Greek Roasted Vegetables & Dijon-Dill Potato Salad

I based this vegetable recipe loosely from a Briam recipe in The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook. It's a greek vegetable casserole with assorted veggies flavoured with olive oil, garlic, oregano and dill. It's supposed to consist mainly of potatoes, tomato and zucchini but I added eggplant, onions, red peppers and carrots. They baked up beautifully.


Served with pita and potato salad. This potato salad is one of my favorites. The dressing is a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, Vegenaise, dijon mustard, whole grain mustard, a pinch of sugar, chopped dill pickles, capers and dill. So tangy and tasty!

Homemade Harissa

Happy Mother's Day! My mom took a shift at work today so she won't be off untill dinnertime when we will order her a pizza. Her request! She's not a fussy lady, she likes everything simple. Pizza is her favorite treat and that's what she'll have. Since I didn't have to cook for her or the family today, I had time to experiment in the kitchen. I was flipping through "The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook" today and came across a harissa recipe. Harissa is a North African chili paste that is fiery hot and flavored with things like cumin, coriander, caraway and mint. I had all the ingredients so I decided to make a jar for the fridge.


Here are all the ingredients: olive oil, red chilies which had been soaking in hot water for an hour, garlic and spices: mint, coriander, caraway and cumin. All of this gets thrown in a food processor.


I guess it depends on what kind of chilies you use to determine what the color will be. Mine was a bright orangey red and I used de arbol chilies.


I filled a little jar which had been washed in hot soapy water and dried in an oven for 20 minutes. It's kind of cool that I made my own. It cost me pennies and it'll last for about 6 months. Now I have this spicy condiment to use with dishes like couscous, soups, Moroccan stews, bean salads and pastas. Here's a good pasta recipe that uses harissa.

Beautiful Beautiful Cookies.

Oh, these are just so beautiful and heavenly. I'm going to a family wedding tomorrow and planned to bring some food and dessert to the reception. I decided on a recipe for Ma'amoul B'Jowz from 'The Essential Mediterranean Cookbook'. As much as I love middle eastern food, I am not an expert and the last time I checked, Ma'amoul were described as shortbread cookies filled with dates or nuts and made with semolina flour. The recipe that I used did not require semolina, only white flour and the nut filling was not encased in the dough but rather filled partially and not covered on the top. So I can't say how authentic this recipe is. If someone knows, please let me know!

Authenticity aside, I have to say these cookies are absolutely gorgeous. They are soft and buttery (I used Earth Balance margarine instead of butter), slightly sweet and scented/flavored with orange blossom water. The walnut/sugar/cinnamon filling makes them all the more perfect. I really hope the wedding guests like them.


I hope I made them as pretty as they are pictured in the cookbook.




I have a Ma'amoul mold so I tried making a few with it. I need to practice as these weren't as pretty. And I think I need to fill them more as you can see there is not much filling inside when I cut it open.