makroun bi toom - a Lebanese dish from my childhood

I promised you some recipes from Sunday Cookfest, which I held during October. I found it really hard to pick my favourites, as we made so many things on the day! There were two dishes that everybody loved and the savoury dish was one of my favourites.

My auntie who is here from Lebanon and my dad made a dish I loved helping my mum and dad make when I was growing up, called 'makroun bi toom', literally meaning pasta in garlic! Here are my dad and my auntie rolling out the dough on a patterned glass. 

My friend Deb and my mum had a go too!

It is a kind of dough dumpling, boiled up and slathered in a very simple sauce of a good olive oil, lots of garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice. It might seem like too much raw garlic, but the hot dumplings seem to cook through the garlic and warm the olive oil. It is totally addictive!

I am not sure of it's exact origins, but I can only assume like other peasant food it was made by accident by someone who didn't have any fresh ingredients to cook with and not much money. You will find traditional Lebanese food is like this - very few ingredients, nourishing and very tasty. Here are our dumplings, ready for cooking.

makroun bi toom  

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 500g plain flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of yeast
• 2-3 teaspoons of salt
• 6-8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup of olive oil

Method

1. In a small cup, melt the yeast with warm water.
2. Mix the flour and yeast mixture with 1 teaspoon of salt and 200 ml of water (approx 1 cup) until it comes together. Knead by hand until you get a nice soft dough. Let the dough rest, covered for 30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, make the garlic sauce. Peel and crush the garlic cloves and place in a large bowl. Add salt, olive oil and lemon juice.
4. Sprinkle some flour on your working area and start forming the dough into a “snake” form.
5. Cut the “snake” of dough into 4cm long pieces.
6. Place your index finger on each cut dough, and roll inwards towards yourself while punching a wedge inside the dough. Alternatively, you can roll the dumplings onto a patterned glass as my dad and auntie are doing in the background in the photo above. The point here is to create a wedge inside the dough so that it cooks through well, so feel free to get creative in figuring out how to do it your own way. Place dumplings on a large flat tray til ready to cook and sprinkle with some extra flour so they don't stick together when cooked.
7. Drop dumplings into a large pot of salted water. Cook for 3-4 minutes. The dumplings will float to the surface when they are ready. Strain the dumplings (a small amount of water is OK, and mixes well with the sauce).
8. Immediately add dumplings to the garlic sauce, stir through and eat hot! Here is our finished dish.

We found that this was a common favourite at Sunday Cookfest and so moreish.Stay tuned for my husband's famous honeycomb next time and tell me what memories you have of favourite childhood dishes. 

Sunday Cookfest great success

I had an idea a few months ago after a really fun night with our friends. I was about to start cooking dinner on a sunny Sunday afternoon when I got a call from my friend asking us to come over. Not surprisingly, I had already decided what was for dinner that night and started preparing it. I decided to take all my ingredients to my friends house. We cooked a few delicious meals, including spicy sausage pasta, roast fennel risotto and sticky date puddings. We discovered we would have enough to share a few meals for the coming week. As working parents, this was a huge relief and very exciting. Most working families struggle to organise their week on Sunday afternoons, with the main task to decide and organise meals for the week.

This idea turned into my Sunday Cookfest project. The first ever Sunday Cookfest event was held in the afternoon on Sunday 28 October 2012. I held an event at my house and other people organised their own with their friends and families. The intention was for working families and friends to cook together and get ready for the coming week! Each family brought ingredients to cook a large portion of their favourite dish and demonstrated how to cook it.

In the end we all took home a variety of different meals ready for the week. I was still eating the last of the food today!away a few containers of meals for the coming week. It will also give busy families a chance to slow down and catch up and will ease the burden on working families to rush home and cook after work/school/traffic every weeknight. Kids can play together while parents catch up. You can do this at your house with your family and friends or you can come to my Sunday Cookfest. Just don’t forget ingredients for your favourite dish and containers. Remember, you can do this every few weeks with your family and friends and share this idea with your family and friends all over the world. It gave us a chance to slow down and catch up and really made a difference to the usual after work rush home to cook after being stuck in traffic for over an hour. here is my friend Deb with her containers of meals to try!



We swapped recipes and learnt some delicious dishes. My mum made vine leaves and an amazing cheesy dessert that was rolled out and eaten hot from the kitchen bench.



My auntie demonstrated a beautiful dumpling warm salad with plenty of garlic and olive oil. Here is my husband making his now famous honeycomb.



My dad made a favourite dish from my childhood – chicken rice. My friends made two very different delicious soups!

We did cook alot for this one and had some great dishes to eat but the best part was the sharing of love, ideas, food and stories from my childhood. I also realised that my passion for food and cooking comes from having a family who loved food and cooking. I was able to share my parents love for food with my friends and show my three and a half year old son how fun food can be!
Look out for all the recipes, which will be posted on the hidden foodie soon and hold your own Sunday Cookfest with your friends and family and discover how fun it can be!

I am the hidden foodie

I am the hidden foodie. I am a mum and I have a day job but I am obsessed with food. I read about it, I dream about it, I cook it and I try every new cuisine and restaurant I can.

At the ripe age of 34 I have decided to give in to what my family and friends have know for a long time. My obsession with food! I have many early food memories of cooking with my grandmothers in their village in Lebanon. I remember waking before dawn to watch my dad's mother and my aunties prepare and bake Lebanese bread in the outdoor wood fired oven in the middle of their small village. I remember my mum's mother frying eggs collected from chickens in butter she had made on a small portable stove that sat on the floor. I remember the food I loved to eat then and still love being the simple peasant dishes, often vegetarian, with a few fresh seasonal ingredients and a lot of love.

This blog will be a collection of interesting foodie finds - small corner shops, restaurants that make great food but are not yet famous, dishes to cook and share and my favourite food related things.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I will enjoy writing it for you!