The amazing Nigel Slater & the humble lentil soup

No other cooking show makes my mouth water like any show hosted by Nigel Slater…oh boy oh boy…

He makes every dish look so easy to make…the way he describes the cooking & the smells and the feel of the dish he is creating…somehow as if in slow motion, is amazing… and he has a way to turn any ingredient, no matter how humble, into an amazing feast meal & the final tasting isn’t really a tasting at all…it’s more like a sensual experience…

His show “Nigel Slater’s Real Food” Chocolate episode & Sandwich episode left me drooling…and right now I’m watching his Xmas episode….

More importantly, his recipes always work.. which is great. I advise you to check out his recipes, they are great! http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/nigelslaterrecipes

I found YouTube episodes here for you to check out too.

With inspiration from Nigel, I have decided to make a lovely Egyptian soup called 3addss Maghrouf  “Thick Lentil Soup”. Lentils are a humble pulse, they don’t show up a lot except as the puy lentils of fancy shows but this lentil soup recipe is the real deal. It’s my quintessential winter “soup”.

Tasty, thick, hot, smooth, velvety and filling…spiced with cumin and laced with a touch of butter…

This is a traditional dish and its served with lightly pickled bashed onions and crisp balady bread (wholegrain pita bread). 

Even with the bread & butter, its not too heavy on the calories:

My recipe makes a thick and luscious version suited for a hearty main meal. If you like a thinner soup, add more water and it will work as a first course!

Recipe: Spiced Thick Lentil Soup with Sweet Pickled Onions.

Enjoy!

Cold winter swim practice & heart warming pot roast

You know when it’s really cold and windy? Like when you feel the wind is going right through you and you are chilled to the core? Well that’s exactly how I feel after my sons’ swim practice! Sure it’s fun for them – they’re in a warmed pool. The poor parents – i.e. us – we stay outside freezing from the cold! And the wind! The pool deck is raised and it’s all out in the open and there’s nothing to break the wind 😦

As for my boys, they’re just loving it! It’s the first year for my younger son at swim practice and he’s having a lot of fun learning and jumping. My elder boy, he’s been at it for 2 years and had his first official assessment. He did great 🙂

After a fun filled and freezing day at the pool,

coming home to a heart-warming meal is all I really want. And my pot roast does just that! Warms you from the inside out thanks to the lovely broth 🙂

This is one of my familys’ top 10 fav meals! Tender and tasty and ready with a side of veg & potatoes, all cooked in 1 pot!

The traditional way of serving this dish in Egypt, is to serve the meat sliced & cold hence the name “cold meat” or “lahma barda” and blitz the veg and broth to make a gravy (my mums way) or exclude the veg all together with the exception of the onions & garlic as aromatics for the broth the meat is cooking in. Usually its cooked in a pot for hours to get the notoriously tough cut to become tender or in an oven.

To me that meant, at the end of a loooong cooking session, I had only meat, the broth too watery and still had to make sides.

So I played around with the recipe. After many try’s & attempts at cooking the notorious eye round roast “ عرق بارد / تريبيانكو” I landed on
the pressure cooker method to get lovely and tender and most importantly consistent results. Added the carrots & potatoes to the broth to cook & be served along with the meat. And I slice the meat straight after standing it so it’s nice and warm when served. The seasoning & addition of garlic gives the roast a lovely flavor and the searing makes it a real roast as opposed to boiled beef. They only thing I make alongside then is the steamed rice which literally takes minutes.

And there you have it!

A full winter, warm-the-cockles-of-your-heart meal!

And if you don’t have a pressure cooker? Not a problem, just cook it in a regular pot. It just takes more time that’s all.

I hope you enjoy this glorious winter dish as much as we do!

Recipe: Pot Roast, My Way!

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!