While still experiencing the heat of the summer, it’s always nice to have a refreshing, light salad to accompany other summer foods. I love this salad not only because I love the addition of lime juice to salads, but I also love sumac, the dried, crushed and ground fruit of the sumac flower typical of the Mediterranean. Sumac also gives a tangy, lemony sort of flavor to dishes so the combination of the two in this salad is so refreshing. If you don’t like that much tang, you can leave either one out or just reduce the amounts.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup Romaine lettuce, shredded
- 1/2 yellow tomato, diced
- 1/8 cup green pepper, diced
- 1 small Persian cucumber (pickle), diced
- 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
- sea salt, to taste
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- extra virgin olive oil
- ground sumac, to taste
- juice of 1/2 lime
Directions
- Wash and thoroughly dry all produce and herbs. ( A salad spinner is a great way to dry fresh herbs and lettuce, but you can also use paper towels or an all-cotton dish towel to remove moisture)
- Cut produce according to ingredient specifications and mix together. If preparing the salad ahead of time, place the salt, pepper and olive oil at the bottom of the salad bowl. Add the produce but refrain from adding the lime juice or sumac on top until just before serving.
- Mix well and serve.
Bismillah and Bon Appetit!
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Farmer’s Market Salad
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Citrus, Dates & Nasturtium Flowers Salad
Tagged as:
Persian cucumbers,
sumac,
summer salads
Raw garlic can be a bit, well, raw. And Strong.
Don’t get me wrong, I love garlic. Maybe a bit too much, actually.
There is a way, however, to soften the taste of garlic and pack a punch of flavor to certain recipes by using oven-roasted garlic in a lot of dishes.
From here on out, I’ll often refer to roasted garlic in many recipes, linking back to this page for you to see how to use it what your dishes. I’ve used it in hummus, tomato sauce, soups, stews & more.
Go ahead- buy that six-pack of garlic at the grocery store and experiment. Unless you burn it, you really can’t ruin this. Just keep an eye on the stove or set your timer. You won’t want to miss all the goodness a bit of roasted garlic can add from here on out.
Ingredients
- Several heads of garlic, skins on and bulbs intact
- olive oil
- dried herbs (optional)
Directions
- Cut about 1/2 inch off the top of each garlic bulb (refer to the pictures to see what it should look like).
- In an oven-proof baking dish, place the garlic heads, cut side facing upwards.
- Generously drizzle olive oil over the top of the garlic heads. If using dried herbs, sprinkle on top.
- Heat in a 350° oven for 25-30 minutes, or until you see a few of the cloves begin to brown slightly.
- Remove from heat and allow to cool.
- Store in an airtight container (glass is best) and keep in the refrigerator. (This cannot be left out on the counter because bacteria can accumulate quickly on the surface of the garlic).
- When ready to use one or more cloves, simply squeeze it out of the skin of the clove and add to your dish. Each clove can be added to raw or cooked foods, as the clove is itself already cooked.
- Roasted garlic heads should keep fresh in your refrigerator for up to two weeks.
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Nudo Olive Oil: Adopt an Olive Tree Program
Mediterranean Spiced Grilled Chicken
A Spanish Iftar
Peppers & Tomatoes Stuffed with Couscous
Tagged as:
garlic,
roasted garlic
It’s a common Mediterranean and Middle Eastern culinary habit to stuff vegetables with a variety of grains such as rice or couscous as well as ground meats or nuts like pistachios. That said, this dish is amazingly versatile. If you don’t have peppers, you can substitute zucchinis or eggplants instead; if you don’t have couscous, try cooked rice or meat as a filling.
What made this dish taste so wonderful to me was the incredible fortune I had to drizzle it with a lemon flavored olive oil by a very cool company called Nudo. Not only do they provide some of the very best olive oil I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve tasted a lot), but they have an amazing program behind their business.
Small scale, artisanal farmers in Italy produce Nudo’s olive oil. They take great care in ensuring that the life cycle of the olive tree is a sustainable form of agriculture, resulting in healthy, pesticide-free olives to make the oil.
They aren’t privy to sitting on the process of oil production, either. For example, the olives are pressed as soon as possible after harvest. This gives you, the consumer, a healthy (non-rancid) product that is packed with flavor. I can explain it only so far with words; until you try it yourself, you may not realy grasp how amazing a lemon or mandarin-orange flavored olive oil can be. Nudo’s is so refreshing, not bitter like others I’ve tried. I’m using it like crazy in salads this summer (more recipes for those soon, inshallah).
Another amazing thing about Nudo is their Adopt an Olive Tree program, of which I’ve never seen anything else of its kind before. You pay for a tree and get a certain amount of olive oil shipped to you from that tree (and others in its grove) each year. The best part? Should you ever desire to actually visit that tree in person, you can do so–and actually water it, hug it or sit by it for a while. I just love that idea!
Some people may argue that if you don’t live nearby the grove, then you aren’t actually supporting local agribusiness and that you’re buying into the large carbon footprint dilemma of mega-consumerism by having the oil shipped. To that I would respond that for one thing, very few folks are afforded the virtue of living close to any type of climate that supports the growth of olives, so if we want olive oil (and who doesn’t, considering all of its health benefits?), then we have to support some business out there. I like this one because there’s a real story, real people, hard-working farmers dedicated to the art of great olive oil production. And if you don’t believe it, why you can just visit the trees yourself…
Makes 6 servings
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ½ yellow onion, minced
- 1/3 cup golden and red raisins
- 2 small carrots, diced
- 1 cup whole wheat couscous (quick-cooking variety)
- 1 cup water
- sea salt, to taste
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 2 large green peppers
- 1 large, round yellow or red tomato
- 6 fresh basil leaves
- 6 fresh mint leaves
Directions
- Preheat the oven at 350°
- In a sauté pan over medium heat, warm the butter. Add the carrots and onions and sauté in the butter until soft, about 3 minutes. Add the raisins and sauté until plump, then add the couscous and water, salt and pepper. Cook for the amount of time according to the couscous package instructions. When it is done, remove from heat and allow to cool.
- Wash and dry the peppers and tomato. Cut each in half, removing all seeds. Pat the insides completely dry.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place peppers and tomatoes face up on the baking sheet, a couple of inches apart.
- Fill each half of the peppers and tomatoes with couscous mixture. Place one basil and one mint leaf on top of each pepper or tomato.
- Drizzle each pepper and tomato with a bit of lemon-flavored olive oil.
- Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until the couscous has begun to brown somewhat, but not dry out. Allow to rest a few minutes, uncovered, before serving.
Tagged as:
Nudo,
olive oil,
stuffed peppers
