A Week of Recipes (4/27 - 5/3)
Oven Baked Chicken & Veggies, Em Shaat, & Um Ali
Happy Sunday and May the 4th, be with you! This year is just flying by I can’t believe it’s already May. We are big Star Wars fans in my house so we were pretty excited to watch the 20 year re-release of Ep. III in theaters. Anyways that has nothing to do with food just a little side note. This past week was filled with more incredibly delicious and easy foods to make and they feature a lot of my Zawi Spices so if you’re interested in replicating any be sure to check out the spices to go along with the dish!
This week we have a simple Oven Baked Chicken and Veggies perfect for a quick weeknight dinner. It’s almost like a middle eastern fajita if you will. Next are Em Shaat, a Palestinian cauliflower fritter that currently has me in a chokehold. I can’t get enough of them. And last is Um Ali, a delicious Egyptian bread pudding with quite the story behind it.
The Oven Baked Chicken and Veggies is a very simple dish anyone can put together. I used some onion and bell peppers for my veggies but you can use whatever is convenient, some bone in chicken thighs, some Zawi Chicken Spice, and a healthy amount of olive oil. It’s quick and easy and only takes an hour in the oven.
Em Shaat like I mentioned are fried cauliflower fritters. They’re mixed with a few herbs, Zawi Arabic 7 spice, eggs, and flour. Mix that all together and deep fry and you have yourself a beautiful fritter. It’s my current obsession and actually my in-laws are obsessed with them as well. They’re crunchy on the outside and super soft and fluffy on the inside. And a must for these is to eat them with some sort of yogurt. I like garlic yogurt but you can use tzatziki, dill yogurt, or whatever sounds good to you. It helps balance the oil really well.
Um Ali is a classic Egyptian style bread pudding with a very interesting back story. Legend says Um Ali (mother of Ali) created this dessert to celebrate the passing of the Sultan’s wife. Not in a happy way, more like to celebrate her demise. You can taste the sweet pettiness in each bite, it’s addicting lol. Now I’m sure there are other variations to this story so don’t take mine as fact but it’s just what I grew up hearing. It’s a warm and cozy dessert that honestly took me only 30 minutes.
Oven Baked Chicken & Veggies
This is the easiest way to make chicken savory, spicy, and bright with minimal effort. It’s a beautiful way to present chicken as well so please give it a shot. There’s about 10-15 minutes of prep depending on how quickly you can work in the kitchen and then the oven takes care of the rest. It’s my go to for any quick weeknight dinner.
Em Shaat
This is the most incredible cauliflower fritter I’ve ever had, the perfect addition to any weekend brunch. Em Shaat are a traditional Palestinian fritter mixed with herbs, spices, eggs, and flour. They’re crunchy on the outside and fluffy like a pillow on the inside. Plus fried cauliflower is just on another level so imagine how many levels beyond this goes! It’s really quite an easy dish to prepare so I highly recommend everyone give this a shot!
Um Ali
This is a very popular Egyptian dessert with an even better back story. The lore behind this is that Um Ali (mother of Ali) was one of the cooks of the Sultan at the time. His wife was not the greatest person and when she passed away, Um Ali made this dessert in celebration of her passing! And it’s a damn good dessert so I can only wonder how bad she must have been! There are other variations of this story but that’s the one I learned so please let me know what you’ve heard as well!