Black Bean Soup

One of the best things to break your fast on is soup!

I adapted this recipes from here.

Ingredients:

• 1 T olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 3/4 cup chopped carrots
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 29 oz. can of black beans
• 2 cups of water with 2 tbsp. soy sauce (a substitution for the beef broth)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. chili powder
• 1/2 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. dry oregano leaves
• 1 bay leaf.

So my soup turned out a bit salt (I like salty, so it worked out). In order to avoid saltiness you can rinse the beans very well and just overall cut down on the salt. 

Also, this is more of a thick soup. :-)

Directions:

1. Warm up a pot on the stove. Once warm add the olive oil. Then add the carrots, onions, and garlic. Saute for 4-5 minutes.
2. Throw in the black beans and beef broth. (I also added a bit of this chili pepper/tomato mix my mom made).
3. Stir and add all the spices.
4. Leave uncovered and simmer for 20-25 minutes. Add water if the mixture becomes thick.  It is finished when carrots are tender.
5. Let cool. Remove bay leaf and puree in blender. 

Top the soup with cilantro, basil, cheese, sour cream and so on..

Enjoy :-)

Anyone have any other soup recipes I should try out?

Pesto-Yogurt Chicken

I found this in a random magazine. As I was making it, I was kind of skeptical, but it turned pretty good!

Ingredients-Pesto (makes a little more than you need, but pesto never goes to waste!)

• 2 cups basil-packed
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 2/3 cup oil
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix ingredients in food processor or blender until well blended.

For the rest of the recipe you are only going to need 3/4 a cup of pesto.

Pesto-Yogurt Ingredients (makes 2.25 cups):

• 3/4 cup pesto
• 1.5 cups Greek yogurt (I used the Arab Labne)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Just mix the ingredients!

You only need 2 cups for the recipe. So I would suggest making a small amount less. I also didn't add salt and pepper, but I do suggest you add some flavoring. I cooked the chicken according to the recipe and then tried it. It tasted a bit bland so I had to improvise by adding spices and cheese later. It might help to add the spices from the get go.

Finally, the rest of the ingredients:

• 2.5-3 lbs. chicken
• salt and pepper
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1tbsp. olive oil
• 2 cups pesto-yogurt sauce
• Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Clean up chicken and cut up into slices like picture above.
2. Sprinkle salt on a cutting board and cut up the cloves of garlic. This is supposed to make a paste. It didn't work for me. 
3. Mix oil, pesto-yogurt sauce, salt, and pepper. 
4. Marinate chicken overnight.
5. Pre-heat oven to 425F.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.
7. Take out, sprinkle with salt and pepper and Parmesan cheese. Bake for an additional 5 minutes or until cheese browns.  

Safiha (Meat Pie)

So by far is this is my favorite Arab food. It is sooo good! Me and my mom worked together to make this. Of course the recipe is all hers :-)

This is not an easy food to make. It takes a lot of time and energy, but it is really good.

First, you need to get the dough ready.

Ingredients:

• 1 packed highly active yeast (20.8g), 6.5 tsps.
• 3/4 tsp. sugar
• Warm water
• 4 cups flour
• 1 tbsp. salt
• 2 tbsp. honey
• 1 egg
• 1/2 vegetable oil
• 1 cup warm milk

Ready to learn how to make dough?

1. Pre-heat oven, just so it warms up a bit. 
2. In an average sized cup, mix yeast and sugar. Add warm water almost to the top.
3. Leave in warm oven for 10 minutes.
4. During this time, mix flour, salt, and honey in a big round pan.
5. In a blender mix egg and oil. Once mixed, add milk (can warm milk, by putting it in microwave for a little bit).
6. Once the yeast is ready you can start. Take pan that has flour in it,k make a hole in the middle of the flour, and pour yeast. 
7. Start kneading and mixing mixture.
8. Start adding egg/milk mixture slowly.
9. Keep kneading and kneading. Your hands will get sticky, but if the dough is good your hands will get clean of dough as you go.
• If your hands are still sticking and all the ingredients are mixed, add a small amount of water.
• If the dough seems to be hard and dry, add water.
10. Take a big pot, and add some oil to it. Take dough and round into a ball and place in pot. Take a small cloth or towel and water. Squeeze any access water out and place over pot to cover.  Put pot in pre-warmed oven. Make sure to put something under the pot so the oven doesn't cook the dough from the bottom.
11. Leave in warm oven for an hour to let it rise! 
12. It should double in size. The dough looked like this after an hour:

While you wait for the dough you can make the meat mixture.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. ground beef
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 medium tomato, finely chopped (I mean really fine)
• 2 tbs. pomegranate molasses
• 2 tsps. salt
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1/2 cardamon
• Any other spices you would like! Just keep in mind the other spices have a slightly sour taste, so you might not want to put too much spices. Keep it simple!

You can also prep your pans. Just put a little bit of oil and spread it all over the pan, to make sure it is evenly covered.  

Now comes the fun part! :-)

Clean off a flat surface that you can work on.

1. Break off a piece of the dough. DO NOT KNEAD IT.  Just grab a small softball sized piece of the dough.

2. Sprinkle some flour on the surface. Put dough on surface and use your hands to make it flat. Don't stretch the dough. The purpose of this is just so it is easier to roll.

3.Then use a rolling pin to roll the dough until it is very thin. Start in the middle and roll out.  Keep doing this until the dough is even. You don't want it so thin such that you can see through it. I am not sure if you can see the thickness, but it is probably half a centimeter.

4.  Then use a round cup with even edges to cut the dough into small circles.  Make sure you cut down really deep so it is completely cut off from the rest of the dough. 

5.  Take each circle. Either with your hand or the rolling pin and make it thin if it isn't already. Then add some of the meat mixture in the middle and thin it out. Like this:

So you want to make a triangle. So take one side and do this:

Then the other:

Then the other:

Make to press down, so it won't open up in the oven. You also want to make a sure a decent amount of the meat is showing so it cooks. 

Put it in a pan and make sure it is covered like this:

This way the dough doesn't dry out.

When you finish about a tray, you can pre-heat the oven to 500F. As for the placement of the racks. One should be at the very bottom, and one two stubs down from the top.

6.  Place the tray on the bottom rack and bake for around 7 minutes or until the bottom of the pie is browned.

7. Switch the tray to the top rack and bake for about 3 or 4 minutes. Or until the top is browned.

8. Take out of the oven, eat, and enjoy!

It goes really well with the Middle-Eastern salad Tabloeh.

Twitter!!

Hello!
I decided to make a twitter for this blog:

http://twitter.com/#!/SavoryEdibles


So if you have Twitter please follow! Retweet recipes to your followers and so on.

I will also use it to post updates when I making something, or to ask people what I should make with random ingredients I have.


Oh! If you are not following this blog, please do! You can do so, by pressing the "Join this Site" button on the right hand side, under the followers module.

I am also about to update with a very tasty recipe, so look out for it!

Chocolate Sheet Cake

I was fasting and felt like baking so of course I would bake a chocolate cake. I found the recipe here.

Cake Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 2 sticks butter
• 4 tablespoons cocoa (don't be stingy, heaping spoonfuls!)
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (I didn't have any so I made a cup by putting 1 tablespoon lemon juice and added 1 cup of milk, cake turned out well!)
• 2 whole beaten eggs
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F.
2. Put some on water on the stove to boil.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt.
4. In a saucepan, melt butter. Add cocoa and stir. So at this point I accidentally added the baking soda. the cake seemed okay, but you probably shouldn't add it here.
5. Add boiling water. Allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds. Then turn off heat.
6. Add to flour mixture and stir. Keep saucepan to use later for the frosting!
7. In a small bowl, add eggs and beat. Add buttermilk, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir.
8. Add buttermilk mixture into chocolate mixture.
9. Pour into cake into a 18X13 sheet cake pan.
10. Bake for 20 minutes!

Now on to the frosting! It takes just about 20 minutes, so you can pour it right on the cake as it comes out.

Frosting Ingredients

• I used 1/4 cup ground pecans.
• I really didn't feel like chopping pecans so I put it in the coffee grinder and ground them up. There were some big pieces.
• 10.5 tbsps. butter
• 3 tablespoons cocoa (don't be stingy!)
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Grind pecans.
2. melt butter in sauce pan, add cocoa and stir. Turn off heat.
3. In bowl mix milk, vanilla, powdered sugar, and cocoa mixture. Stir.
4. Pour over warm cake.

Enjoy :-)

Pesto

So lately I have been growing basil, cilantro, and parsley. And the basil grows like crazy!

This is what my garden looked like starting out:

Then a couple weeks later:

So I was thinking to myself I have all this basil what can I possibly make?

PESTO PASTA.

I always thought it was very hard to make. Turns out it is mad easy! You just need to have the right ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups basil (loosely packed if you want a creamy pesto, or tightly packed if you want something not as creamy)
• 3/4 cup Parmesan Cheese (fresh or the kind in the container)
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 pine nuts
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp parsley

Directions:

If you have a food processor you can just throw everything in there until it becomes creamy. If you don't, you can a blender. That is what I did. You just have to make sure you occasionally move things around to make sure everything gets hit by the blade.

So now you can use the pesto sauce for anything.

I put it on pasta:

If you have leftover chicken you can always shred it and add it too.

You can also use it as a drip for sandwiches.

Also! You can save it for later use. Just put in a container and add some olive oil on top and put in the freezer.

Enjoy!!