Ottolenghi’s Lamb Kofta with Corn, Zucchini & Roasted Carrot Salad and Homemade Hummus – easy, vibrant and summery, with pomegranate molasses and feta.  Jump to Recipe 

I type this from the sun-lit, flower-adorned kitchen table of our new place in Melbourne.

Dining chairs remain on the to-do list, so an assorted collection of our desk chairs surround the table, any TV watching is currently from the floor, a few cardboard boxes linger to attempt to squeeze into the recycling, and the walls are freshly blank – but it is home base. For the year, or maybe longer – my first experience at living in a home that is not also my family’s, the first go at renting a house. Being more adult and no longer spoon-fed by the organised life of college and living in a building occupied by 300 other student – the freedom of having more of your own space than the 3 x 2m brick room filled up by a non-descript bed and desk. Don’t get me wrong, college was an incredible experience that I wouldn’t change – but I was definitely ready to move on. College food is finally in the past (a big bonus!) and one of my favourite belongings, my Kenwood, proudly occupies the new kitchen. It all feels very grown up.

(In saying that, I do have matte-grey pineapple wall-paper stickers adorning the wall above my bed – so maybe not quite so grown up yet..)

Moving house is strange: trying to find your feet in unfamiliar rooms, and with people who are your friends – but not your siblings or parents. I was lucky to have the best house-mate ever help me out with furniture shopping and IKEA flat-pack assembly, which would have been a major challenge on crutches. Flat-packing isn’t my biggest strength, I quickly discovered. Although reading the instruction manuals wasn’t a challenge, the big arrows pointing to which screw should go where, and which side should face each way, I kept trying to do everything too quickly, assuming I knew it all – and then would come to a grinding halt when I missed essential points in the assembly of my bed, or bedside table – only realising when it didn’t fit together properly, or was extremely asymmetric.

Fortunately, most of my mistakes were reversible – or at least, nothing has collapsed on me yet.

Much of my cooking is going to need to become significantly more budget friendly as well. So far it has gone well: cheap summer roasted tomato pasta with grilled zucchini, a vietnamese ginger chilli chicken with soba noodles, a quick leftovers shakshuka. It is made easier simply by the fact that I am no longer cooking for effectively 8 people as at home – by the time the insane appetite of my three brothers is taken into account, anything becomes expensive. Cooking for three girls is far more managable.

These middle-eastern lamb kofta with corn, zucchini & roasted carrot salad and homemade hummus were on the table last week. The salad relies on seasonal fresh ears of corn and zucchini, pan-fried or grilled, tossed with caramelised, warm roasted carrot and brightened with coriander, feta and a pomegranate molasses dressing. Ottolenghi’s spiced lamb kofta are brilliant – a middle-eastern version of a meatball, sweetly scented with cinnamon and all-spice and given a kick with fresh chilli and herbs. Pinenuts are an optional extra – they taste amazing if they fit your budget, but if not – take them or leave them. Homemade hummus, lemon and garlicy, rounds it all off, and it only takes a few minutes to transform your humble can of chickpeas (or dried, if you are a purist) in your food processor.

Cook’s notes (and budget tips):

• For faster evening assembly, make the kofta mixture the morning of or earlier whenever you have time and store in the fridge uncooked until just before meal-time.
• Hummus can also be made in advance.
• New tip from one of the girls in my house: buying feta for a few is MUCH cheaper (at least in Australia) when bought from the supermarket deli, rather than the prepackaged brands. It might not be quite so fancy, but enough for this meal might only cost $2. For other meals, the same goes with chicken.
• The lamb kofta are more easily cooked on a barbecue flat plate for ease, space and heat – but can be cooked in a pan if necessary. The zucchini can also be grilled on the barbecue rather than a pan.

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Charred kale and asparagus with freekeh, pine nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate, currants, creamy goats cheese and seared lamb – healthy and fast.  Jump to Recipe 

Can too much choice become a bad thing? Is there a point where our culture of wanting “the best” for everything, whether it be the best restaurant experience, the best blender, the best book, the best meal, the best job, heck, the best partner, couples with the insane number of options right at our fingertips, to become crippling?

Amongst the current exams (one to go!), I have been reading Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari, a hilarious take on dating and relationships in the age of texting and social media, along with observations that relate to pretty much every other facet of our modern, screen-devoted lives. SO GOOD. Just about every page had a smile on my face, and this passage particularly resonated:

(on trying to pick somewhere to eat in a new city)
“First I texted four friends who travel and eat out a lot and whose judgement on food I really trust. While I waited for recommendations from them, I checked the website Eater for its “Heat Map”, which includes new, tasty restaurants in the city. I also checked the “Eater 38”…then I checked reviews on Yelp to see what the consensus was on there. I also checked an online guide to Seattle in GQ magazine. I narrowed down my search after consulting all these recommendations and then went on the restaurant websites to check out the menus.

At this point I filtered all these options down by tastiness, distance, and what my tum-tum told me it wanted to eat.

Finally, after much deliberation, I made my selection: Il Corvo, a delicious Italian place that sounded amazing. Fresh made pasta. They only did three different types a day. I was very excited.

Unfortunately it was closed. It only served lunch.

By now I had run out of time because I had a show to do, so I ended up making a peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich on the bus.”

It made me more aware of how much we focus on getting the best thing, the new thing. I am sure that the number of hours a day I spend online, fairly aimlessly, would be eye-watering – and I am not sure whether it results in greater enjoyment – being never quite satisfied with what we have.

However, I am not saying these increased choices are a bad thing at all, or that I want to be transported back to 50 years ago. For example, when my parents were growing up in small town New Zealand, the majority of the ingredients in this Spring Greens & Grains Salad were simply unavailable. Pomegranate, kale or goats cheese? Heck, even asparagus or pinenuts? Think again. Dinnertime was limited to potatoes, red meat, steamed vegetables, with rice puddings as regular desserts. I don’t know whether you can miss something that you have never experienced, but I can’t help but feel my life is fuller for creating food and watching people enjoy it, and more recently through blogging and making connections with you guys through this little (or big, maybe!) online food world.

Like many things, I think there must be balance. Getting the best parts of social media and the internet while attempting to avoid the worst (hello, procrastination), would be a start for me. Would highly recommend Aziz Ansari’s book!

Onto this salad, though. Very green and springlike, it is full of charred kale and asparagus, pops of pomegranate, toasted pinenuts, almonds and pumpkin seeds, a hint of sweetness from currents, lots of parsley and mint, nutty freekeh to bulk it out, and topped with creamy chunks of goat’s cheese and seared lamb. Actually pretty quick to throw together, works perfectly as leftovers (nothing soggy here!) and is healthy to boot. Seriously, get on it.

Apologies also for taking so long to reply to your comments on my last post (this banana bread) – I have been smack bang in the middle of exams and just haven’t had much time. But the last one is tomorrow-  cannot wait to be finished!

The post Spring Greens & Grains Salad with Seared Lamb & Goats Cheese appeared first on The Brick Kitchen.

Middle-Eastern Harissa Lamb Salad with roast cauliflower, warm baby carrots,  fennel, broad beans, herbs, coriander yoghurt and harissa. Jump to Recipe 

A crazy two weeks of cooking has just occurred in the Brick household.

This Rhubarb Caramel Pistachio cake, these Greek Chicken Souvlaki and Cypriot Grain Salad, both sesame and cinnamon raisin bagels, blueberry and lemon scones, pork meatball banh mi, pear and chocolate crumble, harissa chicken with bulghar wheat and hummus, a rhubarb, raspberry and almond tart, cinnamon-date-walnut brioche scrolls… the list goes on. And on.

Mum is getting increasingly concerned about our waistlines.

The other relevant news to this post (which I am hugely excited about), is that we are leaving for a two-week family holiday to Turkey tomorrow! Besides the 24-hours spent crammed into economy plane seating each way (why is NZ so far away from everything?!), I cannot wait to explore Istanbul (fun fact, Istanbul is the 5th largest city in the world – I had no idea!), hot-air balloon over Cappadocia, spend a day sailing off the Turquoise coast, see the thermal pools of Pamukkale, wander the ruins of the ancient city of Troy, visit Gallipoli in the 100th year anniversary of World War I, and eat. Make that lots of eating. Turkish food today is rooted in the culture of the Ottoman empire, which was founded in 1299 and only collapsed in the aftermath of World War I, and placed a large importance on food in daily life. Because of factors like Turkey’s geographic location, the migration of its people from far East Asia, and the vast spread of the Ottoman Empire and its control of the spice trade, Turkish cuisine is a fusion of many, including Asian, Middle-Eastern, Mediterranean, North African and Western European, while the food in each region also has particular defining characteristics and dishes. Culinary lore even identifies Turkish food as amongst the three greatest cuisines in the world – the others are French and Chinese.

You can be sure that in the next few weeks there will be many recipes on here inspired by these upcoming food experiences! I will also be adding a ‘Travel’ tab to the top menu, which will serve as a photo-diary of our time in Turkey with recommendations of what to see and where to eat – and as a record for me to look back on in future. If anyone has any tips on travelling with a DSLR camera, please let me know – it is the first time I have travelled with it and want to look after it well!

I had to experiment with a bit of Turkish-slash-Middle-Eastern food before I left (of course!), and so made this Middle Eastern Harissa Lamb Salad, adapted from the amazing Engine Room cookbook. Tender, slow cooked lamb shanks are paired with crispy-edged roasted cauliflower florets and warm baby carrots, slivers of fennel, broad beans, the sharp flavours of coriander and mint, a cool coriander yoghurt base, a pomegranate molasses dressing, salty pieces of feta, and drizzles of spicy, fragrant harissa. It sounds like a lot, but trust me – it works. I could eat it all day. For many, many days.

It does take a wee bit of work, but it is worth it, I promise. Make the harissa paste ahead (or buy a reeeaally good quality one from a specialty food store or market), cook the lamb shanks earlier in the day, prep the dressing and coriander yogurt – and then all you need to do is put it all together before you eat. If you want to seriously wow people – this is your meal.

The harissa that I used is an adaptation of a recipe of Al Brown’s, which is a relatively mild and very fragrant paste. There are certainly many other recipes out there with a lot more chili, but I like this one as the heat doesn’t overwhelm the other flavours. The recipe below makes a lot more than you need for this salad, but it makes a perfect marinade for chicken or lamb, can be served as a dip, on toast, in sandwiches, with hummus, in yogurt, with pasta, as a salad dressing – you name it!

I also served it with freshly baked turkish pide – a leavened flat-bread (similar to the Italian focaccia) that works perfectly to mop up all of the flavours in the salad. The recipe will be going up next week with my favourite creamy hummus recipe (and hopefully a few photos of Turkey!).

Anyway, do give this recipe a go. For a dinner party, for friends, for your family, or just yourself – the melding of tender lamb, soft spices, mellow yogurt, the pop of pomegranate, fresh herbs, warm roasted vegetables and crusty Turkish bread is very (very) hard to beat. Dad even thought this might just be the best meal I have ever made (and there have been a lot!).

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Middle Eastern inspired chermoula lamb skewers with tabouli, hummus and pita – the perfect healthy meal in a bowl and a great way to cook barbecued lamb. Jump to Recipe   

Beyond excited right now. Mainly because Dad is here for the weekend (!!!) – arriving in about an hour, to be exact, so pretty soon I will be getting in my little car and driving off to the airport to pick him up. Lots of eating (planning Chin Chin, Hammer and Tong, The Kettle Black… any other thoughts on best Melbourne eats??), wandering (or running, actually, knowing Dad), and hopefully a bit of shopping in there as well. An action packed 1.5 days in Melbourne, that I am sure of!

The other reason for my excitement is sharing this AMAZING recipe with you: say hello to these Middle-Eastern Chermoula Lamb Skewers with tabouli, homemade hummus and pita. The lamb is marinated in this blow-your-mind coriander-parsley-paprika-cumin-ginger-lemon-garlic Chermoula mixture, and then threaded onto skewers and chargrilled on the barbecue until medium-rare. Serve with this fresh and vibrant tabouli, smooth and creamy chickpea hummus, and warm crispy-edged pita breads fresh out of the oven. SO good.

Also: Mother’s Day is this Sunday! Unfortunately I won’t be with my Mum for this one, seeing as she will be in NZ and I will be here, but if I WERE home, I would make this dinner for her. So if you are looking for something special to do for your Mum, make this meal, and I promise you she will love you for it. Something a little bit special, a little bit different, and a lot full of flavour and love. Then follow up with dessert (maybe these make-ahead Chocolate Brownies or these night-before Passionfruit Pavlovas) to finish off your day. (To my Mum, if you are reading this: I will definitely be making this again for you when I am home in June!)

Back to the recipe though. How many of you out there have made your own hummus before? If you haven’t, you are missing out. Way, WAY better than the store-bought stuff. This is the quickest, easiest, healthiest, and best tasting hummus I have ever tried, and all you have to do is pop a few ingredients in a food processor, whiz it up, and BAM: you have your own batch of thick, smooth hummus to do with what you will. You can serve it on its own, with pita, bread or vegetable sticks or dipping, keep a batch in the fridge to smear on sandwiches, or with any meat you like. It can also be flavoured in many different ways: I personally prefer the classic lemony-garlic, perhaps with a little paprika and parsley, but you can easily add anything you like – chili flakes, coriander, sumac, za’atar, sun-dried tomatoes or roasted capsicum for a red swirl, roasted beetroot for a deep pink colour, spinach and feta…the list is endless!

So. Go ahead and make these Middle Eastern bowls of Chermoula Lamb Skewers, Tabouli, Hummus and Pita – it might require a quick trip to the supermarket, but its deliciousness will make your day, and your Mum’s too.

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