Mouthfuls of mezze

Over the weekend I needed to book a table for lunch in Covent Garden with my lovely and dear friend JayJay.  We're both fairly fussy, I was seeking to avoid the chains and the tourist pap that can be found in those haunts,  we also wanted somewhere cheap, and good.  We settled on Souk Medina, a North African restaurant near Seven Dials.
"Yummy", I thought, "I can't wait to have Morrocan food tomorrow".
Then I decided I didn't want Moroccan food tomorrow, I wanted it today, as well as tomorrow.  So as per my annoyingly impulsive nature, I set to work straight away on making some Moroccan/Middle Eastern (there's a crossover) treats for dinner.  I don't, by the way, just sit around conjuring up what to do for dinner- as much as I would like to- it was my day off.

The mezze dishes are probably my favourite and the ones I cook the most.  North African and Middle Eastern cuisine can be so much more than this, but I'll save your boredom for another post.  Mezze is essentially the Middle Eastern version of Spanish tapas, it's snacking food, made up of little bites, food you can eat with your hands, and dips with which to dip flatbreads or pitta into. I can say with some conviction that it's the most well known style of this cuisine in the UK too, encompassing household names like falafel, dolma (stuffed vine leaves), baba ganoush and the ubiquitous hummus. 

Middle Eastern cuisine uses some of my favourite ingredients- pine nuts, raisins, chickpeas, tahini, coriander, mint, greek yoghurt, cumin, paprika...I could go on.  These ingredients are so versatile and easy to play with, if you have some or any of these lying around, you can quite successfully make something Middle Eastern in flavour.  Unfortunately, on this occasion, I had barely any ingredients but for a tin of chickpeas and the spices, so didn't create the arabian extravaganza I was imaganing, but I still managed to make the mezze staples of falafel and hummus, with some spicy meatballs with parsley, and my first attempt at pitta bread, which came out thicker than expected, but were still delish.

I've been cooking the majority of those dishes for years, and have had the recipes memorised since my first housewarming when I cooked them, but this time, I turned to the Goddess of cookery, Claudia Roden, who is one of two food godesses, the other being Elizabeth David.  I got her famed 'Middle Eastern Food' for Christmas, and absolutely love it.  The book is so well researched it's almost overwhelming at first, but that's nothing to detract from its brilliance. Like all cookbooks I treasure, there's a story behind every dish, and brilliant little insights about where they found it and what memories it evokes.  It's the kind of cookbook that makes you want to cook right now, and I can't wait to cook from more than the 'mezze and hors d'oeuvres section'. 

The meal at Seven Dials incidentally, was lush.  In authentic surroundings, the low tables and loads of cushions initially looked inviting but were in practice quite difficult to eat from, but they were fun nevertheless. Jay chose a lamb tagine with prunes and I went for couscous topped with spicy North African merguez sausage and vegetable broth.  Nothing too flashy, good flavours and delicious.   I accompanied my meal
with sweet, fresh mint tea that I couldn't get enough of.  Typically we gorged ourselves on too much of the cumin-tinted hummus and flatbread so that we could barely eat any of the main courses, which were of gigantic proportions anyway.  If anyone's in the area and especially in posession of a Taste London card, I would recommend it.