Jewish Muslim Interfaith Cooking Experience

What an incredible day! How exciting to be a part of this Jewish Muslim Interfaith Day, where over the next few weeks, we all share our food customs and traditions with women, whose families have traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East, and today we sit at a Shared Table in Punchbowl Boys High School.

 The girls started with babaghanouj, placing the eggplant directly on the gas hotplates to cook which gives a delicious smokey flavour. This is traditional cook on an outdoor fire. once the eggplant is soft, remove from the heat and let cool. then add cruched garlic, tahini, lemon juice and serve, see below.

Next on the menu were Sambousic, otherwise known as ladies fingers, slim and delicious!!! Below we can see how the girls filled the pastry with the cooked mince and rolled up these little slender pastries, ready for frying.

 

Definitely fiddly, but so very much worth it. We chatted that this dish was really only cooked when entertaining and often made then frozen prior to cooking. Below is Leila cooking the Sambousic.

How delicious were these Lahmi Bajeen below! A puff pastry base topped with a spicy minced meat topping, with pinenuts, to complete such an incredibly simple idea that was the perfect tool to eat the hummos and babaghanouj with.

We enjoyed homemade hummos, with chick peas that were soaked overnight, boiled until soft, drained and set aside to cool. Pureed with lemon juice, tahini, garlic salt and that is it.

What was interesting to learn is that most Lebanese women partially cook their chick peas, then freeze them. So when time is of essence, the peas are almost ready for hummos.

And here below, is the work of some very talented women. Women working together with traditional recipes, traditional ingredients and and a mutual respect and passion for food.

 

A huge thank you to Lynda Ben Menashe at the NSWJBD for creating this brilliant program, together with Fadima from the Muslim community.

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Until next time, Ciao, Mel