Cinnamon and cardamom scented pilaf with puy lentils and fennel confit

Another one from Enjoy tonight. It’s a strange mixture of flavours but it’s really delicious. There are a lot of spices in it and it uses a few pans but it only really takes as long as the lentils take. It’s basically 3 layers – a pilaf rice, cooked puy lentils and the fennel confit on top. As well as all the spices, there is sherry in both the lentils and the fennel. I’ve never used sherry in this way before but I really love this dish. If you make it from the book though, the rice makes a pitiful amount so double it!

Mezze

Bank holiday weekend, hurrah! So what to cook? We decided we’d have some sort of Mezze, and after perusing a few books, I decided to go for the full menu from Nadine Abensur “Enjoy”. It was all naturally vegan apart from swapping some soya yoghurt for dairy yoghurt in a couple of the dishes.

From the top: Nadine’s Baba Ghanoush (which was more like an Imam Bayaldi but very nice), spinach and sumac salad, Joni’s 50/50 flatbreads (as easy as she claims, and holding them over the flame not only improved the texture, but also made me feel good), pistachio skordalia (yum yum), hummus, beetroot tarator, and orange and olive salad. Also intruding in the picture are some vine leaves which I had lurking in the freezer and decided to use up. It was all delicious!