Meurav Yerushalmi = Divine Street Food

Two of my best friends bought me a subscription to my favorite cooking magazine: Saveur. Not only are the recipes and photos stellar, but they really make an effort to find real, authentic, world cuisine. When I saw they had an Afghan recipe in their collection I knew it was true love.

My first issue arrived and had a mouthwatering set of recipes from Jerusalem (which means basically a mixture of Arab cuisines) , including this recipe for "Meurav Yerushalmi" (Jerusalem Mixed Grill). I didn't have chicken livers or hearts on hand, but breast tenders did the trick!

The cast-iron pan is essential to get the real "charred" feel of the street griddle and get the onions golden and crispy instead of soggy.

Instead of the livers and hearts, I modified the recipe a bit and added fried eggplant slices, a mixed tomato-onion-basil relish and tahini sauce! The result was a rich, oily, but decadent dish that was lightened by the lemony tomato relish. (It's tough to avoid oily when you're cooking with eggplant, but you could bake them for a healthier, al beit drier option.) I served it on Trader Joe's frozen naan instead of pita.

I think the tahini and eggplant really put it over the top - the meat & onion mixture recommended by the recipe would have been a bit drier, but still delicious.

The result blew my mind. It is indescribable comfort food. And fun to boot! It's fast, and you feel like a real street chef with everything cooking so quickly in the smoking hot pan.

It's messy, and that's the way I like it.

Meurav Yerushalmi
Griddled chicken breast with crispy fried onions and spices, served on naan with fried eggplant, lemon-garlic tahini sauce, and mixed tomato relish




On an interesting note, it's incredibly similar to an Afghan dish I've featured here before, Do Piaza, but is quicker since it doesn't simmer the meat at all.

Variety Hour: Hummus bi Tahini, Kebab, Sabzi Pilau, and Coffee!

Warning - this is going to be scatter-brained as I'm finally updating with all the things blog-worthy that I've cooked in, wow, over a month! Which has been unfortunately not been a ton =(. School is kind of time consuming, ya know?

First off, I'd like to give credit to Desert Candy's blog for the inspiration for this new attempt at hummus. Reading her blog, I finally realized you have to cook the beans until they are very soft (skins falling off) in order to get that delicious silky-smooth texture that "real" hummus has. The texture was what I always felt my hummus was missing. I guess that's what I get being an Afghan cooking Arab food ;)

Hummus bi Tahini
pureed chickpeas, tahini, garlic, and lemon juice, topped with unfiltered olive oil, sumac, whole chickpeas, and kalamata olives





Definitely leaps and bounds better than hummus I've made in the past! It still needs some tweaking - it could be even more silky...mmm

Unfortunately I made the following dish on a different day - they would have been delicious together!

Kofta Kabob-e-Gusht-e-Gow
Minced beef kabobs flavored with onion, garlic, cilantro, and savory spices, grilled over charcoal and served in flatbread with sliced lemon-juice-marinated red onions, lemon tahini sauce, and spicy yogurt sauce



The grill jockey himself. Aka my buddy Nate who stepped in to help grill =)


Sabzi Pilau
Basmati rice parboiled and baked in the juices of a chicken, spinach, blackeye pea and caramelized onion stew, served with a cherry tomato, cilantro, and red onion salad.



This was a yummy AND cheap meal for the week which kept very well. The method is very similar to all Afghan pilaus - caramelize onions, then add in and sautee meat (typically lamb). When meat is done, add spices (coriander, cardamom, cumin, and cloves or so), then add spinach and blackeye peas. Simmer for half an hour, then pour over parboiled rice and bake for 45 minutes!

This time I tried something a bit different, using black cardamom instead of green. They are actually very different in flavor, but it is commonly used in parts of Afghanistan so I figured I'd give it a shot! It has a really distinctive smoky flavor, and I'm still not sure I liked it in this dish, though I can imagine it growing on me.

In other news, I've become increasingly addicted to coffee.... It really doesn't help that my roommate is a master percolator barista. One of his recent creations, one with milk, one without.

We've also tried grinding up a bit of (green) cardamom and tossing it in with the grounds. Yum. Arab-Italian-Latin American fusion, here we go.

Cafe con Leche y Cafe "Negro"



Really we just liked the colors.

Two Onions....

...and the only thing watering was my mouth. Okay that just sounds awful, but you get the idea? I wasn't drooling into the food, I swear!

I was hungry for a good Afghan treat, but I didn't have a lot of time, so here is an adaptation of a classic rustic Afghan dish:

Do Piazeh (lit: "Two Onions")
Breast of chicken fried with caramelized onions, blackeye peas, turmeric, coriander, cloves, and cardamom, then tossed with fresh red onion soaked in lime juice, served over a bed of mushroom, cilantro, and cinnamon scented couscous and drizzled with lemon-yogurt sauce.







My father actually typically made this dish very similarly - sans the blackeye peas. And of course, no couscous! (Afghanistan does NOT make couscous, but you'll see me use it since it's so easy and tasty.) Traditionally this is served over bread, but we eat it with rice as well.

I was thus a bit confused when I found a recipe for it in my Afghan cookbook, which stated that the meat (lamb) was actually boiled with the red onion first and a bit of split peas, then lifted out of the water when tender and placed on bread with vinegar-soaked yellow onion. I didn't have the time or the lamb to try it this way, but it sounds lovely and very different than the typical Afghan rices and qormas. In any case, this is a kind of quick version that I think is very tasty.

The dish derives its name from the way the "two onions" in the recipe are used - one is cooked (either caramelized in my version or boiled with the meat in the traditional version) and the other is added raw at the end (with a bit of acid to cut the bite).

Needless to say, it was delicious, quick, and has a lot of interesting textures and the contrasting bright flavor from the red onion really lightens the heavy caramelized onion flavor.

What's better than a good wine?

$3 wine students can actually afford to cook with! Trader Joe's Charles Shaw, better known as "two (three in seattle) buck chuck"

Thanks to my sister, I now have a few bottles around - something I'd been missing since I moved out. I don't really drink, so I cook with them instead... that is until I turn around from the stove and notice half the bottle has disappeared into my housemates' mouths. But alas, it's $3, so who cares, open another one and be merry!

It's a nice compromise in quality - they really aren't bad, and give a good wine flavor to dishes. In fact, they are better than most $7-12 wines I've tried cooking with. I do have a nicer bottle lying around that I'm going to experiment (literally) with - comparing a dish cooked with the pricier wine to the same dish cooked with the three buck chuck - a blind test with the help of a few friends.

Once again enjoying the fall produce from the farmer's market, I roasted squashes (a few assorted winter ones) with fingerling potatoes, carrots, red onion, chicken stock, garlic, coriander, fennel seed, lime juice, and a splash of balsalmic vinegar.

Fresh-cracked Black Pepper Rubbed Chicken Tenderloins
quickly braised in red wine and chopped garlic and fire roasted red peppers. Served with lemon roasted fingerling potatoes, winter squash, carrots, and red onions. Garnished with fresh parsley.



The roasted vegetables were probably my favorite part of this dish - a really hearty accompaniment for a cold blustery night's dinner. The lemon and balsamic really came through, giving a lightly sour sweetness to the vegetables, and the chicken stock gave it depth. The squashes, while I was hesitant again since they smelled like pumpkins when I was cleaning them, became delicate and sweet when roasted. The spices didn't seem to do too much, but that worked out just fine.

The chicken tenderloins, while good, came out a bit too peppery! The wine reduction was delicious however.