Monday, April 9, 2007

Food blogging

Today I was in the mood for some Lebanese food. This being Iceland, I had to cook it myself. I'm posting the recipes here in case someone else is interested, but also so that I know where to look them up next time :).

So, I had two variations on a main theme: dough + food on it.

The dough is made this way:

3.5 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1.5 tsp yeast, dissolved in 1 cup of water + 1/2 cup of milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil

Mix it all and knead well, adding water or flour until the dough doesn't stick too much to your fingers. Roll the dough in a ball and place in a covered bowl, put in a slightly warm oven for an hour or so until the ball has expanded enough. This should be enough dough for rolling 4 personal pies.

Now, 1st variation: lahm bi agin (aka meat with dough)
300 g ground beef or lamb (or both)
2 tomatoes, diced
1 onion, diced
salt, allspice, cinnamon as desired (the allspice I use is a Lebanese 7-spice mix)

Mix it all. This should be enough to cover 3 pies. Put it in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius, for 12 to 15 minutes (at least until the dough is golden). Squeeze some lemon juice on top before serving, add cayenne pepper if desired.

Lahm bi agin


Second variation: Man'ouche (zaatar pie)
Mix zaatar with just enough oil so that no amount zaatar is left dry. Spread over the dough. Cook at 200 degrees in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes. I tend to make mine quite zaatar heavy, of course :).


Man'ouche

5 comments:

ziad said...

was there any left for your birthday ?
hope you had lots of cakes :-)

Djaddi said...

No, there weren't any left. In fact today I had some mjaddara at lunch, which is good food but hardly cake-like :).

And I had Thai food for dinner, and no cake. But that's OK, I feel like I've been having cakes and sweets continuously for the last 6 weeks.

Anonymous said...

So you basically made Libanese pizza... just called them with fancy names trying to fool people and pretend you were eating healthy food. Yeah, sure.

Djaddi said...

It's much better than pizza. And it is healthier indeed, not that it matters that much :)

The second one is pretty much just a zaatar delivery vessel. Mmmm, zaatar.

Alda said...

Lebanese food recipes on an Icelandic blog. Very cool.