Fennel soup with pickled lemon and black olives
It’s yellow, it’s in your plate and it’s incredibly tasty. This fennel soup will delight your tongue and more. It’s soft, it’s surprising, and it looks beautiful too. The pickled lemon makes it fresh, the olives give it a good foundation and the fennel is wonderfully soft.
Parsnip with tahina sauce and pomegranate seeds
So parsnips are great. Really, what a top vegetable that is. In this dish too, of course. It’s just fatally delicious. Just give it a try.
Mizuna, pear and chickpea salad with rose harissa
Colorful, tasteful, surprising. Sweet and spicy. Crunchy and soft. What more could you want? You can replace the mizuna with lamb’s lettuce or arugula, for example. Also very tasty.
Deliciously soft Kibbeh of pumpkin and seven spice powder
Yes, and there’s another kibbeh. When autumn comes – and also in winter – kibbeh is to me what stew is here. Deliciously warming, delicious comfort food, always different. And this one is with pumpkin, also such a real autumn vegetable of course. And nice and soft and quite creamy for a kibbeh, because the pumpkin is incorporated in it. And that is also very comfort food.
Walnut soup
A soup I always wanted to make, walnut soup. And our guests were extremely enthusiastic. It is creamy, it is soft and yet very interesting in taste. Purely positive, of course.
Salad with pear, lentils, sourberries and balsamic syrup
The picture says it all. You just look at that in a licking way, don’t you? The mizuna (Japanese turnip stalk, also to be replaced by arugula), the sourberries, the homemade balsamic syrup… the delicious lentils and the sweet pear. A salad of ‘I got you there’.
roumaniya fetteh
I was brought up with two dishes that are very similar. Mudardra (we called it pjadra) and Roumaniya (see also elsewhere on the site). This is a variation on the Roumaniya theme. Super tasty and ultimate comfort food. Crispy due to the pomegranate seeds and the crispy bread.
Pumpkin soup with ginger (syrup) and coconut milk
Pumpkin soup doesn’t look so good, I notice when I listen to our guests. It is not often possible to make a pumpkin soup really tasty. Fortunately, this soup is an exception to the rule, the guests said. And I couldn’t agree more. By the way, it applies to all pumpkin soups here on the site. You can make really tasty pumpkin soup, folks.
Date cardamom cookies
Date cardamom cookies are of course available on every street corner throughout the Middle East. From Lebanon to Morocco (that’s North Africa idd) and back. And in any form, they are delightful. These ones too. We also use them as a starter in the menu. With a dip. Divinely delicious and surprising at the same time.
Fennel in spinach-cashew sauce and fresh coriander
Fennel, not many people immediately are taken by it. Unless you let the fennel stew for so long that it loses everything that doesn’t make it tasty and magnifies everything that makes it very tasty. The spinach sauce is the star in the firmament.
Pointed cabbage with dried fig and hummus
Frying pointed cabbage is of course a very good idea anyway. Along with pieces of dried fig, a mixture of coriander powder/coriander seed/sumac does the rest. It turns pointed cabbage into the attention-grabber of your menu. The hummus is a nice extra that brings everything together.
Firm kibbeh with leek and potato and the classic kibbeh spice mixture
Kibbeh is to the Middle East what stampot is to the Netherlands. It is a dish with which you make a kind of ‘cake’ of bulgur with (sweet) potato or pumpkin for example and an intermediate layer of fried vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices. Here is a delicious hearty version with leeks and potato. Very surprising in taste. You could almost eat it as a pancake.
Braised red bell pepper with dates, lots of coriander seeds and pine nuts
Red peppers become so deliciously sweet if you simmer and braise them for a long time. It makes a tagine dish so delicious. Here the peppers still get help from medjouldadels, the kings of dates. In recent months, since our last visit to Morocco, I have started to use even more dried fruit in dishes. With potatoes, in kibbehs and also here with the bell pepper. Truly a find of Moroccan and Middle Eastern cuisine. The pine nuts give the earthy character and the coriander seed in abundance gives it its own signature. It was ‘the favourite’ of many guests when we had this in the menu at the beginning of September. Now at your home.
Salad of beetroot, pistachio, pomegranate molasses and sourberries
The sweetness of the beet, the sour/sour of the pomegranate molasses and the sourberries, the nutty, earthy and crunchy of the pistachios… And the fresh bed of yogurt make this an ultimate salad that everyone really likes. Even those who are not so fond of beets. We ate this earlier this year in a restaurant in Marrakech and remembered it because it was so tasty.
Onions from the oven with orange syrup and thyme
I had been looking forward to including this dish in the menu for a long time. But each time I felt that it did not fit into the composition of the main courses, until last week. It was the perfect moment. And they were also terribly tasty, according to all the guests. Success assured.
Artichokes and potatoes from the oven with basil cream
It took a while before I dared to put artichoke on the menu. I thought not many people would appreciate artichokes, but nothing could be further from the truth. You love artichoke en masse. Just too much fun. And in this dish they make a great combination with all the other ingredients.
Tomato salad on eggplant puree with tamarind and pistachio
It’s the discovery of the month. Eggplant puree with garlic and tamarind. Man, what a fatally delicious combination. And then the fresh crispy flavorful tomatoes on top, red onion and pistachio to top it off. You want to eat this every day.
Seasoned purple carrot with dates and hazelnuts
Carrot like you’ve never eaten carrot before. So special, so surprising, so delicious. It’s a hit in the menu when it’s in there. Carrot just becomes your favorite and that is very clever for carrots, I think.
Pumpkin-carrot orange soup à la Astrid
We ate this soup at our friend Astrid’s. And it was so incredibly delicious that I immediately decided to include it in the next menu. And the guests were just as excited about it. Success assured.
Fig hummus
Hummus is hummus, but sometimes you want to vary a little with it. Completely against the strict hummus rules, of course. But you can also violate those rules from time to time, I think. Fig hummus is an incredibly tasty variation on the theme. Slightly sweet, slightly crunchy and delicious with a mezze that you serve for lunch. Or as we sometimes do, at brunch. But as a starter or snack also completely great.
Smoked eggplant soup with homemade basil oil, cumin and cinnamon
Eggplant at its best. Smoky and soft in the soup. Crispy on top. And the homemade basil oil makes it all a bit fresher and greener.
Sweet potato salad with pecans and dried fig
A salad that gathers softness, crunchyness, sweet, savory and a little spice. Beautiful in color and certainly also delicious as a meal salad to put on the table.
Caramelized potatoes from the oven with prunes
Potatoes at its best. Crispy from the oven. Caramelized by a little sugar. And extra sweet and delicious because of the prunes that go so fantastically with it.
Swiss chard in white wine sauce with tahita sauce on top
Swiss chard is so versatile. I always do my best to make Swiss chard really tasty. Because I naturally find this vegetable less interesting. But prepared in this way, it is really incredibly tasty. So that’s the good news.
Kohlrabi salad Middle Eastern style
Kohlrabi and I do not have a long cooking history to share with you. But in recent years we get along more and more. If you cook seasonal and you work together with a vegetable garden … this is what happens. And that’s great. This salad is deliciously light, perfect for summer evenings, crunchy, flavorful and creamy.
Tastiest eggplant dip with pickled lemon
Okay, there’s baba ganoush. That’s a fantastic dish of course. But then one day you make this dish. Because you want to make something different. And you take the first bite and you cannot believe what you are tasting. And not just you, but everyone who tastes a spoonful of it. Really, unbelievably good.
Flatbread with yogurt and fresh za’atar oil
Flabread is a delicious and rewarding substitute for bread. It’s fluffy, it’s tasty, it’s something else. And a dot of yogurt topped with ‘fresh za’atar’ turns it into something festive.. And those red speckles? That’s a little sumac to top it off.
Red lentil soup with tamarind
An incredibly delicious soup, the tamarind makes it all the way. Along with all the spices. A soup for all year round.
Focaccia à la the Middle East
Bread is not my thing. I don’t really like bread. I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. Still, the bread we make at à la Damaris, I eat a few pieces of it every now and then. Because I can’t resist it anyway, because it’s very tasty. This focaccia absolutely is. Very spicy, very fluffy and very tasty.
Broccoli with a slightly spicy gochujan sauce and caramelized peanuts
Well, I just really like broccoli. In any form. But just like with spinach, I’m always looking for new opportunities to give the broccoli an even more amazing stage. Well, that worked out pretty well with this version *she said with a sense of understatement* when I listen to the guests in the restaurant. Try it yourself…