Recipes

Mediterranean Night

One thing I love to do when making a weekly meal plan is have at least one “themed” night, which usually means some kind of bowl with a lot of fresh ingredients. I love the flavors of the Middle East, and I know I’ve only scratched the surface.

When I lived in Tokyo, there was this Israeli all-you-can-eat restaurant where they brought fresh, hot pitas and a ton of garlicky pickles, meats and sauces to fill and you just kept asking for more of what you needed. That is the inspiration for this meal.

• Start with a base. You could do brown rice, quinoa, a bed of greens, or Joseph’s Lavash bread. I cooked onions & garlic in my electric pressure cooker until soft, added the brown rice with tumeric, cumin & chicken stock, then pressure cooked the rice for 30 min. Delish!

• Prepare the meat. I use this shawarma seasoning recipe and marinade chicken with yogurt, then sous vide it using our Chefman sous vide and a reusable silicone ziploc. (You save a ton of money and the environment.) When it’s cooked, you can use as-is or grill it for more flavor!

Our Chefman indoor grill makes this so easy, gives a lot of flavor, and is simple for cleanup as well.

• White sauce. These meals always have some kind of white sauce. Usually there is hummus and tzatziki. I wanted the tahini flavor of the hummus, but I didn’t really need the extra carbs from the chickpeas. So I combined the two sauces into a tzatziki tahini sauce. Chopped cucumbers, dried dill, garlic, lemon juice, Greek yogurt, salt, olive oil & tahini.

• Falafel. Trader Joe’s has a fabulous falafel mix that you just add water to, let rise and form into balls, and then you can spray with a tiny bit of oil and use the air fryer to get nice and crisp. Alternatively, Yves falafel balls are easy to buy and just warm up. If it isn’t deep-fried, falafel is very healthy. (If you are going to include falafel, they contain quite a few carbohydrates so this would be an E or XO for the Trim Healthy Mama plan).
  
• Vegetables. To start with, I’d say lettuce, cucumbers, red onions and tomatoes are a must. I really adore some roasted cauliflower tossed with a bit of tumeric & cumin. For some reason I think it would be good with some raisins. (?)
  
  But I feel the star of the dish is making tabouleh. I kept putting it off, but it was so easy! I think I prefer making it without my food processor, to be honest. Sure, the chunks were a bit bigger, but it was so tasty mixed with the other flavors. This was a vegetable-only spin: fresh Italian parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, tomatoes, cucumbers, and steamed riced cauliflower, all chopped very fine.

I started in the morning & slowly pulled all the ingredients together for this amazing dinner. I looked forward to it all day and I was not disappointed! Next time I might try beef, or I might even get brave and try lamb!