Street Food

Sabich

This is truly a classic street food recipe, which has its origins in Iraqi cuisine. One of my favourite things to do is to walk in Tel Aviv’s streets because there are so many places that serve Sabich. There is something about the combination of ingredients in this dish that creates a perfect balance. The soft hummus, sautéed potatoes, Amba, Zhug, and grilled aubergines all complement each other perfectly. It is like a savoury version of the vanilla ice cream, peaches, and raspberry coulis that make up a Peach Melba. The flavours seem to give you a warm embrace. There are so many different variations of this dish but this is my way of making it. You can either serve it in pitta bread or present it on a plate with bread to accompany.

30 min 6

6 eggs

2 large potatoes

2 large aubergines

2 tbsp olive oil

1 portion of hummus (see Hummus Ful recipe page ****)

1 tsp Amba (see page ***)

1 tsp Zhug

Tahini (see page ***)

1 sliced lemon

3 pieces of pitta bread

1. Put the eggs in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for about 7 minutes and then transfer them into a bowl of cold water. When they are cold, peel and cut in halves.

2. Peel the potatoes and then parboil for about 10 minutes. Drain and leave to cool.

3. Slice the aubergines into slices about 2 cm thick. Slice the cooled potatoes into slices about 1 cm thick.

4. Pour a little olive oil into a large frying pan and heat over medium heat. Put in the potato and aubergine slices and fry gently until they are golden brown. You may need to do this in more than one batch depending on the size of your frying pan.

5. When the potatoes and aubergines are nicely browned, remove them from the pan and drain them on kitchen paper.

6. To compose the Sabich, cut the pitta bread in half and then open each half with a sharp knife to create a pocket.

7. Start by putting about two dessert spoons of hummus into the pocket and spread it around the inside of the bread. Next, put all the rest of the ingredients: fried potatoes, aubergines, Amba, Zhug, hard-boiled eggs, and Tahini. Finish with a slice of lemon.

13

Aubergine Burger

I love vegetarian burgers but some recipes require quite a lot of preparation. This recipe is so easy it can be made any time you feel a little hungry. For me, the aubergine is one of the best vegetables. The key to getting this recipe right is to cook it e slowly and carefully . After trying this, you will never want minced beef in your burger again.

4 1 h

2 large aubergines 4 classic burger buns (or any other bread of your choice)

A few leaves of salad 2 ripe tomatoes 4 tsp harissa (see page ****)

100 ml tahini (see page ***)

50 ml olive oil for basting the aubergines

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Depending on how large your aubergines are, you can either cut them in large rings with a thickness of about 4 cm or cut them lengthwise to form a steak of about 8 x 6 x 4 cm. Slice the tomatoes.

2. Line a baking tray and place the aubergine steaks onto it. Brush both sides of the steaks generously with olive oil. Season with a little sea salt.

3. Place the steaks in the oven for 45 minutes. Every 10 to 15 minutes remove them from the oven, turn them over, and brush again with olive oil. When the aubergine steaks are golden and very soft, remove them from the oven.

4. Cut your burger buns in half and spread harissa paste on each side of the buns. Make your burger with the rest of the ingredients finishing off with the tahini sauce on top. Eat immediately.

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15

18

Roasted Chickpeas and Cumin

If you want a little snack for an aperitif, try these fragrant crispy chickpeas. They are also great sprinkled on top of hummus to give some bite to it.

40 min 6

250 g cooked chickpeas

2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tbsp olive oil

Lemon wedges for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash and drain the cooked chickpeas. Then, pat them dry with kitchen paper.

2. In a small frying pan, dry roast the cumin seeds until they begin to give off their fragrance. Let them cool and either crush with a pestle and mortar or put them in a small food processor and blitz for a minute or so.

3. In a small bowl, mix the chickpeas, the ground cumin, the salt, the smoked paprika, and the olive oil. Mix thoroughly with a spoon so that all the chickpeas are well covered with oil and spices.

4. Line a shallow baking tray with greaseproof paper and roast in the oven for about 20–30 minutes. To get the best result, make sure that the chickpeas are well spread out across the baking tray.

5. Before serving, squeeze the lemon wedges over it.

19

Roasted Almonds

If you can’t stop eating these once they are cooked, you are not alone. This roasting mix comes from many years of experience. It takes just a few minutes to make and is an ideal accompaniment to an aperitif.

200 g blanched almonds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp Za’atar

1 tsp sumac

50 ml olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C. Heat a small frying pan over moderate heat. Add the coriander and cumin seeds. Dry roast for a few minutes until the seeds begin to give off their fragrance.

2. Remove the seeds from the heat and grind with a pestle and mortar or in a small blender to make a powder.

3. In a small bowl, mix all the rest of the ingredients together. Add the freshly ground coriander and cumin. Mix the ingredients thoroughly.

4. Put the nuts onto a lined baking tray and roast in the oven for about 10 minutes until they are turning golden brown. Turn them occasionally to get them brown on all sides. Check regularly to make sure they don’t burn.

5. Leave to cool and then serve.

25

20

min 1

30

Green Tahini

Tahini is fundamental to so much of the cuisine of the Middle East. Whether it is in pitta bread with falafel or drizzled on your grilled meat, it is everywhere. I always have some tahini mixed in my fridge. It livens up a simple salad and many of the recipes in this book are perfect for dressing with tahini. Here, I make a variation on the classic tahini mix by adding some green herbs. This not only adds colour but also taste to the plate, depending on the choice of herbs. For example, if you use dill, it adds a lovely aniseed touch to the tahini. You can always leave out the herbs to make the classic tahini.

1 clove of garlic

500 ml of tahini

2 lemons

1 tsp sea salt

Cold water

1 large bunch of dill ( you can also use parsley, coriander, or any combination of these herbs)

1. Finely chop or grate the garlic into a medium-sized bowl. Pour the tahini paste into the bowl.

2. Squeeze the lemons and pour the juice into the bowl. Add the salt.

3. Start adding the water gradually whilst whisking the mix. Initially, the mix will go more solid rather than more liquid but as you add more water, it will start to get thinner. You want the consistency of pouring cream. Check the mix for seasoning.

4. Finely chop the dill or blitz in a small food processor.

5. Mix the dill into the tahini.

Store in a container in the fridge for up to a week. You can always add more water if the tahini thickens over the course of a few days.

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10 min 10

Pickles

Street food without pickles isn’t really street food. Whether it is hot chilli or pickled carrots, they all are a welcome extra kick to an already flavoursome dish. Pickling is so easy, but if you are like me, you will find them so hard to resist that you will have to keep making them.

20 min + repos 2 à 3 semaines 3

Any mix of the following vegetables with a combined weight of around 600 g: radishes, red peppers, chilli peppers, carrots, cauliflower, spring onions, courgettes, small beetroots, kohlrabi, red cabbage

For the pickling liquid

250 ml water

250 ml white wine vinegar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

2 tsp whole coriander seeds

2 tsp black peppercorns

1. Sterilise your jars by first washing them and then placing them in a preheated oven (160°C–180°C) for about 20minutes.

2. In a large bowl, mix the vinegar and water. Add the salt and the sugar, and mix to dissolve them.

3. Roughly chop the vegetables into generously sized chunks. If you are using red cabbage, then cut the cabbage in half, then cut 3 cmlong strips in one direction. Then, cut in the other direction to form cubes.

4. Tightly pack the vegetables into the sterilised jars. Add a few coriander seeds and peppercorns to each of the jars.

5. Pour the water and vinegar mixture into the jars to cover all the vegetables.

Seal the jars and leave them in a cool dark place for two to three weeks…if you can wait that long.

35

Labneh

Labneh is so easy to make, but it will change your life. You can find it everywhere in restaurants across the Middle East and it can be eaten on its own with bread or as an accompaniment to other dishes. It seems so easy that you might wonder how it can be so delicious. The process is just about extra-straining an already good yoghurt. However, the result is wonderful.

5 min + 1 or 2 days to mature 6

500 ml thick Greek or Bulgarian yoghurt

2 tsp sea salt

1. In a large bowl tip in the yoghurt and then add the salt. With a balloon whisk, mix the salt with the yoghurt.

2. Set a clean tea towel (or a fine muslin cloth) over a large bowl and then pour the yoghurt and salt mixture into the centre.

3. Bring together the four corners of the tea towel and, with a piece of string, tie the four corners together to create a sack.

4. Hang the bag over a bowl and leave for 24 to 48 hours at room temperature.

5. When the cheese is ready, carefully open the tea towel and put it on a serving dish—if used immediately—or in a plastic box and place it in the refrigerator. The Labneh will keep for about a week in the fridge.

6. Serve with Za’atar and olive oil.

55

Sambusak

There is a chain of bakeries in Israel that is called Abulafia. They serve a bewildering range of delicious pastries with recipes drawn from all over the Middle East. The wonderful thing about these bakeries is that you can pick something to eat at almost any time of the day or night. When I was a teenager, I couldn’t resist getting something to nibble on as I was wandering about Jaffa. The smell, as you enter these places, is magnificent. My tribute to them is three vegetarian recipes: mushroom, potato, and cheese Sambusak. It is the same dough but the shape is different. As the Italians will tell you, the shape is important as it seems to give different tastes to pasta.

1 h 50 min 6 à 8

For the dough

420 g flour

1 tsp castor sugar

15 g dried yeast

40 ml sunflower oil

1 tsp sea salt

180 ml hot water

1 tsp nigella seeds (if you are making the cheese or the mushroom filling)

1. In a large bowl, put the flour, sugar, dried yeast, and sunflower oil (add the nigella seeds if you are making the cheese or mushroom fillings). Mix together. Add the salt and then slowly add the hot water to make a sticky dough.

2. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for about 5 to 10 minutes. Alternatively, use the dough hook on your food processor and knead for 5 minutes.

3. Put a little olive oil around the dough, cover, and leave to rise in a warm place for 1 to 1.5 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.

4. Make the filling or fillings you want.

65

78 11. Place the balls into the prepared Put 4 uncooked eggs in their shells 12. 12. Cover the pot with a tight-fitting 13. 13. Put the pot in the oven and 14. 14. Serve with the crushed tomatoes ****).

Jachnun

Jachnun is a substantial Yemenite bread and is most often served with grated tomato (see page ***) and Zhug (see page ***) on Saturdays as part of the Sabbath brunch. Observant Jews who don’t cook on Saturdays place a tightly covered pan of Jachnun in a barely warm oven on Friday night and slow-bake it until Saturday when it is then served for lunch. Some parts of the bread will be buttery and chewy whilst the middle is soft. The smell of this bread slowly cooking overnight is one of my favourite memories from childhood. Opening the pot in the morning is a wonderful moment.

2 h 30 min and 12 h to cook overnight 10

1 kg all-purpose flour

100 g light brown sugar

10 g baking powder

3 tbsp honey

1 tbsp of salt

700 ml warm water

2 tbsp olive oil (more if needed for coating the balls and keeping your hands oily when working with the dough)

100 g unsalted butter

4 eggs

prepared pot. Finish with a layer of greaseproof paper. shells on top. tight-fitting lid. and leave for 12 hours.

tomatoes (see page ****) and Zhug (see page

1. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, honey, and salt into a large bowl and mix together.

2. Add water gradually to make a pliable dough.

3. Knead the dough for 2 or 3 minutes.

4. Cover and put aside for 5 minutes.

5. Stretch the dough on a lightly floured surface and then fold to make a round parcel. Cover with cling film and leave for 1 hour.

6. Cover your hands and the ball of dough with olive oil. Separate the dough into ten balls.

7. Preheat the oven to 100°C.

8. Line a deep oven-proof pot with greaseproof paper and cover with a thin layer of olive oil. If you have some, you can add a few slices of normal bread to act as a base for your dough.

9. ake each ball and, using a rolling pin, start to flatten them as much as you can. Put some oil on your fingers and pull the dough into a very thin pancake. If you can see the worktop through the pancake, you are doing it perfectly.

10. Once the flat pancake is made, spread some of the softened butter over it. Fold the longest sides into the middle. Then, take the narrow edge and fold it into a tight roll. Don’t worry too much about this process. The objective is to get the dough as thin as you can and to make rolls so the bread is layered.

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Rem erciements

De nombreuses personnes ont contribué à la réalisation de ce livre, mais je tiens tout particulièrement à remercier Michelle Poskin des Éditions Racine qui a cru en moi encore et encore. Je remercie mon incroyable partenaire, Tim Grosvenor, sans qui ce livre n'aurait jamais vu le jour. Merci pour les heures de travail et le soutien que tu m'as apporté pendant toutes ces années. Un merci très spécial également à Nathalie Bruart. Tu es extraordinaire.

Merci à mon équipe de Kitchen 151 et en particulier à Omer Zernitsky Dromi pour son incroyable savoir technique.

Et bien sûr, un énorme merci à toute ma famille qui m'a aidé et soutenu tout au long de ces années.

Textes : Simona El-Harar, Tim Grosvenor

Traduction : Nathalie Bruart

Conception graphique et mise en page : Nathalie Jolie - www.visucy.com www.racine.be

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Éditions Racine, Tour & Taxis - Entrepôt Royal Avenue du Port, 86C / bte 104A B-1000 Bruxelles

1er tirage D. 2022. 6852. 16

Dépôt légal : juillet 2022 ISBN 978-2-39025-196-5 Imprimé en Europe

176

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Street Food

Contents

Legends

Sabich

Aubergine Burger

Roasted Chickpeas and Cumin

Roasted Almonds

Green Tahini

Pickles

Labneh

Sambusak

For the dough

Jachnun

Rem erciements