some sugars, the amount of sauce itself is very little compared to the overall dish.

Most of my recipes are from or adapted from the Rasa Malaysia website which is great!

So I’ll be sharing my Chinese & Thai experiences across the coming few weeks.

cheers, Riham!

Real Crusty Bread

Dont you just love crusty bread? I know I do. Paul makes this amazing bread called Acien (I think that’s how it’s spelled…) which is airy and filled with holes but it’s just too darn expensive! So with Masterchef episodes as a guide and a million internet searches I managed to make a homemade loaf
that’s silly easy and tastes lovely, is crusty and full of holes!

Check the recipe here!