Couscous Salad with Ras-el-Hanout and 'Kofu'

When I don't travel in the Middle East, I am trying to bring the Middle East to my home - or to my plate, to be more precise. With my bag full of spices from Spice Kitchen UK, part of their Brand Ambassador Programme, I am bringing the rich world of flavour of the East to my West-Berlin kitchen. 

And there are many opportunities coming to my door, almost begging me to take them, prepare them and further share them with my readers. A couple of weeks ago, I've purchased from a local store Kofu, produced in Berlin, using the culinary wisdom of Israel. It is a special kind of tofu, using chickpeas flour. Available in different variants, including simple, mine was the falafel-one, which means that it has the usual spices used for the preparation of this special Oriental dish. I am generally very skeptical when it comes to the non-Asian attempts of producing tofu - I've tried way too much from the Bio sortiment and none was really satisfactory compared to the usual original results. Kofu seems to be a completely different story with an unique taste, not necessarily the usual soybean one, but healthy, smooth and adaptable enough to a variety of ingredients and dishes.

Another great discovery I had is that there is a before and after using Ras-el-Hanout in your couscous everything. This spice made of dozen of ingredients - among which cardamom, rose petals, paprika salt, ginger, coriander, cloves and turmeric, to mention only few of them - gives actually THE taste to the couscous. All the other occassions when you had this typical Moroccan dish are past and not a very glorious one. Ras-el-Hanout brings flavour, strength and unique memories to your plate. With every single bite of my couscous dish I felt like being back from a long - foodie - sleep. All the years when I only added salt, or only za'atar were a nightmare, as nothing compares to taste revelation of a couscous done right. Feel free to try by yourself and you will experience by yourself this unusual enthusiasm. 

The salad I prepared is easy, can be prepared in less than one hour and can be eaten both cold and warm, alone or in combination with meat - preferably chicken, in the summer as during the winter, as part of the lunch or the dinner menu. It suits the vegan or vegetarian, the healthy mother or child.

Ingredients

- 1 cup couscous

- 1/4 cup tablespoon cooking oil

- 2 medium-size eggs, beaten

- 10 small can champignons, halved

- 1/2 tablespoon Ras-el-Hanout spice

- 1 pinch salt

- 1/2 cup lemon zest

- 2 medium-size tomatoes, finelly cut

- 125 gr. Kofu Falafel-flavored tofu, cubed

Directions

In a medium-sized pan, add the oil, and let it fry, at least 10 minutes before starting to cook, at 250C. Add the couscous and eggs and 1 cup water and stir slowly. Add the Ras-el-Hanout and salt and lemon zest, and keep mixing every couple of minutes.

On another pan, slowly fry first the champignons and on another, the cubed Kofu. You can either fry them deep or just warm them a little bit. Once ready, add them to the bowl. 

In the bowl, add the couscous, the tomatoes and the other ingredients and mix them well.

Your healthy meal is ready!

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking: 30 minutes

Serves: 3

Bon Appétit!

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Spicy Sweet Potatoes with Onions and Zucchini

It started as an experiment: I was trying to match my heavily spicy hamburgers. Although an easy tomatoes and cucumber salad would have been enough, I was ready for some more spices. This time, added to my plate of veggies.

Ingredients
- 3 big sweet potatoes, peeled
- 3 scallions, chopped
- 1 big zucchini, cut into rounds
- 1 medim-size white onion, finelly chopped
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon Ras el-Hanout from Spice Kitchen UK, part of their Brand Ambassador Program
- 2 tablespoon cooking oil

Directions
Preheat the oven at 250C, at least 10 minutes before starting the baking. Add the baking paper to the pan. Add one by one the veggies, and mix them well. Sprinkle the oil, the salt, pepper and the spices. Let it cook until ready, turning the veggies on all sides every 20 minutes or so.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 1h30

I've personally found this mix as a great addition to my meaty plate, but it can also be served as an individual dish. The eclectic Ras el-Hanout - the crown of North African Spices, which includes at least 30 ingredients as diverse as cardamom, anise, ginger, turmeric and nutmeg - adds a complex taste to the dish. It balances the sweetness of the potatoes and diminishes the strong flavor of onions, with a sweet, mild note. Especially recommended to spices' lovers, but also to anyone looking to experiment rich, new flavors. 

Bon Appétit!

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10 Spicy Burgers for Hot Tasty Days

Hot days ask for spices. Lots of them. And long meals eaten outdoors. Grills and barbecues and cold beers and white wines. All the good things in life.

For me, a delicious summer meal should involve meat. And my newly discovered love for spices. A burger, preferably, with a glass of sparkling white wine and some roasted veggies on the side. As simple as that.

Let's start with the meat part, for now. I am a big fan of meat, but consumed moderately - once the week, and only kosher. Which means that sometimes I depend on the available supermarket offer. I am not living in America after all, where the range of kosher meat is amazing and you only need ideas to make all those meaty dish to happen. Before the Jewish High Holidays, I wanted to offer myself a meat overload, in preparation of what was supposed to come. Just to be sure that my stomach is getting ready. 

As a busy mom, frozen burgers are the answer to many serious foodie problems. All you need is to defrost them and add the right ingredients and salad - very easy fresh tomato and cucumber salad, for instance. 

Happy owner of a 10- beef burger pack, I started to build up our star of the lunches for the next days. Luckily, the generous reserve of spices I got from Spice Kitchen UK, part of their Brand Ambassador Program, solved 99,9% of my questions and challenges. 

First, need to defrost the burgers. Therefore, I place them on baking pan for around one hour. 

Meanwhile, the search for the best spices, began. I tried to use at least 8 different spices, spread to every burger. One got a special treatment, as I wanted to try a gourmet variant, with a truffle oil addition. This is the only burger that got some oil, as for the rest, I only used spices.  

I smear the spices on both sides of the burgers, to be sure that the flavors are equally distributed all over. 

Ingredients

I've used the following selection of spices (for each side of the burger, I used 1/4 teaspoon). When not mentioned otherwise the spices were offered by Spice Kitchen UK:

- Fenugreek - was the best surprises. Its hints of roasted maple, which means both a sweet and bitter add, it melted perfectly with the original beef flavor. Note to myself: experience more with this amazing spice.

- Harissa - is a classical Moroccan hot spice, but it cannot get older. Recommended if you love your meat hot and very spicy!

- Aleppo Pepper - it is a very versatile spice, that adds a fruity pleasant note. Pleased to discover it matches meat as nicely as it does with avocado.

- Urfa Biber - it never disappoints when it comes to coming together with meat. It adds that special flavor and balance that goes very well with any kind of meat (tried with turkey and now with beef and nothing to complain about).

- Ras el-Hanout - it is a very rich spice, which has an impressive list of ingredients (from star anise to rose petals, cumin, turmeric, paprika and nutmeg, among many others). It goes very well with foods which are 'neutral' (not with a very strong flavor, such as corn or couscous) and opens up a complex range of tastes and impressions.

- Berbere - it never disappoints when it comes to meat, and I was very happy to reinvent a - despicable at a time - childhood traditional meal. It has a balance of tastes, from very spicy (paprika, black peppercorn, red chilli, garlic), to moderate mild ones (fenugreek and cardamom). 

- Black Pepper - from my own reserve of spices...- as simple as that. Pepper, especially the black one, always adds a particular spicy note to every meal, and to some cocktails too (Bloody Mary, anyone?). I smeared over the burger also 1/2 teaspoon of truffle oil, my purchase from www.viani.de.

- Special Grill Mix - a mix available in the Turkish stores in Berlin, which has: paprika, pepper, chilli, coriander, garlic and celery salt.

Directions

Preheat oven at 250C.

Leave the burgers to cook, while moving them from a side to another every 20 minutes or so.

Serves: 10

Preparation time: 15 minutes+the time requested for the burgers to defrost

Cooking time: 1 hour

Bon Appétit!

Disclaimer: Spices offered for review by Spice Kitchen UK, but the opinions are, as usual, my own.

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Ready for New Spicy Adventures. Avocado Toast with Aleppo Pepper, anyone?

When your mail box smells of fresh spices, you know that you just received something too good to be true! The multi-awarded Birmingham-based company Spice Kitchen UK selected my blog for their Brand Ambassador program and my selection of spices that I want to try for the next weeks and months was sent super fast, with a very responsive and friendly customer service that I rarely experienced, sending updates about the products I've selected and the stages of the delivery.

I've worked previously with this family run company, back in 2013, but since then they grew up and I - hopefully - got more experience in terms of both cooking and understanding flavors, so I am very excited about my next cooking adventures. Stay tunned for a lot of interesting recipes, original or adapted from my very rich collection of cookbooks.

Besides the hand-made spices, they also create award winning teas, which ranges from Earl Grey to Strawberries&Cream. Spice Kitchen UK is also involved in supporting several charities. It also concerned about the environment, as most of the packaging is recycled from other local businesses, in order to reduce the environmental impact and carbon footprint as much as possible.

My package included a very exquisite mix of spices, many of them in my kitchen for the first time: Baharat - a rich Middle Eastern spice mix combining black peppercorns, cadamom, cassia, cloves, coriander, cumin, nutmeg and paprika; Isot Pepper (Urfa Biber) - a dried Turkish pepper with a deep raisin, smokey flavour; Harissa - a fiery North African chill mix with dried red chilli, garlic, coriander, paprika and caraway; Star Anise; Berbere - one of the building blocks of Ethiopian cuisine, combining red chilli, garlic, coriander seeds, fenugreek, black peppercorns, cloves, paprika, onion powder, black cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and salt; Aleppo Pepper - dried chilli flakes wtih a hint of cherry-like fruitiness; Carom Seeds; Sumac; Za'atar - the first time when I will use for the regular cooking other za'atar than the usually one brought to me from Israel; Ras el Hanout - a traditional blend from Morocco, with lots of ingredients such as turmeric, paprika, salt, nutmeg, ginger, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper, cardamom, sugar, all spice, chilli powder, star anise, cloves, rose petals; Fenugreek. 

And yes, my future in the kitchen sounds as amazing as it smells!
What I also liked a lot about the small packages was that there are hints about where to use them, for salads or meats, which is very helpful, especially for those who are wondering how to match them.

Initially I wanted to start my adventure the next week, but as I was in the middle of preparing the breakfast, I couldn't resist to not start already playing with my spices. I began by spreading a discrete pinch of Aleppo Pepper on my avocado toast. And from now on, there will be no other garnish to my avocado toast. 

The fruity, spicy flavor of the pepper - you need to use only a little bit - interacted perfectly with the crunchy texture of the bread and the fatness of the avocado. It makes it into a great balance, bringing it some fruity sparkling that stays with you for longer. 

A great choice and I am happy that I followed my creative mind for trying this combination. My first encounter with Aleppo Pepper, a spice that I wanted to try for such a long time, was also special and can't wait to give more substance to my foodie dreams. 

Disclaimer: Spices offered by Spice Kitchen UK for review, but the opinions are, as usual, my own

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