I’m not long back after 9 days staying with my sister-in-law Rachel in Dubai. This time I managed to get several opportunities to eat middle eastern food (mostly Lebanese) which was great as I love it. The only middle eastern cook book I have is a slim little paperback A Middle Eastern Feast by Claudia Roden. This is a lovely little book which has an interesting introduction to middle eastern food and how she came to write the book. I’m planning to try quite a few recipes from this book. The main drawbacks of this book are the lack of index and pictures.
I came across Dukkah when I went out shopping one morning with Rachel and we stopped off at a lovely cafe called the Lime Tree for breakfast. I opted for the local breakfast and got fresh Arabic (flat) bread, 2 boiled eggs, 3 Lebnah (soft cheese) balls with different coatings and 2 little dishes, one with olive oil and one with Dukkah. As Claudia explains in her book Dukkah is a loose mix of nuts and spices in a dry crushed but not powdered form usually eaten with bread dipped in olive oil. I have no idea whether you would normally dip hard boiled egg into Dukkah for breakfast but I dipped my egg in as well and it was delicious. I divided Claudia’s recipe by 10 ! as I really don’t think I’d get through the sort of quantities she suggested. My quantities are below.
Ingredients
- 50g sesame seeds
- 25g coriander seeds
- 15g hazelnuts
- 2 tsps ground cumin
- pinch salt
- little ground pepper
Instructions
- Roast or grill the ingredients separately
- Pound together until finely crushed but not pulverised
- Store in a jar
100 Cook Books 