Meeting 311 - The Wines of Château Musar    

Food from Lebanon/Middle East - Charlotte's Notes

The Nibbles:

We started with Mezze Wrap Flatbread.
Grilled Meguez (cumin spiced lamb) sausage (available from Gabriel Machin, Henley on Thames and Vicars, Reading)
Fried red onion and red pepper strips.
Aubergine hummus - roast aubergines for half an hour and scrape out soft middle, mix with tahini, olive oil, garlic, toasted cumin seeds, lemon juice and seasoning and fresh rocket wrapped in the homemade flatbread - roll it up and it's scrummy!
The Flatbreads (borough market cookbook page 174) were great fun to make. Mix strong white flour with boiling water and a pinch of salt - stir and form a ball, knead this for 3 mins-ish on a floured surface until silky and then wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the kitchen for 30mins. Roll into a 30cm sausage and cut into 12 pieces, then flatten with your palm to a circle, brush sesame oil over one and put another on top. Then get the rolling pin and with a bit of pressure roll out from the middle on a floured surface turning until the rough size of your frying pan. Put the dry pan on the heat and throw in the bread. like a pancake, it will get brown spots an then flip it over and cook the other side. Then toss it out. After a couple of mins you will be able to separate the two creating a wonderfully thin crispy bread - WOW! When I got the gist of making one, I knocked out 48 in half an hour!

The Main Course:

Butterflied Roast Leg of Lamb (borough market cookbook page 60) with date, almond and chilli marinade. Rub the marinade all over 24 hrs before and leave to rest. Roast the lamb (it only takes about half an hour when it is butterflied) and leave to rest to relax the meat. Carve.
Served with: Winter Tabbouleh (Casa Moro page 148) - bulgur wheat (pour on boiling water to cover and leave to absorb for 15 mins) and add flavourings and texture - tiny florets of cauliflower, sliced chicory, fennel, pomegranate seeds (fresh, ready prepared in Waitrose) chopped mint and parsley and a dressing made with pomegranate molasses. I couldn't find this so bought a bottle of fresh pomegranate juice from Waitrose and reduced it down to a syrup.
    Also grated Carrot Salad (Casa Moro page 162) flavoured with orange blossom water and chopped mint.
    And Broad Bean Salad (Casa Moro page 163)(use frozen and just bring to boil) with cumin seeds and fresh coriander.
    The dressings for all the salads have lemon juice, olive oil, a touch of garlic and seasoning.

The Dessert:

    Rosewater and orange blossom water are two of the better known ingredients of the middle east. Both are made from distilled petals, rosewater from a particular type of rose called al-joori in Arabic and orange blossom water from the flowers of the bitter Seville orange (better known as marmalade oranges) I made a Blood Orange and Rosewater Sorbet (Casa Moro page 307) because it is the (short) season for blood oranges at the moment. The sorbet is an acquired taste - if you like Turkish delight then you are on to a winner! Due to the high alcohol content of the rosewater - this will not set hard - (tip:1 orange produces about 100ml of juice).
    I served this with a walnut, lemon and Cardamom Cake (Moro page 279) (made in a spring-form cheesecake tin). This was really superb! I couldn't find ground cardamom seeds so had to buy cardamom pods, crush the shells to release the seeds and then grind them in a pestle and mortar.

Some additional notes and musings!

    This meeting gave me the excuse to make 8 new recipes from scratch - I don't test them first, I just use good quality cookery book recipes that I hope I can trust, and then multiply the recipe by 5 to make enough food for 40 people!

Things I would do again...
    The Wraps were great fun and I would definitely do these again for an alfresco lunch or bar-be-que. You could put any fillings or flavours in to suit the event or time of year and they look really professional! I have roasted boned rolled leg of lamb for years but I will now roast my lamb butterflied (i.e. not re-rolled and tied - unless I wanted to stuff it) as it is so much quicker to cook, only half an hour-ish plus resting and there is a better ratio of pink insidy to crispy outsidy bits! The salads were good for any buffet - the carrot and broad bean being particularly quick to make. I probably like my cous cous recipe better than the tabbouleh, but it made a nice change. I personally wasn't a fan of the sorbet but the cake was amazing! The mixture of cardamom, walnuts and lemon create a new flavour that makes you think that there might be honey in the recipe but there isn't. It's also good with a cup of tea! A very enjoyable evening for me as it pushes me to experiment and research!

Charlotte