Sawah

Karak...

What is Karak?

Karar Tea or Chai Karak is a really heavy red tea with milk and lots of sugar usually made is quick serving food places, costs around 50 fils (around 15 cents) per small paper cup

Turkish Coffee time..

Sunday is the first day of the working week. Being unwell on Sunday morning is not the best idea (if you had a choice I mean). What could open your sleeping eyes? and switch your brain on? and make sure the signal between eyes, brains and other parts is working and clear? Coffee? not this time...Black coffee? maybe...Red Bull? I'm not into energy drinks...looks like very Bitter Turkish Coffee is it!

Winter Food

The cold month, or should I say the cold week, usually introduces a number of hearty dishes. Soups, hot sauces, pasta, potatoes, casseroles & lots of them, beans, pies, etc...

Winter-warming cooking seems like the best option to celebrate the 14hrs of non-stop rain. I wanted pasta...cream..something I could see the smoke coming out from when serving and that is the perfect time to put cheese over it and enjoy the melted texture over the soft pasta...yummm That was it! to the kitchen I go!!

No time to eat? snack!

Coming from a healthy wannabe family, snacking on food other than fruits and nuts is a big No-No. Now that we are old enough to make our own food (and decisions), things have changed slightly (when Mom is not around).

Hommus is a very popular dish in the Middle East. Not only it tastes good, but it is east to make, eat & store. All you need now is Chickpeas...

How to Make...

Stuffed Basboosa

Basboosa is a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made with semolina and yogurt, then soaked in a rose water syrup. One of my all times favourite desserts to have. I love basboosa in all it forms (except the coconut version), I really do.

When I went to Egypt last month, I made sure that everywhere I went I tried thier basboosa, It was kind of my way to grading the cafe's/restaurants. I even brought some back home.

This recipe combines Basboosa and Baklava (sweet pastry made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup). I always looked at the picture in the book and thought to myself, this is good. And it really was...

I enjoy Turkish Coffee

I allow myself 1 cup of coffee a day (mostly during working hours), I can only properly function at work after my cup of caffeine.

Every Ramadan I promise myself that I won't get to attached to coffee and teach myself to live happily without it. However, between the parking lot & the office building, a Starbucks is strategically located with fresh coffee aroma tickling the brain as you try to focus on your destination but never works as you always go back for that latte.

Early last year, I tried to minimise fattening things in my diet. So my regular caramel macchiato became a latte, then a skinny latte, then espresso from the coffee machine at work (which was too light for me) and finally a Turkish Coffee.

If you haven't tried Turkish Coffee yet, I think you are missing out. I always thought Turkish Coffee was bitter, but if you order a medium or sweet, you can live. And as a mean of entertainmet, we read the coffee cups for fun after we finish. Today, it wasn't the best looking cup (but I took pictures anyways).

What Turkish Coffee cup looks like


that's a google picture - I forgot to take one before I start drinking

The Packed Lunch

To take homemade lunch to work or t order anything from anywhere? that is the question...

if you work the normal 9 to 5 (or in my case the 8:30 to 4:30 & beyond) then your choices for lunch are: the sandwich/salad from the trolley or the sandwich/salad from the place downstairs or the tasteless whatever from wherever...by time, you'd get fed up and really bored from the same orders. Lunch then becomes the 15 minutes when you have something to chew.

Kunafa

It was a long week, followed by a short weekend. I woke up in time for lunch and I had a series of places to be in before bedtime (funeral, charity market, ceramic cafe, laundry) and all were 30 minutes drive away from each other.

If I don't make something now, most probably I won't make anything till the coming weekend (which I realised I will be out of country then). Being a challenge seeker, I wanted to make something that I have never made before & never though about making. So Kunafa was it.

We have a friend that specialised in Kunafa making, being Lebanese of course, and she doesn't ind making for us whenever we felt like it. Kunafa for those not familiar with it, is an Arabic dessert (Levant and Egypt to be specific), it has different variations and different fillings. I chose to make the easiest, made of bread and mozzarella cheese. Everyone was napping after heaving weekend lunch, perfect opportunity to experiment (so if I fail, no one would know).

The recipe required 8 slices of bread, we had only7 & since they were slightly bigger than the regular bread it wasn't an issue. So bread and butter crumbled in the bottom of the greased cake pan, topped by a layer of cheese, then I heated 1cup of milk together with 3 tablespoons of semolina until thicken and poured over the cheese layer (this is to protect the cheese from burning) and into the oven for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, I made the very easy syrup. 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of water & 1 tablespoon of rosewater heated until the sugar is dissolved and then left to cool. The 25 minutes are now over, flip the Kunafa onto the serving dish & pour the syrup over it or serve on the side.

you could decorate the individual slices

And there you have it, a successful Kunafa & a proof that I'm still doing what I promised to do :-)

Cheers

Eggplants? no problem

After a long day at work (which came after a long holiday), coming back home was the happiest thing to do.
It's almost 6 pm now and I'm not ready to cook anything....let me go to the gym then, I had plans to use gym as an excuse and come back and write about it but unforunately I was way too tired (in other words took a nap/or fainted).

By the time I managed to get myself together the time was nearing 8 o'clock, everyone had eaten already but I was hungry. With no time to defrost or to do anything complicated, the internal voice said: go vegetarian. I look over to inspect the farm my mom bought and all I could see was the shiny eggplants. So eggplants dinner it was.