Chicken Tikka (grilled)

After going to an Indian buffet last week, I wanted to try my own hand at chicken Tikka (not masala). The recipe I used was an amalgamation of several ones I found online:

• 3/4 cups of regular fat yogurt
• 2 tablespoons red masala (homemade paste)
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 tablespoon garam masala
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• pinch of salt (red masala already has a fair bit)
• 1 lb chicken drumsticks

1. Mix Marinated and put in a zip lock bag with chickenr
2. refrigerate for... 8-24 hours? ( I can't remember how long I went for.)
3. Grill over high heat until browned and for about 15 (?) minutes total.

Review: super tasty; a few too many charred spots, though. Maybe let more of the marinade drip off and baste with it during the cooking process?

Chickpea salad (Turkish-inspired)

This was sort of a blend of several salad recipes I had done during Turkish month.
Ingredients:

• 1 cup dried garbanzo beans, cooked
• one tomato
• 3/4 cup chopped parsley
• 1/4 cup chopped mint
• pinch of ground coriander
• 3 tablespoons dressing:  50/50 lemon juice and olive oil with salt and pepper to taste

Preparing the chickpeas:

• soaked for 24 hours
• simmer for one hour

By the end of cooking, many of the garbanzo bean skins were coming off and some of the beans/peas were splitting in half.  Undesirable in my opinion.

In the end, I thought this salad turned out really well: meaty from the beans, fresh with the parsley and interesting flavor with the mint and coriander.

Lentil salad (Salatet Adds)

From Roden's "The new book of Middle Eastern food".

A simple, comforting and filling dish. A good addition to the culinary repertoire.

Red lentil soup with caramelized onions from Aleppo (Syria)

From Paula Wolfert's "The cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean".

Simple and straightforward to make; sufficiently complex in flavor. I must admit that I thought the amount of oil called for to sauté the onions seemed excessively high. However, once the onion mixture was added to the soup it really gave it the perfect boost of flavor.

Black-eyed peas with scallions, walnuts and parsley

From Paula Wolfert's ".... of the Eastern Mediterranean".

This is a dense, meaty salad, with almost a cheesy flavor.  I used the pre-steamed Trader Joe's black-eyed peas, which surely aren't as good as cooking the beans fresh.