I have been cooking several dishes from “Jerusalem” by Yotam Ottolenghi – and I have been exploring Turkish food. There is more connection between the 2 than you might think because Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman empire for centuries, and a lot of the culinary traditions are still alive there.
At any rate one of my favorite things from Jerusalem is a chunky salad with a side of chick-peas, and optionally some kofta on the side. Kofta (in Turkish, köfte) is basically meat-balls. Kofta b’siniyah is a particularly good one, made of lamb with veal or beef, and notably including pine nuts. The spices mixed with the lamb include cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, black pepper, and salt. Chopped parsley, garlic, and hot chilis are also mixed with the meat. Sometimes Kofta is cooked on skewers but these are fried. This is on page 195 of Jerusalem, and with it he suggests the salad on page 56.
The salad on 56 is called “Spiced chickpeas & fresh vegetable salad.” One thing I love about it is that he specifies a 2/3 inch or 1.5 cm dice, which is unusually large but works really well, somehow opening your mouth more helps to make the ingredients taste fresher and stronger. You dice up cucumbers, tomatoes, red radishes, and a red bell pepper. You also dice a red onion but a little smaller, 1/4". And you chop up a batch of cilantro and parsley.
One thing that makes this salad a little Turkish is that the dressing is very lemony. It includes the grated zest of a lemon plus 2 TB of lemon juice, plus 1.5 TB of sherry vinegar, 1 clove of garlic, crushed, and 1 tsp of fine sugar with about 5 TB of olive oil. Shake all of that in a jar until emulsified and pour over the salad and toss. Mmm, tasty!
Then you take a cup or so of cooked chickpeas – drain them rather dry. On a big plate combine 1 tsp ground cardamom, 1.5 tsp of ground allspice, 1 tsp ground cumin (I use toasted cumin). Roll the chickpeas around to coat with spices and then fry for a couple of minutes in olive oil. Serve the salad on plates and serve the chickpeas literally on the side, like clear a space and add the chickpeas to that space.
If you are also making kofta, THAT can be on the side replacing the chickpeas, but they are all good together.
You will want some pita bread and some good Greek yogurt or Labneh, maybe some hummus. I don’t know whether this is traditional but I like to take one of the kofta meatballs and put it into the pocket of half a pita with a slice of tomato and some yogurt or hummus…
Do you have “Jerusalem”? What recipes do you like??