Daring Cooks February: Mezze

When I heard that the Daring Cooks challenge for February would be mezze, I decided to do a little bit of research. After all, the tradition of the mezze table is a long and fascinating one -- and I wanted to be sure I approached the challenge in the proper spirit.  I was actually surprised to find that I didn't know as much about the tradition of mezze as I first anticipated.

I've owned Clifford A. Wright's book, Little Foods of the Mediterranean, for some time now, but have only dabbled with the recipes.  I was excited to think that this challenge would allow me to explore the concept of mezze a bit more deeply.  So, I started reading.  And the more I read, the more I realized how much more there really was to know. Clifford does a great job of explaining the differences between mezze, tapas, antipasti, and hors d'oeuvre. And, although the book is fairly academic in its approach to culture, it also does a great job of giving the reader an appreciation for the sensuality of the foods and flavors of the Mediterranean region.

As I read, I realized that I had been introduced to a very important aspect of mezze on my trip to Tunisia back in the early '90's -- the concept that the "small plates" of the mezze table are, in fact, meant to be a full meal -- not simply something to whet the appetite. In fact, the concept of an "appetizer" is all-but-absent from Mediterranean culture -- so it's generally inaccurate to consider mezze to be a precursor to something more substantial. Wright explains it best when he says:

To think of these small dishes as appetizers or tapas is to misunderstand the Arab or Near Eastern culinary sensibility. For the Arab, and this goes for the Turks and Greeks too, the notion of a food needed to “open the appetite” is completely foreign. The Arab simply starts eating; one is hungry and the stomach enzymes are ready to go to work [...] it is more appropriate to compare mazza to the Scandinavian smörgåsbord, to which it is more philosophically related, rather than hors d’oeuvre, antipasti, tapas, or appetizers.

So, as we approached our mezze for the challenge, one of my goals was to create a collection of dishes that stayed true to the spirit of mezze -- a nourishing collection of small plates that would stand in for an ordinary meal.  Our final menu included dishes from Cyprus, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and the Middle East -- a varied menu that included a bit of meat, but also lots of vegetables:

• Homemade pita bread
• Hummus
• Baba Ghannouj
• Green olives stuffed with ground beef in a piquant tomato ragu
• Harissa
• Grilled haloumi with lemon and capers
• Beet salad with orange flower water and Moroccan spices

The first thing we set to work on was the chickpeas for the hummus.  After an overnight soak, we cooked put the chickpeas on to boil in plenty of cold water, seasoning them with a few dried chile peppers and a couple of bay leaves.

We prepped our eggplant for grilling by washing and drying it, and then pricking it all over with a fork.

Then, we took it outside to cook on the grill. We filled our smoker box with applewood chips to give everything a nice, smoky flavor, and we grilled the eggplant until it was browned on all sides, and very soft.

We peeled the eggplant, cooled down the flesh, and whirred it up in the food processor with garlic, lemon juice, tahini, and a bit of salt.  All at once, we had a delightfully smoky baba ghanouj. 

Meanwhile, we put some beets on the stovetop to boil.

Once they were tender, we peeled them, sliced them into rounds, and put them away to marinate in a mixture of orange flower water, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, lemon juice, and sugar.

By this point, the chickpeas were cooked. We drained them, rinsed them with cool water, and removed their skins. Then, we blended them up with some garlic, tahini, lemon juice, and salt to create some of the smoothest hummus we'd ever tasted.  We garnished it with za'atar and pinenuts, and set it aside.

Next, we put together the dough for the pita bread. The dough was a pleasure to work with. It started off with a sponge made with yeast, water, and about 3 cups of flour. We allowed the sponge to rest for almost two hours before incorporating the salt, olive oil, and the remainder of the flour and giving it about an hour and a half to rise.  Once the dough was risen, we punched it down and cut it into pieces, which we rolled out into flat pitas (less than 1/4 inch thick).

One of the tricks to pita bread is to bake it in a VERY hot oven -- so we preheated ours as high as it would go (550ºF).  After about 2 minutes on our baking stone, each pita puffed up into a lovely little balloon.  The pitas deflate rapidly after being removed from the oven, creating the bread some call "pocket bread". We put all of the pitas into a bowl covered with a towel and kept them warm.

While the pita bread was cooking, I set Peef to work stuffing green olives with a mixture of grass-fed ground beef, parsley, eggs, cumin, cayenne pepper, garlic, and onions.  Although we bought the largest green olives we could find, the task was still pretty challenging. Peef ended up using the pointy end of a teaspoon to scoop and stuff the filling right into the olive.

 

When the olives were stuffed, we cooked them in a mixture of tomato paste, harissa, red pepper flakes, and water until the filling was thoroughly cooked -- just under an hour.

While the olives were cooking, we grilled up some halloumi, which we plated up with some sliced lemons and a liberal dose of capers.

We also arranged the beet salad.

By the time the olives were finished cooking, we were both ravenous. We put together our mezze table -- using colorful dishes and linens, we tried to make everything as visually appealing as possible (after all, the mezze table is meant to please the eye, as well as the palate).  We poured ourselves a nice big glass of wine, and started in on the eating.

One of the wonderful things about a successful mezze table is that there are so many different flavors to enjoy -- briny, smoky, tangy, spicy, and fresh. It seems there's a little bit of everything here. And even though the plates are "small," the meal itself is more than fulfilling. Since there is so much food offered on a typical mezze spread, it's not generally expected that every dish will be finished at the end of the meal. Diners are satiated -- but, not only by the food, but the company as well. It's such an appealing concept, it makes me wonder why we don't do it more often.

Fortunately, it looks like we have enough leftovers from our Daring Cooks mezze table to feed a small crowd of hungry Mediterraneans. So, it's likely we'll be putting together another spread pretty soon.

Care to join us?

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

Recipes for Pita Bread and Hummus
Remainder of recipes taken from Little Foods of the Mediterranean (Wright)



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