Vegetarian » Israeli Kitchen

Sweet Potato Salad

May 112011

Just before sweet potatoes got expensive again (because they’re always best and cheapest in winter), I brought some good ones home. Putting the vegetables down on the kitchen counter, I began to think.

Should I roast them in date honey? How about chopping one and putting it in the roasting pan with curried chicken and apples? A vegetarian sweet potato and lentil salad?

Hm, it does look like a lot of sweet potato recipes here. Yet because the weather’s getting warmer and I wanted something light, I chose another one for your enjoyment and mine. Please view my sweet potato salad – then cook it up, because it’s not only good, it’s good for you.

Sweet Potato Salad

6 portions

Printable version here

Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato

1 medium red onion, sliced finely

1/3 cup olive oil

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

black pepper

1/2 cup chopped cilantro or parsley

Method:

Scrub, but don’t peel, the sweet potato. Chop it into large dice.

Put the chopped sweet potato in a pan with salted water to cover, and bring it to a boil.

Lower the flame and cook for 7 minutes. Start testing the pieces for tenderness. They should take between 7-10 minutes to cook till tender but still firm.

Drain the pieces at once and run a little cold water over them to stop the cooking.

Put them in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Taste for the exact balance of salt, sour and sweetness that you like, and adjust accordingly. Use a wooden spoon to stir – gently.

Chill the salad in the fridge for an hour before serving. Simple, colorful, and satisfying.

Grilled Vegetable Kebabs

Passover, Purim, vegetables, Vegetarian, What's Cooking for Shabbos and Yom Tov 4 Responses »

Apr 172011

How we do love anything grilled. That smoky, slightly charred flavor just wakes appetite up. And how smart we are not to confine our grilling to meat – even peaches taste special cooked over an open flame. With the Passover week coming up, we expect to smell a lot of al ha-esh barbeques around. Ours will have vegetables too.

I brought marinated vegetable kebabs to the family Purim party. While the rest of us sat at the rooftop table drinking wine and sangria, my son-in-law’s brother-in-law – well, extended family tends to grow close here – anyway, one of the young men stood and kindly grilled.

He turned out grilled chicken fillets and wings and livers (and hearts, those dark, crunchy little nuggets). Grilled, thinly sliced beef fillets. Spicy little hamburgers. And there was a big potato salad colorful with chopped red onions, cilantro, and celery and tart with a lemony mayonnaise. Dishes of humus and Turkish salad (follow links to recipes). A bowl of Israeli chopped tomato/cucumber salad. French fries. A feast – but the surprise was the grilled vegetable kebabs. Everyone loved them.

My mechutenet (daughter’s mother-in-law) asked me for the recipe. She herself is an excellent cook in the Sephardic tradition, owning no other kitchen appliance than a hand-held grater and making every single thing fresh. I was honored.

Now it occurs to me that except for the pile of fresh pitas, this menu would be wonderful on a Passover get-together. Many like to grill on the holiday. And at the conclusion of Passover, half the country goes to the parks for the Mimuna festival. Everyone sets up portable grills and boom boxes and lounges around on the grass, eating grilled meat and grooving to loud music sung by people with nasal obstructions. Vegetable kebabs would make a welcome light note there.

Grilled Vegetable Kebabs

6-8 servings

Choose from any mix of eggplant, zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, bell peppers of any color, white or red onions, mushrooms, and sweet potatoes.

Combine:

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon orange zest

1 tablespoon lemon zest

2 teaspoons freshly-ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh, chopped za’atar or oregano, or 2 teaspoons dried

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon thyme

1 tablespoon chopped, fresh rosemary leaves or 1/2 tablespoon dried

Cut tomatoes in quarters or use cherry tomatoes. Chop peppers and onions into chunks convenient for skewering. If using button mushrooms, there’s no need to cut them; if using larger ones, slice into halves.

If using eggplant and/or zucchini, slice them thickly, place them in a colander, and cover with a light layer of salt. Set the colander over a bowl to catch the juices, and let the vegetables drain for half an hour. Rinse them and either put them back into the (rinsed) colander to dry or pat them dry.

If using sweet potatoes, slice them thickly and drop them into boiling water. Cook for 5 minutes, covered. Remove from the water and drain.

There should be about 8 cups of vegetables, not tightly packed, when you’re done chopping. Combine all the vegetables and pour the marinade over them. Cover and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours and up to overnight.

Have plenty of wooden skewers at hand. Soak them in cold water for half an hour before spearing them into the food – this will help prevent them from burning while the vegetables cook.

Arrange the vegetables on the soaked skewers and grill 5-10 minutes on each side, till all are tender. Have fun sliding the fragrant grilled chunks off the skewers and onto your plate.

Nut Butters That You Make At Home

Everyday Cooking, Just Hungry, Useful Flavorings and Relishes, Vegetarian 10 Responses »

Mar 102011

Looking at the price of almond butter in the health food store, I put the jar back on the shelf and thought, I can make it myself. So I strolled out and headed for the shuk, where almonds are plentiful and affordable.

I could have bought American almonds, but sampling all of them, I found the local ones best. Probably they’re fresher, not having been sitting in the hold of a ship for who knows how long. And while I was at it, I indulged in cashews. Some sunflower seeds went into my cloth shopping bag too.

At home, I pulled out my trusty food processor (of mayonnaise fame) and got to work. It took almost no time to produce three individual nut and seed spreads. It’s worth making small batches, because they really taste best fresh. And while these spreadable butters usually wind up on bread as a snack, you can do a lot of different things with them – as you’ll find out.

Almond Butter

Yield: 2/3 cup

Choose either blanched (white) whole nuts, or almonds with the papery brown skin still on them. Either way, the almond butter is delicious.

2 cups raw almonds

Salt

2 tablespoons almond oil or other neutral-flavored oil

Heat the oven to 300 degrees F, 150 degrees C.

Spread almonds on a baking sheet in a single layer.

Sprinkle lightly with salt.

Roast for 7 minutes, then turn nuts over and roast another 5-7 minutes. There should be a light, nutty aroma when you open the oven door.

While the almonds are still warm, transfer them to the food processor. Add the oil.

Process for 5-12 minutes. Processing time varies according to the age of the nuts and how dry or moist they were when you bought them. There will be a dry flour at first, but persist, stopping the food processor once in a while and scraping the sides down. Process till you have a smooth paste. Store in a clean, dry, covered jar for up to 1 month.

Things to do with your Almond Butter:

Substitute it for peanut butter in cookies and Oriental sauces.

Stir a tablespoon into hot cereal. It will add protein and fat.

Milk substitute: blend 2 tablespoons almond butter or cashew butter with 1 cup of water and 1 teaspoon honey till foamy; strain and drink, or use in cooking or baking. Cashew butter doesn’t need straining.

Sweet variation: add a handful of good chocolate to almonds when processing. Or 1 tablespoon maple syrup, or 1 tablespoon brown sugar.

Kid’s favorites: the classic “ants on a log –“ celery sticks stuffed with peanut butter and dotted with raisins – tastes new when you substitute almond butter and cranberries. Or spread almond butter on toast and top with sliced bananas or jam.

Cashew Butter

Use the same procedure as for almond butter, above. It will be firm, but moist. A delicious thing to do with cashew butter is mix finely chopped chives with grated sharp cheese like cheddar or Parmesan and roll little balls of cashew butter in the mix.

Sunflower Seed Butter

Sunflower seeds pick up the taste of salt strongly, so start by adding only a pinch, then add more to taste – up to ¼ teaspoon salt.

1 cup shelled, roasted sunflower seeds

1 tablespoon oil

Pinch of salt

Sunflower seed “techinah”

½ cup sunflower seed butter

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup water

1 small, mashed garlic clove

Salt to taste

Blend all.

Spread toasted slices of challah or French bread with sunflower seed butter and top with one of the following:

A slice of tomato

Slices of hard-boiled egg

Thinly sliced leftover roast chicken

Garnish the open sandwich with olives, pickles, and sprigs of fresh herbs like parsley, aragula, and basil.

Cardoon and Potato Gratin

Eating Local, vegetables, Vegetarian 3 Responses »

Mar 022011

Doing folkloric things tickles me. A pot of rue placed to the right of the entrance – sure-fire way to avert the Evil Eye. Stuffing mallows like grape leaves once a year to keep up the tradition. Things like that.

So when I saw cardoons in the Petach Tikvah shuk this week, I decided to stop ignoring them, as in years past, and cook ‘em already.

Cardoons are the stems of a thistle related to artichokes. Which are thistles. But the cardoon flower is negligible and the leaves horribly bitter. To eat cardoons, you must cut the thorny parts of the stem off and peel away the celery-like fibers. What a load of work. And that with the luxury of buying them with the thorns already shaved off.

Cardoons must be pre-cooked before starting the recipe, to get rid of excess bitterness. The resulting taste is so delicate, so subtle, that you must not overwhelm it with loads of onions or cheese. Or garlic. In fact, it’s so darned delicate that you can hardly taste it. Did I do something wrong here?

All the same, I peeled, cooked, and baked cardoons and potatoes in a cream sauce enriched with shallots and cheese. It was tasty. But worth the effort? I don’t know. You judge.

Cardoon and Potato Gratin

Ingredients:

8-10 cardoon stalks, trimmed of thorny sides and with fibers on the stalks peeled away. A sharp knife, just slid down the backs, removes most of the stringy fibers.

2 large potatoes, cut into sticks about the shape of your forefinger

1 cup grated Parmesan or cheddar cheese, out of which reserve 1/4 cup

1 cup milk

1 cup light cream

1 shallot, finely minced

1/2 teaspoon salt

freshly-ground black pepper

Juice of 1 lemon

1. Have ready a bowl of cold water with the lemon juice in it.

2. Cut the stalks into thick slices diagonally and toss them into the bowl of lemon water as you work, to keep them from turning brown.

3. Peel the potatoes and cut them into sticks about the shape of french fries. Chop the shallot finely.

4. Have ready a large pot of boiling salted water. Cook the cardoons in it, covered, for 10 minutes or until barely tender. Drain well.

4. Mix the cardoons, potatoes, shallot, 3/4 cup of grated cheese, milk, cream, salt and pepper.

5. Prepare a gratin dish by lining it with baking paper, or grease it heavily. Pour the vegetables into it.

6. Taste for seasoning and adjust if needed. Scatter the remaining 1/4 cup grated cheese over top.

7. Bake at 425 F – 220 C for 45 minutes – 1 hour, till the potatoes are cooked through.

Ratatouille

Everyday Cooking, vegetables, Vegetarian 2 Responses »

Feb 172011

Just an eggplant and me. It was a slender young thing, all in shiny dark purple. Almost too beautiful to slice up.

But I was hungry.

Ratatouille takes minutes to prepare. It’s deliciously Mediterranean, redolent of olive oil. It’s filling. And low-carb.

I sharpened my knife.

Ratatouille

4 servings

Ingredients:

1 eggplant weighing about 350 grams

1 large onion

2 slender zucchini

2 large, very ripe tomatoes

1 large, red, bell pepper or (1 medium red and 1 medium green)

2 garlic cloves, minced

Olive oil

salt & pepper

Method:

Cut the eggplant into slices as thick as your thumb. Cut each slice in half.

Slice the onion into thick rings; halve each slice.

Cut the zukes into slices the same width as the eggplant, but do not halve.

Chop the tomatoes into rough chunks. Do the same with the bell pepper.

Mince the garlic.

Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in a wide pan. Add onions and fry till starting to soften. Add all the other vegetables, including garlic.

Drizzle a little more olive oil in. Cook for 5 minutes over a medium flame, stirring once in a while.

Cover pot, lower flame, and cook without uncovering for 15 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper, stir, cover again, and cook another minute or two. Taste for seasoning. Ratatouille is done when the eggplant is cooked through and everything is kind of soupy.

Pronto! Eat hot, at room temperature, or cold, with crusty bread to mop up the sauce.

Eggplant Stuffed With Burgul and Dried Fruit

Tu B'Shvat, vegetables, Vegetarian 10 Responses »

Jan 192011

For our Tu B’Shvat feast, I thought I’d stuff an eggplant. I saw this gorgeous shiny purple “baladi” – prime – eggplant in the shuk. Brought it home, set it down on the kitchen counter, and contemplated it.

I could imagine layering it, fried, with cheese. Doing something tomato-saucy.

Umm, too much. Too big to chop up into ratatouille. We would be eating ratatouille for weeks. Too big for babah ganoush for the same reason. Too big to grill. Too big, too big, too big. There’s only three of us in the house these days. What was I thinking?

But it looked so good.

Then I recalled a fruity bulgur salad that was sitting in the fridge. It was full of chopped nuts and fruit and chives and celery. Hmmm. Wheat. Walnuts. Currants. Sounds like Tu B’Shvat to me. So I stuffed and baked the purple monster with fruity bulgur and let me tell you, it was good. We didn’t have any trouble eating it up. If you’re fond of eggplant, try this one.

Eggplant Stuffed with Fruity Bulgur

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant

olive oil

1/2 cup medium-grade bulgur

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup boiling water

1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

1/4 cup raisins or currants

1 celery stalk

1/4 cup toasted sunflower seeds

2 tablespoons minced chives or 1 shallot

1/2 red apple

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon honey

1/4 teaspoon cumin

dash cinnamon

1. Place the bulgur in a heatproof bowl with the salt and mix. Pour the boiling water over it and cover the bowl. Leave it alone for 1/2 hour.

2. Meantime, toast the sunflower seeds in a medium oven for 5 minutes. Chop the walnuts coarsely and the celery and apple finely (don’t peel the apple). Chop the chives (or shallot).

3. Pour some of the lemon juice over the apples to prevent browning. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover, and set aside.

4. Remove the green cap from the eggplant. Slice the eggplant in half horizontally. Cut away the pulp, leaving a thin shell inside. Chop the pulp finely and add it to the fruit bowl. Mix well.

5. Brush the insides of the eggplant halves with olive oil. Sprinkle generously with salt and grind some pepper over all.

6. Fluff the cooked bulgur up with a fork. Add it to the fruit/eggplant bowl and mix well. Drizzle more olive oil into it, mix, and taste for seasoning. Add more salt, pepper, honey, cumin or cinnamon to taste.

7. Stuff the eggplants, tamping the bulgur mixture down with your hands to keep it firm. Drizzle yet another little olive oil over all.

8. Tuck a strip of tin foil tightly around each half. Bake at 350° F – 180° C for 1 to 1-1/2 hour, depending on size of eggplant. When the meat on the shells and the chopped eggplant in the stuffing is tender and an appetizing odor of “cooked” arises, it’s done.

Remove the tin foil and bake another 10 minutes to make the top crisp.

The stuffing tends to crumble when first taken out of the oven. To slice firm portions, allow the dish to cool and then re-heat it. Good at room temperature too.

Pan-Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli

vegetables, Vegetarian 2 Responses »

Dec 102010

Skies are grey, rain sprinkles down, and storms are promised for the weekend. Do we feel gloomy? No! We’re thrilled. Let it rain, let it come.

Winter vegetables are now worth cooking. This past long summer, you had to get to the shuk early, before the produce wilted on the stands. Leafy greens had big holes in them where bugs had been noshing. Root vegetables looked stunted. But everything’s reviving with the colder nights and rain. Cauliflower and broccoli looked especially tempting this week, so I brought some of each home for lunch last week. I found inspiration for the recipe in one of my favorite sites, 101 Cookbooks.

Pan-Roasted Cauliflower and Broccoli

4 servings

Ingredients:

1 small cauliflower

1 medium-sized bunch of broccoli

Olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove of garlic

2 scallions

Freshly-ground black pepper

zest of 1 lemon

Method:

1. Cut away the leaves from the cauliflower (don’t throw them away) and cut the stem off. Break the head up into small florets no bigger than the first joint of your pinkie finger. Do the same with the broccoli. Keep the florets all about the same size, so that they’ll cook evenly. Rinse and drain.

2. Chop the scallions finely. Chop the garlic finely and use the edge of your knife to mash it.

3. Pour a dollop of olive oil into a large skillet and heat it up for a couple of minutes. Add the cauliflower and broccoli and stir gently to coat them with oil. Keep the flame medium-high. Leave the vegetables alone a minute or so, then lift a few to see if they’re starting to color at the bottom. If not, give it another minute. Sauté another five minutes , stirring gently.

4. Add the garlic and scallions and stir; cook only another minute. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if needed.

5. Remove from the heat. Grind a little pepper over all and stir in the lemon zest.

Serve right away.

.…So what’s with those cauliflower leaves?

Well, I’m always surprised that people throw them out. Steamed and with a little olive oil or butter drizzled over them, they’re a fine vegetable side dish.

Apple Fritters for Thanksgiving or Hannukah

Chanukah, Vegetarian, What's Cooking for Shabbos and Yom Tov No Responses »

Nov 242010

Looking for a side dish to go with the Thanksgiving turkey? These little apple fritters provide a lightly sweet note to offset savory dishes. The recipe below includes butter, but use margarine to keep the fritters pareve.

They came about because I was thinking of a latkeh alternative for Hannukah. Have a look at my 5 Hannukah recipes, including one for Moroccan sfrenj fritters. While I was thinking of fried foods, apple fritters occurred to me. Then, naturally apple fritters occurred in my kitchen.

For a meat meal, drizzle just a little dark honey over them before serving. For a dairy or vegetarian meal, serve them with cream and honey sauce (recipe below) – delicious. Alternatively, drizzle a little dark honey over cubes of firm white cheese and eat the fritters with that – also very good.

Apple Fritters in Beer Batter

Recipe adapted from Al-HaShulchan magazine, Sept. 2010

about 20 2-inch fritters

Ingredients for beer batter:

2 eggs, separated
2/3 cup white beer
a pinch of salt
1 cup minus 2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons margarine or butter, melted
1 tablespoon sugar

oil for frying

Ingredients for apples:

3 peeled apples, chopped into large dice
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon honey

Ingredients for Cream and Honey Sauce:

1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons honey

Method:

1. Make the batter:

Whip the egg yolks with the beer till light. Add the salt, flour, and melted margarine or butter. Mix well and set aside, covered, for 30 minutes. (In hot weather, let the batter rest in the fridge.) Later, you’ll add the whites, so don’t throw them away.

2. Prepare the apples:

Mix the chopped apples, raisins, vanilla and honey in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Prepare the cream and honey sauce:

Mix all the ingredients well and put it away in the fridge till time to serve the fritters.

4. Assemble and fry:

Mix the whites with the tablespoon of sugar until stiff. Mix this gently into the yolk batter. Add the fruit and mix again, gently.

Fry the fritters in hot, shallow oil, turning them over to brown each side.

Drain, turning them over to allow the oil to drain from the lumpier side.

These fritters can be made ahead, frozen, and popped into a hot oven straight out of the freezer. Let them heat through for about 10 minutes.

2 Recipes: Spiced Olives and Potatoes with Olives

Appetizers, Everyday Cooking, vegetables, Vegetarian, What's Cooking for Shabbos and Yom Tov 9 Responses »

Nov 062010

My neighbors and I cook at around the same time of day, and our cooking smells waft around the building. I stick my head out the kitchen window and sniff judgementally. One neighbor’s food smells great, with sharp notes of onions, turmeric, cumin. Another’s cooking is so bland it depresses me. (Boiling potatoes again, are we? Don’t you get tired of boiled potatoes?)

Yesterday, Friday, every woman was cooking for Shabbat. Naturally, she needs to put something nutritious, filling, and cheap on the table. Potatoes suit the menu every time. I looked at my potato bin. This Friday, I was bored with them. I needed some potato inspiration.

Flipping through my cookbooks, I found an interesting recipe in Joyce Goldstein’s Saffron Shores: Jewish Cooking of the Southern Mediterranean. Actually, it’s two recipes in one, because first you must prepare spiced olives, then add them to potatoes and cook them together.

Goldstein’s recipe calls for crushing whole olives with the flat of a cleaver or a mallet, then soaking them overnight. I didn’t have time for that and figured that canned, pitted olives would release plenty of their salt with a few good rinses. So they did. And the dish was very good. It has the advantage of being vegetarian and pareve, for everyday meals as well as for Shabbat. And the olives, you can serve serve and eat as an appetizer all by themselves.

Spiced Olives

Yield: 2 cups

Ingredients:

2 cups of pitted olives

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large bay leaf

2 cloves of garlic

½ teaspoon sweet paprika

A large pinch of cayenne pepper and/or ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Juice of ½ lemon

Method:

Rinse the olives thoroughly, three times in cold, running water. Drain them.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet or shallow pot, over a low flame.

Cook the bay leaf, garlic, paprika and cayenne or pepper for 3 minutes.

Add the olives to the skillet and cook for 5 minutes, turning them over occasionally.

Remove from the fire and let cool. Put the olives, with the bits of garlic clinging to them, in a clean dish.

Add the lemon juice; mix.

You may store the spiced olives in the refrigerator for a week if kept in a clean, dry jar.

Potatoes Stewed with Olives

Serves 6

Ingredients:

The olive oil left from cooking spiced olives, or 3 tablespoons fresh olive oil

1 large onion

2 ½ lb. – 1 kg. potatoes, unpeeled but scrubbed and sliced 1 inch (2 centimeters) wide.

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

2 cups spiced olives

¼ cup finely chopped parsley or celery leaves

Method:

Chop the onion finely. Sauté it for 5 minutes in the skillet where the spiced olives cooked, with their oil returned to it. If using fresh oil, sauté the onions in 3 tablespoons of oil.

Add the potatoes and the spices. Don’t add salt – the olives will add enough.

Add water to halfway up the potatoes, and bring to a boil.

Cover the skillet, lower the flame, and cook the potatoes 15 minutes.

Add the olives and cook another 10 minutes, turning everything over once or twice.

Check to make sure the potatoes are tender; give them a few more minutes if necessary, but don’t let them get mushy.

Sprinkle the dish with the chopped parsley. Serve hot.

Tabbouleh Recipe

Everyday Cooking, Vegetarian 9 Responses »

Oct 282010

Tabbouleh is regarded as a main-dish salad for summer meals. But tabbouleh fits into chilly weather menus too. Cracked wheat, chopped vegetables and herbs bathed in olive oil and lemon juice – all that vitamin C. How can you go wrong? Not to mention that tabbouleh is delicious, inexpensive, colorful, and ethnic. A favorite with vegetarians. And takes very little effort to make.

I think I just talked myself into tabbouleh for lunch tomorrow.

There seems to be a difference of opinion as to the correct proportions of bulgur wheat to parsley in tabbouleh. Middle Easterners like less bulgur, more parsley – and plenty of lemon. Westerners don’t enjoy so much herb in their tabbouleh, and favor a mellower dressing. American recipes sometimes include a cucumber, which makes Middle Eastern people raise their hands in horror. Some add cumin to the salad; a shocking departure from the traditional recipe.

Shall I confess the dreadful truth? I like to chop a little bell pepper into my tabbouleh, and favor the greater proportion of bulgur. I guess I haven’t lived in Israel long enough to change my errant ways.

By the way, cooked, firm quinoa makes a delicious tabbouleh.

Tabbouleh

serves 4

printable version here

Ingredients:

1/4 cup fine bulgur wheat

hot water

4 tomatoes

1 small onion

1- 1/2 cups parsley

1/2 cup fresh mint

juice of 3 lemons

6 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Method:

1. Soak the bulgur in hot water for 20 minutes. Drain excess water out and if need be, squeeze the mass between your palms to get as much moisture out as possible.

2. Chop the parsley and mint as finely as you have patience to – or chop them up in the food processor. If you use the machine, watch it carefully so you don’t get green mush instead of chopped herbs.

3. Chop the onion and the tomato.

4. Add the herbs and vegetables to the tabbouleh, seasoning it with salt and pepper. Add the lemon juice and olive oil, again tasting and adding more if liked.

It’s ready. Serve with yogurt or tahini, or both, on the side.