Greek Style Potatoes with Lemon Vinaigrette

When my parents came to visit this fall, I made chicken and beef gyros, a greek salad, and these yummy potatoes.  Although I never got around to posting the recipe, I haven’t stopped thinking about these potatoes, so I’m actually making them again tonight!

Greek Style Potatoes with Lemon Vinaigrette

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 shallot, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano, or 1/2 tablespoon dried
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 pounds large russet potatoes, cleaned, each cut lengthwise into 6 wedges

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Whisk olive oil, lemon juice, shallots, garlic, oregano, and parsley in a medium bowl to blend; season with salt and pepper.

Toss potatoes with vinaigrette on a heavy, large, rimmed baking sheet. Season potatoes with salt and pepper. Roast potatoes until tender and golden brown, turning occasionally, about 45 minutes.

Recipe adapted from Bobby Flay

Mujadarah

Mujadarah is a simple but delicious vegetarian dinner.  Essentially it’s lentils with rice and flavored with onions and cumin.  Now, I am not the world’s largest onion fan, but you really can’t leave them out in this dish.  Since there are so few ingredients, they provide an important part of the flavor of the dish.  Also, you’re supposed to cook them until they are almost burnt, so they really lose a lot of their strong onion flavor and add a sweeter taste than what you’d expect.

Mujadarah

• 1 cup lentils
• 2 cups long-grain rice
• 1 large onion, quartered
• 5-6 cups water
• 2 tsp. cumin
• 1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
• 1 – 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. pepper

In a large pot, combine the lentils, water, salt and pepper, and cook over medium heat for about 7 minutes or until the lentils are approximately halfway cooked.

Then add the rice and cumin.  Cook until the water is absorbed and the rice is cooked, usually about 15-20 minutes.

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat.  Once hot, fry the onions until they are very dark brown (basically until any longer and you’d burn them).

Mix the onions and oil in with the rice and lentils.  You can also drain the onions and reserve the oil.  Then mix the oil in with the rice and lentils and serve the onions on top.

This is excellent served with plain yogurt and/or Lebanese salad which I just realized I’ve never posted.  Essentially a version of fattoush, but consider it coming soon!!

Recipe source: My mommy!

Ruz Yakhnit (Mak Loubei)

So my spelling is likely completely and totally off.  I grew up eating this, and I love that it’s easy to throw together and can make a ton because its easily adjustable!

Ruz Yakhnit

• Lebanese Rice
• 1 Tbsp. butter
• 1/2 – 3/4 large onion, sliced into thin wedges
• 1 small pkg. (10 oz.?) frozen green beans or peas (canned works too)
• 1, 28 oz. can crushed or diced tomatoes
• 1, 8 oz. can tomato sauce
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• Salt and pepper
• You can also add beef or lamb, cut into cubes if you want to add meat to this dish.  Just brown the meat before you add the tomatoes. Or I recently learned my Sitti used to make meatballs of meat and cinnamon with a little pine nut hidden in the middle!

Melt the butter in a medium stockpot and brown the onions over medium heat until the onions begin to brown and turn translucent.  Then add the tomatoes, cinnamon, and green beans or peas.  Season with salt and pepper, stir, and let simmer on low for 20 minutes.  I usually start this before I start my rice and then they’re both done at the same time.

Serve over rice with pita.

“Lebanese” Rice

I don’t know the official name for this rice; all I know is this is the rice my mom, cousins, etc. serve with Lebanese meals and that I find it overly delicious as far as rice goes.  It’s a simple method which is easily adjusted for both the number of people you’re serving and if they’re vegetarian or not.

Lebanese Rice

• 1 Tbsp. butter
• 1/4 cup vermicelli or very fine egg noodles, broken if not already into small 1/2″ or less pieces
• 2 cups long-grain rice
• 4 1/4 – 4 1/2 cups of water (or vegetable/chicken stock if not using bouillon)
• Bouillon (if not using stock!)

Melt the butter in a medium stockpot over medium heat.  Add the vermicelli and stir to evenly distribute the butter.  Allow vermicelli to brown, stirring occasionally.  Then add the rice, stir.  Allow the rice to toast for a minute, stirring occasionally.  Then add the water or stock and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Once it reaches a boil, cover and cook on medium-high for 10 minutes.  Then, reduce the heat to low to medium-low and cook for another 10-15 minutes or until rice is cooked and the liquid is absorbed.  If you’re serving as a side dish, give it a generous sprinkling of cinnamon for extra deliciousness!

Shake Your…Fattoush!

Fattoush is healthy.  I think I need to go on a diet where I am only allowed to eat fattoush for a week and see if I can rid myself of the evidence of all these foolish sweets I’ve been making!  However, since I made Corrie a Reese’s cake with peanut butter frosting for his work potluck and my brother a red velvet birthday cake to be posted later, AND we’re going to Cleveland, Ohio for the 4th; I don’t see that happening this week!  I have high ambitions…I just put them off.

Eat this – it makes up for being undisciplined.

Keep in mind it’s a salad, so add more of what you like or less of what you don’t.  These are just suggestions!

Fattoush

• 3-4 pieces of pita bread
• 1 head iceberg lettuce, torn into pieces
• 2 tbsp. parsley, chopped (traditionally curly, but I’ve used flat leaf if I have it on hand)
• 2-3 green onions, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped (mysteriously missing in mine…)
• 1 tbsp. sumac (this can usually be found with the international foods at your local grocery store)
• 1/4 c. feta, optional

Dressing

• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 1/2 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp. dried mint (or fresh if you have it – you’ll want to use about double)
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• salt and pepper, to taste

Toast the pita, break into bite-sized pieces and set aside.

Put the lettuce, parsley, vegetables, sumac, and feta into a bowl.  In a separate bowl whisk together the dressing ingredients.  Pour the dressing over the salad, add the pita chips, and toss to coat.  Serve immediately or the pita will get soggy.  If you’re not going to serve immediately, leave the pieces separate and then combine before serving otherwise you do what I did and take a late picture = soggy bread!

Hashweh

Have I mentioned Lebanese food is sooooo tasty? We had this for dinner last week or the week before, and I forgot about it, but oh when I saw this picture I got hungry all over again!  I’ll post the simple recipe for fattoush too….mmm..fattoush, and I wonder why I can’t stop eating?!?

Best of all, although it requires a few pans, it’s relatively easy to throw together!  Usually this is served as a side dish with chicken, which does seem a bit odd to first contemplate since it has beef in it, but hey – it’s good so what else really matters?

Hashweh (the rice and meat dish pictured)

• 1 – 1 1/2 lbs. ground beef
• 3 tbsp. butter
• 2 c. rice
• 4 1/4 c. vegetable or chicken broth (or water + bouillon)
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. allspice
• 1 c. pine nuts, lightly toasted

Add rice to a small to medium size pot on medium heat.  Let the rice start to toast just slightly, you can add a bit of butter if you’d like, and then add the broth.  Stir to combine and increase the heat to medium-high.  Once it reaches a boil, cover the pot and allow to cook for approximately 10 minutes.  (While it is cooking for those 10 minutes start the directions for the meat below.)  Then, reduce the heat to medium-low and allow to finish cooking, another 10 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed.

Brown the meat in 1 tbsp. of butter.  The traditional way is to brown it in all the butter; however, although this dish uses more fat than I usually do as it’s essential to making sure it’s not too dry.  So what I like to do is brown it, drain most of the fat then add the remaining butter.  When I add the remaining butter I also add in the salt, pepper, allspice, and cinnamon.  Stir to combine.

Combine the rice, meat, and pine nuts and serve!

Greek Salad

We also had some delicious greek salad to accompany our chicken gyros.  These are just some suggestions of what you could include but when I had googled elly’s gyros to double-check something in the recipe, I came across Annie‘s post and she had made her own dressing so I decided to try it myself!

Greek Dressing (found at Annie’s Eats)

• 1/4 c. red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp. fresh dill, finely chopped
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Whisk or blend everything together and directly add to the salad.  Just give it a quick shake or whisk to recombine if it sits for a minute before adding.

My salad included romaine, feta cheese, red onion, assorted bell peppers, and cucumbers.  I think Corrie added some of the tomato I cut up for the gyros, and you could also add kalamata olives, I’m just not an olive fan.

Chicken Gyros with Tzatziki (YUM!)

I would like to know what there is not to love about tzatziki.

• Associated with Mediterranean cuisine – one of my favorites – Check
• Cucumbers – Check
• Dill – Check
• …you see where this is going

Gyros seem to be popular on several different food blogs at the moment so I went to elly says opa! to find inspiration which is where I found this recipe.  Again part of the afterthought photo series…

Chicken Gyros (adapted from elly says opa!)

• 1-1 1/2 lbs. chicken breasts
• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed
• Juice of a lemon
• 2 tsp. red wine vinegar
• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 2 heaping Tbsp. plain yogurt
• 1 Tbsp. dried oregano
• salt and pepper

Condiments

• Tzatziki  (I used elly’s recipe which can be found here; the only change I made was I LOVE dill so I threw some in – all I had on hand was dried, but oh my, the thought of it with fresh dill makes me salivate.)
• Red onion
• Tomatoes (bleech, these are for Corrie)
• Pita bread

Combine garlic, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, yogurt, and oregano in a ziploc bag.   Add the chicken breasts and massage to coat the chicken with the marinade.   Refrigerate for an hour.

Using whatever cooking method you prefer- we did this on the grill – season with salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken breasts and cook through.

Heat or warm up your pitas.  I thought we would warm them for just a minute on the grill, but they ended up too crispy, so next time I think I will either warm them in the microwave for a minute or better yet, make my own pita (next goal!) and then it would probably work to grill it for just a couple seconds.    Top the pita with chicken, tzatziki, onions, tomatoes or whatever you desire and enjoy!

Kousa/Kusa/Koosa (a.k.a. Kousa Mousa)

Growing up with an American Lebanese mother one could say I developed a love of eating at a young age.  It sounds strange to say it had a life-forming impact, but it truly did.  What is deemed important in life mainly includes cooking for family (and friends!), family, and socializing that revolves around eating.   Because we’re a strange bunch we joke that it’s called Kousa Mousa.  I really have no idea how to spell it, so I’m open to corrections on that one.  I’ve seen it all ways.

On my mystery birthday trip to Nashville, I found Lebanese squash at the Farmer’s Market!! I know, I know what’s the big deal…well it’s extremely difficult to find and it maintains its texture slightly better than what we usually use.  Needless to say, I bought some for a Kousa extravaganza.

There’s only two of us, so I made four, but you can easily expand this recipe.  The amounts below are completely approximated – suit it to your tastes.  Also, don’t be immediately turned off by the tomato if you don’t like fresh tomatoes, because I don’t at all, and I love this!

Also, I apologize in advance as this is a terrible picture, but as with most of our dinners I am so excited to sit down to eat that I forget to take a picture.   I really do cook more than just sweets, but I’m trying to get better about remembering to take a picture.  In this case, we luckily had one left over; that is, until I ate it.

Kousa

• 4 Lebanese squash, yellow squash, or whatever you want to stuff (Use squash with larger bottoms, you want to be able to fit some filling in there!)
• ~1 lb. of ground beef (Some people use lamb)
• ~ 1/2 cup of rice (Essentially you want it to visually look like almost equal parts of meat to rice)
• 1 tsp. cracked black pepper
• 1 tsp.  salt
• 2-3 tsp. of cinnamon (I cover the top of my meat prior to mixing)
• tomato juice (I use the the large cans they sell in the juice section; I believe they’re 46 oz.)

Wash squash and cut off the top down to the point at which its wide enough for you to start filling the squash.   Also cut off the very, very end, you just want to cut off that inedible part without cutting a hole in the bottom.  I just trim it off.  Using a squash/zucchini corer, carefully core out the middle until you’re left with a ~1/2″ edge, any closer and you’ll probably poke through the squash.  If you happen to do so, just push back together with a toothpick while cooking and make sure to remove the toothpick before eating!

Mix together the meat, rice, salt, pepper, and cinnamon until its evenly combined.  Then fill the squash with the mixture, filling to the top of the squash but do not pack the filling tightly otherwise it will not cook evenly.  Place the filled squash in a large pot and cover with tomato juice.  Turn the pot on medium-high to high heat to bring up to a boil and then cover and reduce the heat to just above medium for 10 minutes.  Cover the pot to speed cooking and prevent tomato juice from splashing everywhere!  Then reduce to medium-low for another 15 minutes or until the rice is cooked through.  Cooking times will vary depending on the size and thickness of the squash you’re using.  The only real way to tell is to take one out, cut it half horizontally and if it’s not done I gently put both pieces back in to cook longer.  Once done, remove from the heat and serve while hot!

I enjoy cutting mine open and ladling the juice across to enjoy, but some people prefer it without.