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West Australian
26-04-2025
- General
- West Australian
The New York Times recipe: Namoura (syrup-soaked semolina cake)
You don't always need eggs to give a cake its structure. This semolina cake soaked in a floral syrup gets its texture from yoghurt that's been mixed with baking soda and left to sit until doubled in size. Amanda Saab, a social worker, got the recipe from her Lebanese grandmother and serves it at iftar dinners during Ramadan, but it can be enjoyed year-round. Namoura (syrup-soaked semolina cake) Recipe from Amanda Saab Adapted by Tejal Rao Amanda Saab, a social worker and home cook who lives near Detroit, riffs on her Lebanese grandmother's recipe for namoura, a cake made from semolina flour, soaked in syrup while it's still warm. When she serves it at iftar dinners during Ramadan, Saab often doses the syrup with a little bit of lavender extract. You could follow her lead, or use another floral note like vanilla or rose. The cake has no eggs, but this version gets its rich flavour and texture from aerated yoghurt, which goes bubbly within minutes of being mixed with a little baking soda. For the syrup: 400g sugar 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice 1¼ tsp lavender extract, vanilla extract or rose water For the cake: 170g unsalted butter, melted, plus more for coating the pan 490g semolina flour 150g sugar 227g plain full-cream yoghurt 2½ tsp baking soda 29g slivered almonds Step 1 In a small saucepan over high heat, boil sugar and 1 cup of water, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Reduce the heat to a simmer, add lemon juice and extract, and stir to combine. Simmer until thickened into a syrup, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Step 2 Heat oven to 200C. Coat a 22cm x 33cm baking dish with butter. Place the semolina, melted butter and sugar in a large bowl and stir until well combined; set aside. Step 3 Place the yoghurt and baking soda in a medium bowl and stir to combine. Set aside until the mixture has nearly doubled in size, about 10 minutes. Step 4 Pour the yoghurt mixture over the semolina mixture and mix well to combine. Transfer to the buttered baking dish and press into an even layer. Using a knife, score the surface of the namoura on the diagonal into 5cm diamond-shaped pieces. Top each diamond in the centre with an almond. Bake until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Step 5 Place baking dish on a wire rack and drizzle the cooled syrup over the top of the hot namoura. Let cool to room temperature before re-cutting along the scored lines and serving. Makes 20-24 pieces Total time: 1 hour This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2022 The New York Times Company
New York Times
25-03-2025
- General
- New York Times
A Go-To Protein for Economical Meals
I wish I liked the phrase 'ground meat' as much as I like the dinners you can make with it. Ground turkey, chicken, beef, pork and other meats are the delicious and easy-to-prep foundation of meatballs, kebabs and burgers, a key element of countless sauces and curries. 'Ground meat' isn't super appetizing to me; a platter of nachos strewed with browned beef is. This week's newsletter is devoted to this ubiquitous but sometimes undersung ingredient, which is economical, convenient, easy to cook and hard to mess up. I'm sorry to those of you who don't eat meat! Usually you'll find at least two meatless recipes here in the newsletter every week. Instead I'm going to send you to this collection of vegetarian sheet-pan recipes, and there's a tip on using plant-based meat below. And do you get The Veggie, our weekly newsletter devoted to vegetarian recipes? If you don't, sign up here; it's free. A few tips: Most kinds of ground meat can be used interchangeably (especially ground turkey and chicken), though you'll probably detect a difference in flavor and texture. Nothing major. (Melissa Clark even wrote a recipe for meatballs using any kind of meat, and I love Tejal Rao's flexible keema.) If you're using ground turkey or chicken, use dark meat if you can, though don't worry if you can't. It's harder to find but worth looking for; it has more flavor and is less prone to drying out. Don't forget sausage, which is just ground pork, beef or other meat that's been salted and highly seasoned — which is to say, highly flavorful with no extra work from you. It's famously sold in links, which you can split open if you just need the meat itself, but I like to buy bulk (or loose) sausage, which is just the seasoned meat, no casings. Plant-based meats, from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, are their own thing. While you can often just swap them into recipes, you'll get tastier results if you read this article that Kenji López-Alt wrote for us and follow his tips. (He also created recipes for vegan cheeseburgers, chili and Turkish kebabs.) It depends on what other ingredients are in them, but recipes made with ground meat tend to freeze and reheat well. (The meat itself, properly packaged, freezes perfectly.) Thoughts? Requests? Email me at dearemily@ I love to hear from you. Porchetta pork roast; citrus salad with fennel and olives; sheet-pan pierogies with brussels sprouts and kimchi. Image Credit... Armando Rafael for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Hadas Smirnoff. Kay Chun takes mildly flavored ground chicken to a better place by browning it with ginger, garlic and scallions, and then simmering it with sweet potato in coconut milk. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
27-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
This Cake Is So Easy for How Gorgeous It Looks (and Tastes)
Hello! Ramadan begins tomorrow, and Tanya Sichynsky has compiled a collection of 21 recipes to enliven suhoor meals and iftar celebrations. There are beautiful, centerpiece mains — like Tejal Rao's lamb biryani, a generous dish of layered lamb chops, mint and cilantro, basmati rice, saffron milk and fried onions — and equally lovely sweets. Yvonne Maffei's dates with cream and chopped pistachios, a five-star, five-ingredient recipe adapted by Julia Moskin, would be a wonderful dessert, as would this namoura (syrup-soaked semolina cake). Amanda Saab's recipe for namoura, adapted by Tejal, is simple to make and assemble: First, you make a simple sugar syrup with lemon juice and lavender extract (or rose water or vanilla extract). While that cools, your cake batter — melted butter, semolina flour, sugar, plain yogurt and baking soda — goes into your trusty 9x13 baking dish for a quick bake in a 400 degree oven. The cooled syrup gets drizzled over the fresh-from-the-oven cake, and you get a beautiful, gently scented treat that only gets better as it sits. Featured Recipe View Recipe → You probably noticed that there are no eggs in this wonderful cake — a boon to anyone whose store shelves are a little bare these days. If you didn't catch yesterday's newsletter, Melissa Clark shared some excellent eggless versions of otherwise eggy recipes, and you can find Genevieve Ko's smart guide to egg substitutions here. The egg yolk is optional in these boulèts (epis-spiced meatballs), a recipe from Elsy Dinvil adapted by Korsha Wilson. The torn bread soaked in evaporated milk (or unsweetened coconut milk) keeps the meatballs plenty juicy and bound together, and the sauce — a deeply spiced mix of tomato paste, epis, chile and onions — brings plenty of richness. Pair your meatballs with rice or fried plantains (or both!) for a warming weekend meal. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
23-02-2025
- Lifestyle
- New York Times
Got Ground Meat? Cook Some Keema.
Image Tejal Rao's keema (spiced ground meat). Credit... Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks. Good morning. There's no better weekend morning than one that begins in line at Trinciti Roti Shop in Ozone Park, Queens, waiting amid the good-natured crowd for doubles to eat in the car afterward: one goat and one oxtail for now, with all the sauces, a bake and saltfish for later and, to wash it all down, a bottle of Peardrax. It's fuel for adventure: a long walk in Shirley Chisolm State Park, for instance, looking for snowy owls; or a ramble through Forest Park to count squirrels. I'll think about dinner as I roam. (I always do.) Could this be the night for a pork roast with jalapeño gravy? Or for coconut red curry with tofu? Possibly. But I've been wanting to make Tejal Rao's recipe for keema (above) for a while now, alongside a stack of chapati and a bowl of yogurt to dollop beside the meat. It's simple, comforting food — ground beef simmered with caramelized onions, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, warm spices and plenty of cilantro and mint — that's perfect for a Sunday night. Tejal never steers me wrong. Featured Recipe View Recipe → Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
