Batheeth pies

Wow - haven't posted a recipe in ages. It's silly season again, that's why. Only time for silliness, nothing else. In the midst, I have been preparing some Christmas recipes for Ahlan Gourmet. They are a twist on the original, and bring a little of the Middle East into the traditional English recipes.

The first is Batheeth pies - a replacement to mince pies, which incidently I hate. I love looking at them, but they're so rich and unbalanced that I rarely find one I like. These however I have been eating by the dozen. Batheeth is something I was introduced to by a fellow food blogger -  La Mere Culinaire - at her own home (I wrote about the experience here - fab day, cooking with her mum.) It's a date and spice mix, with flour and ghee to bind. Very commonly seen on Emirati tables - it's very easy to make, and tastes great with a coffee (or gahwa)

Ingredients:

For the batheeth:

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 ½ cups chopped dried dates
• 1 tsp ginger
• ½ tsp cloves
• ¼ cup good quality ghee
• 3 cardamom pods
• pinch salt

Caramel and Chestnut pie

Still in France, and finding it hard to stay gluten and dairy free. But the way I figure it, it's only the kids who are supposed to be on that diet, so I'm allowed to fall off the wagon for a month. I love the pastry available in the supermarket here - there are many kinds, brisée is a shortcrust pastry, and there are also some labeled as pizza pastry. I bought some gorgeous pre-made french puff pastry known here as feuillete. This utilises several ingredients that are easily found in french supermarkets, and now in many gourmet stores around the world. Even my local sells French feuillete by the roll and tinned chestnuts (marron).

Ingredients:

• 100g butter with salt crystals
  
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups prepared chestnuts (can be bought like this in tins or vacuum packs)
• 1 sheet round feuillete pastry
• 1/2 cup cream
• 2 egg yolks
• more caster sugar for sprinkling

Apple Pastries

 There used to be a show on Australian TV called "Surprise Chef". This excitable chef would accost people in supermarkets, force the camera in their face, and then go home with them and put the camera through their pantry and fridge. His aim was to make a gourmet three-course meal for their family with only what he could find there.

Today, I found some gorgeous pink lady apples - the kind that look like they have come straight off a tree and into your basket, ripe, smelling like a glass of apple juice, un-waxed, oddly shaped and un-spectacularly coloured. I had to make an apple pie with no pie pan, and the laziest way possible (children wanted to eat them RIGHT NOW!!!). So I delved into my shelves, and found some condensed milk. "Hmmm...", I thought "Now that will be my challenge ingredient".

So here are the easiest apple pastries ever.

Crunchy prawns with korma dipping sauce

Every once in a while, there is a dish from a restaurant that sticks with me. One evening, about 8 years ago in Melbourne, I dined with my husband at Circa at 'The Prince' in St Kilda. It was fairly soon after it had opened, and it was still well and truly in its hey-day, a food style-leader in Melbourne, and in fact Australia. That night, among other things, I had a prawn dish, with the most perfectly crisp and delicious casing - knaffe pastry. 

Just recently I purchased Suzanne Husseini's new cookbook, and what did I find in there? Prawns with knaffe pastry. Hers are with orange and lemon rind and stuffed with almonds, and they are amazing. Of course, I can't put her recipe here, so I brainstormed a little - I really enjoyed the sweetness of the almonds with the sweetness of the prawn flesh, and that got me thinking about korma.

Korma is a curry sauce that is made with a cream and nut base - either almonds or cashews. But as far as I'm concerned, the almonds just don't cut it for this sauce - cashews are far creamier. Most of the work is done in the blender, so it's super easy to cook.

Za'atar

Living in the Middle East is a dream for a spice lover. It is of course, smack in the middle of traditional spice trails, and the trading hub for all the fragrant and piquant treasures of this world. Baharat, Sumac, Saffron, Cardamom, Oud, Roses, Za'atar. The list goes on. A trip to the spice souk of Dubai is a must for any traveller  (not to buy spices - they are cheaper at the hypermarkets) to immerse oneself in the origins of this port. Dubai started as a trading town, and pearls, spices and gold were the objects of desire, and the Souks still bear hints of the traditional Middle East that has been lost everywhere else in this shiny city.

Za'atar is both Arabic for Thyme, and also the name of a spice blend that includes thyme, and usually marjoram, oregano, sesame, salt and sumac. Here, you can find it everywhere - in plastic packets on the supermarket shelves, in hessian sacks at the souks, on flat bread with melted cheese, in croissants, on the table next to the salt. It's a zingy, herbaceous mix that goes with almost everything - it can be added to a lamb stew, a fish marinade, a breakfast frittata, sprinkled on a pizza, but one of my favourites is simply on pastry, and oven baked for about 10 minutes - it makes a superb finger food, and is wonderful dipped in minted labneh (thick yogurt that tastes a little like tzatziki).

Easy Baclava

I discovered a little about baclava while I was at the Al Samadi Bakery recently - the term "baclava" actually refers to the pastry, not the sweets. It's a super-soft mix that is flattenend, then has more layers of the same placed on top, and then is flattened again and again and again until you get a mille feuille style of multi-layered pastry. They then use this "baclava" to make sweets in hundreds of different ways. 

There is another wonderful style of pastry that abounded in the factory, and that was knafe (or kanafe) - pastry made up of hundreds of threads that can be pulled apart and moulded any which-way. Like Baclava, the pastry has given the dish its name, and if you type kanafe into a search engine, you will get hundreds of recipes for the wonderful arabic cheese-filled desert pie. 

And do you know the wonderful thing? We can buy both pastries in the freezer at the local supermarket (but baclava is better known as 'filo'). So here is how you make it the easy way:

Party pies for adults

I love cooking for parties. It is the kind of food I really excel at - tit-bits that can combine my love of fusion food, and my desire to cheat at every corner. I make one hell of a Peking duck pancake, and my canapes (I reserve that title for anything on a biscuit or piece of Melba toast) are inventive and delicious. But (beside it not falling into the category of fusion food), this is my new favourite cheat. I served them at my husband's birthday party last week, and they disappeared before the steam ceased rising off them.