Disasters and Adventures with Silver Beet

silver beet stalks with tahini

I’m guilty of murder. Okay, not actual murder, more a culinary crime. You know what it’s like. You get an idea for a recipe and in your head it sounds brilliant. But when you execute your plan, the end result is so bloody awful that you feel you may get jail time for your misdeeds. Has this ever happened to you?

Well, it happens to me, and quite often. Last week, for example, I attempted a new approach to silver beet rolls. I had it all planned out. The stuffing would be burghul flavoured with lemon olive oil, raisins and pine nuts. The rolls would be piled and dolloped with thick ribbons of creamy labna. I imagined the velvety textures contrasting with the crisp bite of the roasted pine nuts. I imagined the balance of flavours, sweet, sour, earthy and the heady aroma of lemon and spice. I subsequently imagined myself at a ceremony where Lebanese president Michael Suleiman was granting me the Order of the Cedar for my contribution to and innovation in Lebanese cuisine. The crowd was cheering, and I was shaking the congratulatory hands of my numerous fans.

Unfortunately, the creation was a total disaster. No cheering crowd for me. I was devastated. I wanted to silver beet myself silly.

One consoling factor was that I was left with many silver beet stalks. To avoid further disasters, I resorted to the fool proof Lebanese classic, silver beet stalks in tahini. Tahini is the Lebanese culinary cure-all. If disaster befalls the Lebanese, we reach for tahini. Let me see; we’ve got chickpeas with tahini, eggplants with tahini, snails with tahini, fish with tahini, falafel with tahini, shawarma with tahini, molasses with tahini, kibbeh with tahini, eggs with tahini, cake with tahini. And of course, silver beet stalks with tahini.

This is a super easy dish and is a prime example of how necessity is truly the mother of invention. After making silver beet rolls stuffed with rice, the Lebanese cook is left with a large stack of silver beet stalks. Waste is avoided. The default setting of “smother the whole thing with tahini sauce” is applied. The end result is delicious.

So don’t underestimate this dish because of its simplicity. It really is wonderful, and its creator should have been bestowed the Order of the Cedar. To prepare, cut the cleaned stalks into squares, boil or steam them until just tender and mix into tahini sauce (tahini, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt and some water for thinning). Sprinkle with roasted or fried pine nuts, drizzle a bit of olive oil and enjoy a disaster free dish.

Share your kitchen disasters. Leave a comment and tell me how horribly you have failed.

Kibbeh with Star Anise Caramelised Onions

You’ve gotta love it when an idea comes together. It’s even better when it’s an idea so simple that it seems crazy that no one has already thought of it.

I once read the following formula:
Modern Art = I could have done that + Yeah, but you didn’t

I’m not saying I’m a modern culinary artist in any way, but there’s a pleasure I find in invention, and I sense joy when I manage to create something new, simple and delicious.

This is my version of kibbeh, and to be honest, it’s bloody awesome. Kibbeh is a family of dishes considered as Lebanon’s national culinary emblem where the common factor is that burghul, spices and onions are mixed with a binding agent. This binding agent could be anything but most commonly you’d see minced lamb or goat, pumpkin or lentils.

The two most famous incarnations of kibbeh are nayyeh and kbeb (or mikliyyeh). Nayyeh is the raw version, a silken beauty doused with olive oil and eaten with loads of fresh mint and raw onions. Kbeb are the torpedo shaped kibbeh, hollow but filled with fried mince, onions and pine nuts and then deep-fried. Imagine how good that tastes.

My kibbeh is derived from the latter, and it simply aims to bring out the best aspects of the kbeb: a crisp exterior, a generous filling of the sweetest, star anise caramelised onions and an abundance of fried pine nuts. It’s kibbeh on steroids, with all the flavours amplified ten-fold. This goes down on my list of top 10 favourites. You’ve got to try it!

Kibbeh Recipe

Ingredients

Shell

• 0.5 kilo finely minced lamb, beef or goat meat (twice minced)
• 180 grams fine burghul
• 1 pureed or finely grated onion
• 2 tsp finely ground black pepper
• salt – use your judgement

Filling

• 6 large onions, sliced
• 4 star anise, in a muslin bag
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup fried pine nuts

Method

• In a frying pan, add all the filling ingredients except pine nuts and caramalise on a low heat. It will take around 45 minutes. Stir occasionally and make sure the onions don’t burn
• Remove from heat and add pine nuts
• Mix all the shell ingredients
• Flatten some of the shell mix between your palms until it’s evenly thin
• Use a cup you like the shape of and line it with the meat.
• Use the method outlined in the photo below (from my pumpkin kibbeh post) for a fully manual kibbeh experience, or rill the meat with filling and cover the bottom with another piece of flattened shell, ensuring the bottom adheres to the rest of the kibbeh.
• Deep fry until golden

Heartache & Meat Pies – Lahm b’ Ajeen Recipe

I must have been around 17 years old the first time I witnessed earnest, all-covering snow as it dropped lightly but persistently to create a carpet of whiteness over red-tiled roofs. We were at the ski village of Faraya, and I, with my friends, was there to spend New Year’s Eve. There must have been around twenty of us sardined into a room that could hardly sleep five. We didn’t mind. It was a night of celebration, and there was no intention of sleeping. And besides, how could I have slept when she was there, looking as beautiful as only she could? Ah yes. There she stood, with skin that outmatched the whiteness of the freshly fallen snow and hair darker than the charcoal that later glowed to keep us warm. Miss Faraya hardly noticed me but as far as I was concerned, that room only contained her – and the bottles of local red wine; so while she continued, oblivious of my presence, I paused and Château Kefraya and I became the best of friends.

I don’t remember what happened. I have these intoxicated flashbacks of myself after midnight, walking back from the center square alongside thousands of party people. How I got there, I don’t know, but every person I encountered was repeating the same phrase: baddna n’nem (we want to sleep). Baddna n’nem? What? Why? I woke up with a headache so titanic it had created its own gravitational pull, and in its orbit was complete confusion. It was only when I heard someone on the phone wishing a loved one a “Bonne Année” (French for Happy New Year) that I realised that all the people I had met during my hazy, drunken stroll weren’t kindly informing me that they wanted to sleep, but were giving me their wishes for the new year. “Bonne Année” not “baddna n’nem”. This total lack of recall confirmed my doubts. The previous night had been a disaster.

Angry with myself, Mr Château Kefraya (who was no longer a friend of mine) and the French-speaking Lebanese, I convinced my mate who had the car that we needed to return to Jbeil (Byblos). Escape is the easiest way to avoid shame, you can trust me on that one. We were starving and dehydrated but agreed to wait until we reached a well-known bakery that made lahm b’ ajeen. The bakery’s claim to fame was not the quality of its product but rather the character of its owner. We were told that when he served his lahm b’ ajeen, he would theatrically grab a lemon, slice it down the middle with a mighty strike of his butcher’s knife, toss the lemon onto the lahm b’ ajeen and offer it to the customer with the command: hrisa (destroy it)! The rumours proved true, and so it was that we witnessed a Lebanese legend in full-swing. The comedy temporarily soothed my aching brain and uplifted my spirit, and that lahm b ajeen, though not the best I’ve had, remains the most memorable. Maybe because I had suppressed around 24 hours of prior calamity.

Well, you may have guessed it, but thankfully, Miss Faraya and I never ended up together. I have since rekindled my relationship with red wine after a period of enmity while lahm b’ ajeen and I have never lost touch, remaining in close contact. Lahm b’ ajeen is a Middle-Eastern/Levantine pizza of sorts: a piece of flattened dough, usually with a hint of sweetness from sugar, covered with a mixture of hand-minced lamb shoulder, diced tomatoes and onions, salt and pepper and baked in a hot oven. When the sides are a crisp, golden brown, lahm b’ ajeen becomes one of the miracles of Lebanese food that needs to be eaten straight away as it comes out of the oven. Only then does it posses the right crunch, moisture, heat and aroma. A moment in time that needs to be given full attention and respect. Sharp and sweet drizzles of pomegranate molasses, dollops of creamy yoghurt, sprinklings of dried chilli or simply a squeeze of lemon juice: these are all suitable toppings, but the end aim is one. Seek a lahm b’ ajeen and destroy it!

Lahm b’ Ajeen Recipe

Make the topping by mixing 0.5 kilos of finely minced lamb shoulder, 1 large medium diced onion, 4 tomatoes (I used oxheart because of their dry texture), salt and pepper. Using your chef’s knife, mix the ingredients thoroughly using a chopping motion. Add a few handfuls of pine nuts on top.

Make some dough as you saw in my manakish recipe, but add 2 more tbsp sugar and use olive oil instead of vegetable oil. Let it rise and then make the pizzas. Add the topping to the dough and bake on the highest heat possible, until gold and crisp.

You say Tomato, I say Tomato. You say Labna, I say Labneh.

Labna with olive oil, olives and rosemary sprig

Yoghurt. The oldest of all milk derived foods and the most feared. It is said (by me) that Genghis Khan’s only phobia was due to a recurring dream of drowning in a pool of horse milk yoghurt. The same goes for Alexander the Great, though he, against all odds, managed to overcome that fear through strenuous hypnosis and homeopathic practices, and in fact ended up loving the stuff. Throughout the ages, yoghurt has had many wonderful and amazing uses. Phoenicians used it for facials, and the ancient Egyptians used it in their mummification process in conjunction to consuming it with long grain Egyptian rice as they waited for the mummies to dry.  Allright, enough joking around. Let’s be serious for a minute. This multi-faceted ingredient has helped shape the face of Middle-Eastern gastronomy, yet its origins are shrouded in mystery. Legend has it that after slaughtering a newborn camel, desert travelling Bedouins would saddle the mother camel’s milk encased in the baby’s stomach sack, where the stomach bacteria, along with the heat of the sun, curdled the milk into, yes, yoghurt!

If you were to consider world cuisines distilled to a singular ingredient, would you be able to imagine French food sans beurre, Chinese food with no soy sauce, Italian food before Chris C brought back the first tomato? Well, you may not have guessed it, but when it comes to Middle- Eastern food, yoghurt is the reigning champion, the jamon to Arabia’s Serrano, and without it, Middle Eastern food just wouldn’t be Middle Eastern food. I grew up eating yoghurt. All Lebanese people have. In fact, It is so prevalent that there are Middle-Eastern cookbooks solely dedicated to cooking with yoghurt. When it comes to cooked yoghurt dishes, kibbeh b’ laban (yoghurt kibbeh) is an absolute favourite, but when eaten fresh, there’s nothing that beats labna. Strained through muslin, yoghurt lets go of its whey to become incredibly creamy, and the longer you strain it, the thicker and richer it gets. This is labna: wheyless yoghurt that is salted and eaten in every single Lebanese home, every single day at every single breakfast.  My memories as a child take me back to when dad would stack up the “troups” in the run down 70’s Mercedes (he loved that car) and drive us around. We’d whinge and complain about being hungry, and Mr Kassab would try to find somewhere cheap and cheerful to feed the family of six. Often, we’d end up at small makeshift bakeries with (as was usually the case) a weathered, slightly chubby but very cheerful grey-haired lady sitting cross legged in front of a saj, masterfully baking the thinnest sheets of bread, crisp and translucent. We would demolish a sheet in seconds, dunking shards and folds into most luscious olive oil drizzled labna decorated with sweet tomatoes, salty olives and fresh, fragrant mint. Pure joy.

Saj bread making

N.B. Make labna by straining yoghurt through a clean pillow case or muslin, or by pouring it over layers of absorbent paper towel. Depending on the quantity, it may take a few hours so keep it straining in the fridge. When it reaches the desired consistency, remove it, salt it and destroy it!

The Story of Burghul and a Recipe

Burghul Pilaf with beef and almonds

Rice is living the high life while burghul has committed suicide. This is an old Lebanese saying, and to understand it, one needs to go back to the original diet of a Lebanese village dweller. For a long time, that diet was focused around wheat, and the Lebanese household consumed as much as 90% of its daily calories from wheat, be it in the form of bread or burghul. Once a year, a travelling salesperson would arrive at the Lebanese village with his donkeys laden with bags and bags of wheat. He would go to the rooftops and call out to the villagers, informing them that wheat has arrived. Depending on how well-off each villager was, either a full year or half a year’s provision was purchased. At that point in time, wheat would be at its cheapest, so it made sense to stock up for the whole year if one could afford it. Once purchased, each housewife got busy preparing burghul. First, the wheat would be boiled until the outer layer showed some cracks, but care is taken not to overcook the wheat as, at the end of the process, the burghul needs only be half cooked to accommodate for further cooking. The day the wheat is boiled is highly anticipated as some of the wheat is taken aside, sprinkled with sugar and rose water and covered with walnuts, pine nuts and almonds, and then handed to the children, neighbours and helpful hands who may have assisted during the process – a day of celebration, as these lavish ingredients are hardly consumed in the Lebanese village. After the wheat is cooked, it would be taken to be sun-dried on the roof tops, and then sent to the mill to be cracked, and to have its bran removed. The milling process creates burghul of three varying grain sizes: coarse burghul for pilafs, fine burghul for kibbeh and tabbouli, and powdered burghul for bsisa (an almost extinct dessert made by mixing the powdered burghul with grape molasses and butter).

This process gave the Lebanese villagers their daily food. Meat, vegetables and dairy products (all expensive and highly seasonal) were there to support the main act, burghul or bread. But, on big occasions, be it feasts of saints or weddings, the Lebanese would turn to rice, an imported food product that was highly prized, dear and exotic. During those costly feasts, burghul would be forgotten, and rice shone as the star of the show. And as rice became more and more affordable, burghul’s consumption decreased drastically. This is a parallel to the industrialisation of meat, and how offal, once a staple in day to day food, fell out of favour. And so my friends, this is why rice is living the high life, and why burghul has committed suicide. My friend once used this saying to describe the situation when his girlfriend left him for a richer man. Such apt usage!

Despite all this, burghul still holds a dear place in my diet. I crave it, and have recently started to use it more and more. I love its texture, grainy and slightly nutty, and its earthy scent takes me back to my childhood. When I have just a few ingredients in the cupboard, a burghul dish is so easy to make, and a rustic plate of burghul pilaf with beef and almonds topped with some yoghurt is one of those comfort foods we all need from time to time.

Burghul Pilaf with Beef and Almonds

Ingredients

• For the Burghul Pilaf
  • 2 cups burghul
  • 2 crushed cloves garlic
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 1 heaped tsp salt
  • ¼ cup olive oil
• For the Beef and Almonds
  • 0.5 Kilos beef mince
  • 1 large onion, finely chopped
  • 1 cup slivered almonds (fried or roasted)
  • salt to taste
  • 1.5 tbsp fine black pepper
  • ¼ cup olive oil
• Yoghurt to serve

Prepare the burghul by first frying the garlic and onions in a lidded pot, using the olive oil, until translucent. Add the burghul and salt and fry for a minute, covering all the grains with the olive oil. Add 4 cups of water, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until all the water has been absorbed.I use a rice cooker to do that. In the meantime, fry the second onion (adding the salt) in a separate frying pan using the rest of the olive oil. Once translucent , add the beef (in batches if the frying pan is too small) and fry until cooked through. Use your spatula to break down the mince to make sure the beef does not clump together. Add the pepper, cook for another minute. Add in the almonds and toss well. Serve the burghul in a bowl, topped with the beef mince and some nice Greek-style yoghurt.

Lebanese Cauliflower with Pine Nuts and Tahini Recipe

My father tells me the story of a Bedouin man walking on the street with ten dead crows. A walker-by, fascinated by the murder of dead crows, stops the Bedouin to enquire as to the reason he is carrying the birds. “They’re to be eaten of course”, comes the Bedouin’s simple reply. Slightly intrigued, but more horrified, the walker-by insists on finding out more information. “But surely crows can’t be eaten. They are foul creatures with tough, flavourless meat. Bedouins are truly strange folk for eating crows!” he answered. The Bedouin smiles and replies, “Crow’s meat simply needs a deft hand at cooking. First, you feather and clean the bird, removing its guts. Then you take the meat from the bones and discard the bones, as they impart a bad flavour. Then, you mix some flour, salt and cinnamon and cover the meat with it. After pan-frying the bird, you deglaze with lemon juice, and add some olive oil, garlic and coriander, which you fry until the garlic turns golden. Toss the fried meat back in, top with fried pine nuts and experience heaven with some bread and arak”. The walker-by replies, “Great recipe! Do you think it would work equally as well if I used my leather shoes instead of the crows?”

Okay, I admit it’s not the funniest story in the world, but I love my dad, and I love his stories. And this little tale makes for a nice lead in to today’s recipe, cauliflower with tahini and pine nuts. You must agree that cauliflower isn’t the most delicious of vegetables. Boiled, I may go as far as calling it insipid and even downright disgusting. I can’t swallow an unadorned floret of cauliflower without the tapioca rising in my gullet. But deep-fried cauliflower? Praise the Lord! Just like the inedible crow, some skill can turn this figurative frog into a delicious prince. This is the true essence of alchemy. Glittering gold from lowly lead, dazzling diamonds from dirty coal, wonderful butterflies from waggling worms. Paulo Coelho should have written books about this transformation instead. Imagine, white florets devoid of flavour, worthless and well-hated, diving down into the oil, a baptism of  fire, and rising once more, darker, crisper, and sweeter than any vegetable that ever took the plunge. Coat them with thick, creamy tahini, sharp with lemon and hot with garlic, top with fried pine nuts and experience heaven with some bread and arak.

Lebanese Cauliflower with Tahini and Pine Nuts Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 Cauliflower, broken down to florets
• ½ cup Fried pine nuts
• Tahini Sauce
• 1 cup tahini
• Juice of 2 or 3 lemons
• 2 garlic cloves
• Salt, to taste

Method

1. Prepare the tahini by mixing the ingredients, tasting as you go, and diluting with water to get that thick, creamy consistency
2. Heat deep frying oil on high
3. When the oil is ready, deep fry the cauliflower florets in batches until the tops are brown
4. Sprinkle with some salt, top with pine nuts and tahini and jump in

Six Hour Roasted Pork Shawarma Recipe

Pork. Has there ever been a kind of meat more versatile? Has there ever been a kind of meat that has been the subject of this much godly wrath? No. There hasn’t. Let me start by declaring my love for pork. Pigs are wonderful animals; apart from making great pets, and having loads of character, they are the symbol for nose to tail eating. Every part of the pig can be used in some delicious, mouth-watering way, including, well, a pig’s nose and tail. The meat is delicious, the bones make fantastic stock (and ramen!), the skins makes a cracking crackle, the fat affords itself to unbelievable roast potatoes, the blood makes bloody great black puddings, the offal is stuffed into sausages and terrines, the trotters walk with pride into any soup; and perhaps the greatest ingredient in the world, jamon iberico (Iberian ham) de bellota would not exist without the pig. I love pork. I truly do. But here’s the thing: in reality, I’ve only really started eating pork when I came to Australia. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone! Here’s why I’ve missed out on 20 years of porky delights.

Consider the map of Lebanon above, surrounded by the azure waters of the Mediterranean. Though feuding nations, the major religions of Lebanon’s two neighbours – Syria and Israel/Palestine (what’s the PC term?) – seem to agree on one thing: No Pork. Lebanon itself is a country that is around half Muslim, so fresh pork is never seen in the supermarket or at the butchers. Back when I was growing up, the only pork products one could get was stock standard ham and mortadella. At least, that’s what my father used to buy. The closest thing to fresh pork that I had tried was a wild boar that our friend and neighbour Mohammad killed on a hunting trip. Mohammad, as the name suggests, wouldn’t eat the wild boar, so he gave it to dad, his best friend. Dad got a Christian butcher to cut the pig up, and we invited the whole family over for a barbeque and a feast. It was awesome; the freshest of charcoaled, moist, full-flavoured free range meat – an experience to remember even 15 years later.

Cooking pork is not something I do too often, as I try to watch the waistline (expand). The tastiest bits of the pork are the fatty meats and the skin. When roasted for 6 hours, this pork shoulder becomes fork tender, flaky and just falls apart. You simply want to gnaw into it, crunching into the crisp crackling, sucking on the fatty under layer and shredding into the meat – but I did one better. When added to the fillings of a shawarma, our awesome roast pork makes a fine substitute for lamb. Lainy even thinks it makes a better shawarma than lamb does. Imagine the soft meat, the glass-like shattering crackle, the fattiness, all mixed in with creamy, lemony tahini, parsley, mint, sumac rubbed onions, pickles and a final punch of chilli. It doesn’t get much better. Try it. You’ll find you can’t stop till you’ve completely pigged out!

Six Hour Roast Pork Shawarma Recipe

I roasted my pork shoulder the Jamie Oliver way. It’s sooo good. Check out his recipe here. It’s worth mentioning that using a bread knife makes scoring the pork skin much more easy, if your butcher doesn’t do it for you. I have a bit of a lazy butcher.

Make the tarator by mixing crushed garlic with lemon juice, tahini, salt and water. It needs to be thick but not too thick. Try to balance out the flavours depending on your brand of tahini. Use a Lebanese tahini as we make the best in the world, of course. Get some Lebanese bread, add some onions that are rubbed with sumac (here sumac is optional), chopped parsley, chopped mint (not traditional but I love it with pork), the tarator sauce, the shredded pork, some crackling, pickled chillis and pickled gherkins or cucumbers. Ready, set, destroy!

Saj Bread, Labneh, Olive Oil and Mint Mille-feuille – A Dessert Inspired by the Classic Lebanese Breakfast

In case you are wondering, yes, these greens in the picture are indeed garden weeds and not micro-herbs; I don’t have easy access to micro-herbs and thought these guys are small enough to do the trick. They look pretty though, do you agree? And another thing, I know this is not a mille-feuille, but let me have this one, please…

I’ve been obsessing about this dessert for around a fortnight now. I came up with the idea in a moment of brilliance (or insanity, call it what you may) and have been dying to make it. For my non-Lebanese readers, a little explanation is needed so that you get a full appreciation of the idea behind the dessert. One of the most, if not the most popular breakfast in Lebanon is a labneh roll. Lebanese bread or saj bread (paper thin bread cooked on an inverted wok, sold in Australia as mountain bread) is slathered with snow-white salted labneh, drizzled with olive oil and rolled up with one or more vegetables and herbs such as mint, cucumbers, tomatoes or olives. Labneh is a cream cheese (yes it is a cheese) made from removing the whey from yoghurt, resulting in a rich, smooth spread. The breakfast roll is salty, savoury and creamy but also light and fresh, a true representative of Mediterranean cuisine with its lavish use of olive oil, dairy, bread and fresh vegetables and herbs.

This superb, yet everyday sort of breakfast was the inspiration for a creamy yet fresh dessert. The labneh is mixed with some whipped cream to give a lighter consistency, and then sweetened with icing sugar. Then, rectangles of saj bread are brushed with butter and crisped up in a pan, with some pressure applied on top to keep them straight. The saj and labneh “mille-feuille” is constructed on a plate drizzled with olive oil butterscotch, then served with a mint leaf tempura; and there you have it: labneh and saj bread with mint and olive oil! An experienced pastry chef could have turned out something a bit more professional looking, but I had to make do with my crooked design skills. And I also wanted to make a tomato jam to go with it but I couldn’t be bothered, so please imagine that it’s there too.  See how the beautifully reddish orange hue of the tomato jam contrasts with the white?

Now unfortunately, I didn’t take note of measurements when I made this as it was just an experiment, but it was not hard to do once the concept was there. I have to admit though, the dessert exceeded all my expectations. The buttery richness of the labneh and cream is complemented by its sweetness and then offset by the yoghurt’s acidity. That’s why it’s important to use Greek style yoghurt labneh (and not that European style stuff). Then, the crispness and delicate saltiness of the saj bread intertwines with that creaminess, and the multiple layers create a textural explosion that is quite out of this world. The olive oil butterscotch added an extra layer of flavour, and the mint tempura is more a visual and textural addition than one of flavour; it’s just a bit of fun really. It may be worth noting that I made my own unsalted labneh using Meredith sheep’s yoghurt, which is more delicious as a labneh than it is as yoghurt. Sheep’s yoghurt has a sensational mouth-feel due to the high fat content and in my opinion makes a far superior labneh than cow’s yoghurt.

Saj Bread, Labneh, Olive Oil and Mint Mille-feuille Recipe

Now, being an IT guy, and seeing I didn’t really write down the measurements, here’s an “algorithm” as to how to make this dessert:

• Buy or make your own labneh. Make sure it’s low salt. Making labneh is easy: strain Greek style yoghurt through muslin or on layers of paper towel, changing the paper towels when they are fully soaked. The result should be the consistency of cream cheese
• Cut rectangles from saj bread (sold as mountain bread in Australia)
• Brush bread with butter and crisp up in a pan on both sides. Press them down to keep them flat as they crisp up
• Make the olive oil butterscotch by caramelising some sugar and olive oil and then emulsifying them with cream… Easy?
• Whip up some cream until semi-firm peaks form and then mix with the labneh and some icing sugar. Adjust the sugar to taste. Don’t use too much cream or the labneh flavour will be lost. Maybe a 60% labneh, 40% cream.
• Assemble as per the photo: drizzle the butterscotch, layer the mille-feuille with bread and labneh
• Cover a mint leaf with tempura batter and fry until crisp and put on the side