One of the best things I've eaten in an airport was a roasted butternut and feta sandwich in Melbourne. Simple, earthy and salty all at the same time. We're no strangers to the virtues of butternut squash around here, and in fact, my grinchiness about pumpkin this year has sent me straight into the arms of butternut squash. Roasted, it makes great soup, salad, risotto, pasta, even pizza sauce. Even with a good, sharp peeler, it may feel like prepping a butternut is taking your life into your own hands, but it's worth the effort.
A couple of weeks ago on the Splendid Table, LA Times Food Editor Russ Parsons wrote, “The thing that's really great about this book is that he takes what might seem familiar and just throws a twist on it. When you cook it, it's an act of exploration because you're doing things that you know, the ingredients are fairly familiar, the techniques are fairly familiar, and then boom, there's this very new and exciting result that really makes you want to cook more into it.”
He was talking about < Ottolenghi's Plenty
, but he hit it on the head for Jerusalem
,too. It’s the twists that set these recipes apart. And it's never more true than with Naama’s Fattoush, the marquee recipe for this month's salad theme for Tasting Jerusalem.
Greek salad is one of those of dishes about which it seems there’s nothing left to learn. The cucumber-tomato-red onion combo is so common, even my regular ol' grocery store usually has a big bowl of it swimming in dressing in the deli department. While it's not exclusively Greek and appears in multiple countries across the Middle East and Mediterranean, the variations are usually minor, some include olives, feta cheese, red bell peppers, even a little romaine, maybe a little parsley, usually with a lemon or red wine vinaigrette. Eat one, and you’ve eaten them all, right?
In the summer, Greek salad is a default around here, beating out even basic green. So for all those reasons, I was ready to skip right over the recipe for Spiced Chickpeas with Fresh Vegetables in Jerusalem. How could it possibly be anything special? Don’t make that mistake.
