For just a moment it was spring.
Then it snowed.
Then it was almost spring again but raining.
This is the Midwest. I’ve spent a lot of my life here. I should expect it by now, but somehow I don’t, and every year it surprises me.
In that brief moment though, that moment when the sun was shining and there was a weekend afternoon in the 70’s and … well, just for the blink of an eye that long cold grey lifted … then it was time. Time to pretend it was summer, to swap out the flannel for linen, pour a glass of rosé, and enjoy some summer foods out in the garden with friends.
Did the sky look just a little bit threatening? Sure. Did we have to light the firepit to stay warm when the sun dropped below the houses across the street? Yeah. Did that stop us from enjoying that flash-in the-pan first false summer of the year? Absolutely not.
This week’s menu is a warm weather appropriate – or cool weather respite – Mediterranean meal. I’ll call it mini-terranean. Small. Small plates, small things. A small nod toward warmer weather.
Most of the recipes here aren’t really standalones – but they also don’t have to all go together. Make a batch of hummus and cut up some veggies, have marinated feta with crust bread and a glass of hearty red wine. Throw some falafel, white sauce, your favorite hot sauce, and some lettuce tomato and onion into a tortilla for a culturallyclashed but exceptionally tasty lunch.
One quick thing before I really dive into this week’s menu. I need to ask you a favor. If you enjoy reading The Weekly Menu, and I hop you do (because you’re actually reading this instead of deleting the email) - please share it with friends and family. While we’ve grown quite a community of cooks, food nerds, and admirers of typo-laden bizarre run on screeds about food related things here over the last year or so, that growth has sort of stalled. More subscribers … well, it makes me feel better about spending so much time cooking.
So, please very much thanks etc. No really. Thanks!
Marinated Feta
This is a quick and remarkably satisfying snack – and to be honest, if you’ve got enough time for it to sit in the fridge, you don’t even have to heat the oil, it just helps to bring out the flavors of the herbs and tames the garlic’s harshness. You can vary the levels of spiciness and individual herbs to your taste. I add just a touch fresh grated cinnamon as it adds a really surprising depth of flavor without … well, actually tasting like cinnamon.
8 oz good quality feta (I like sheep’s milk)
¼ cup good olive oil
1 large clove garlic
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp dried rosemary
½ tsp dried oregano
2 tsp red pepper flake
1 tsp tomato paste
½ tsp ground black pepper
pinch of fresh grated cinnamon (opt)
Peel, trim, and finely mince the garlic.
Add the olive oil to a pan over very low heat.
Add the tomato paste, and red pepper flake.
Cook, stirring to break up the tomato, until the oil is red and fragrant.
Add the herbs and garlic, and cook until the herb smell is bright.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Cut the feta into ½ inch cubes.
Fold together the feta and the oil, making certain that the oil and herb mixture coats each piece.
Allow to rest at room temperature 1-2 hours before serving.
Flatbread
This is a redux of the flatbread recipe that I included in last year’s “Greekish” menu. I’m fine with re-sing the recipe for a couple reasons. One, it’s good, and pretty easy. Two, I make these ALL. THE. TIME. Seriously. I make them a couple times a month – whether for middle eastern or Mediterranean meals – and honestly I often use them in place of Naan when making northern Indian food – because I don’t (yet) have a tandoor in the back yard (though these instructions for making one out of a trash can and flower pots are fascinating)
325g Bread Flour
180g water
7g yeast
50 g Greek yogurt
25 g olive oil
7 g salt
Add the water and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer, and stir to combine.
Allow to sit for 5 minutes.
Add the bread flour, yogurt, salt, and olive oil and process with a bread hook until a smooth dough has formed.
Turn the dough out into a lightly oiled bowl, and cover.
Allow to rise until doubled in size.
Divide the dough into 8-10 pieces.
Roll the pieces into balls, and lightly flatten them with a floured hand.
Allow to rest 10 minutes, covered with a damp towel or plastic wrap.
Roll each piece into a thin circle approximately 1/8th inch thick.
Heat a griddle, comal, or thick bottomed pan over medium heat.
Griddled the flatbreads, turning once they begin to puff up, until lightly browned on both sides.
Hummus
For the first 2/3rds of my life, hummus was something the hippies ate. Someone tried to sell it to me at a Dead show, or at the college co-op. It was a popular item at a café I worked at for a while in the 90’s – layered into “wraps” with bean sprouts and roasted red peppers on a green crumbly tortilla. That hummus was pretty much always made with canned chickpeas, and had a rough, thick masonry consistency – like a legume based mortar. You could have an adobe colored empire built with the stuff – but might be better off without eating it. And don’t even get me started on the other varieties of the stuff. Like those freeze pops you ate as kids, they were more other colors than other flavors. Purple. Green. Red. Sometimes it came with dry crumbly pita. More often, blue corn chips.
Then at some point, some place, someone set a plate of smooth, flavorful lovingly made well seasoned hummus in front of me. With real bread, hot from the oven or griddle. It didn’t taste like a can. It didn’t leave flecks of beanskin in your teeth.
It was good. I mean, really, really good.
I tried to reproduce it at home, but no extra time in the food processor or extra lemon juice made that can of beans into that luxuriously creamy dip.
Later, I learned the trick – either by reading about Michael Solomonov’s method (used at his Philadelphia restaurant Zahav) , or hearing it second hand. The short story: soak dried chickpeas in water, cook them with some flavorings, and process them while hot. The result is creamy, smooth, flavorful hummus. You can tweak the amount of lemon, olive oil, and tahini to your preference – as well as the texture (by varying the amount of liquid, or by thinning it later before serving) … the one unifying thing – you’ll need a blender. You can get close with a food processor, but a good high speed blender really does make all the difference.
1 cup of soaked dried chickpeas
4 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp tahini paste (more to taste)
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt (more to taste)
1/4 tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp baking soda
1 bay leaf
Olive oil and sumac for garnish
Add the soaked chickpeas, bay leaf, baking soda, and 4 cups of water (or the soaking liquid) to a thick bottomed pot. Bring to a low boil and cook until the chickpeas are fall apart tender.
Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic.
Combine the garlic and lemon juice and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
White the beans and cooking liquid are still hot, add the cooked chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice/garlic mixture, salt, cumin, and olive oil to the container of a high-speed blender along with a little cooking liquid.
Process until very smooth, adding hot cooking liquid as necessary.
Cool to room temperature.
To serve, whip vigorously with a whisk – adding a little water if necessary to thin the mixture (it will thicken as it cools)
Spread on a plate and top with olive oil and sumac.
Serve with flatbreads and/or sliced vegetables for dipping.
Falafel
While the very same college co-op hippies (see above) who tried to pawn off bean mortar as food would also often espouse the benefits of falafel - I didn’t hate it. It was crunchy. There were sauces. I liked that. I liked it even more when, upon moving to larger cities, I discovered the late night falafel shops with their endless topping options, cheap late night eats, and Dutch style frites with Dutch mayo and peanut sauce. Ok, that last one was just one place in particular, but it really was spectacular.
This is a very simple recipe, again, with a lot of flexibility in seasoning it to your tastes. I use a blend of herbs – heavy on parsley, but with mint, cilantro, and dill for flavor. You can go in almost any direction – though the signature flavor is mostly garlic and parsley.
I also tend to double fry my falafel. This is mostly a matter of convivence - I prepare them ahead of time, and then re-fry them to crisp them up before dinner, or right as guests arrive. This also means that they’re amazing good for batching up and freezing. Just re-fry (or even air fry) them once they’ve been fired and frozen.
That green sauce? It’s the (sort of) zhug from a previous menu.
2 cups soaked chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
1 cup loosely packed assorted tender herbs (I use a mixture of cilantro, parsley, dill, mint, oregano)
½ tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp kosher salt
Oil for frying
Peel, trim, and crush or microplane the garlic. This is my mantra. I will repeat it.
Add about ¼ of the soaked beans to the container of a food processor along with the garlic, the salt, the herbs, and cumin.
Process this mixture until it’s about as smooth as you can get it.
Remove the smooth paste and add the remaining beans, pulsing until they’re fairly finely processed, but not a paste. Work in batches if necessary.
Fold the first paste and the processed beans together.
Preheat your oil to 350°F.
Form the bean mixture into balls or quenelles and fry, working in batches, until golden brown.
Drain on paper, and serve immediately – OR – re fry just prior to service for convivence (and extra crispness)
Serve with fresh cut cucumbers, tomatoes, hot sauce, white sauce – make it as you like it.
Shrimp With Lemon and Dill
This simple dish is basically just quickly pan seared shrimp in a sauce that’s essentially an olive oil based hollandaise spiked with dill and garlic. I’m sure there’s a proper name for the sauce I French cuisine, or in Greek cooking, or really anywhere. I just call it Lemon Dill Sauce because I’m not really interested in taking the time to look it up.
Though I will look it up, eventually, because it’ll bother me.
Just not today.
12 large raw peeled tail-on shrimp
2 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
4 tbsp plus 1 tsp olive oil
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp minced fresh baby dill
1 tsp minced garlic
salt to taste
Place the garlic, lemon juice, and egg yolk in a steel mixing bowl, and whisk until foamy.
Bring a large pot of water to a low boil, using a kitchen towel to hold the bowl, lower the bottom of the bowl into the hot water while whisking.
Whisk over the hot water until the lemon/egg mixture is foamy and thick.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the 4 tbsp of olive oil.
Once partially cooled, add the minced dill and salt.
To serve, season the shrimp with salt and pepper, and cook quickly over high heat with 1 tsp of olive oil.
Once the shrimp are pink and just cooked through, remove from the heat and toss with the sauce.
Garnish with more dill.
Mediterranean Roast Pork
This roast pork recipe is loosely based on a chicken recipe I’ve been making for years. The marinade is simple, the flavor surprisingly rich. And it’s super easy. It’s a mix, marinade, grill/roast sort of thing with no complex technique, no weird hard to find ingredients, and really – other than letting the marinade do it’s work – not a lot of time committed.
The real key to this dish … well, it’s the white sauce. If you’ve ever stood on a street corner for a Styrofoam plate of yellow rice with some grilled meat (which would probably not be pork) this is that sort of white sauce. Kabob shop white sauce. It’s essentially a delicious garlic delivery device. It exists in a strainge place where a traditional Toum meets fast food and late night cravings and it’s delicious.
Pile some of this roast pork on a flatbread, add some cucumber, red onion, a little tomato – and a healthy dollop of the sauce – maybe a little hot sauce for good measure – and you’ve got one of the best sandwiches I know.
Just know this – you WILL get it on your shirt. It’s a law of physics.
2 lbs pork shoulder
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flake
2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
Cut the pork shoulder into 1-2 inch cubes.
Peel, trim, and microplane the garlic.
Combine the garlic, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, oregano, and red pepper flake.
Allow to rest 10 minutes.
Stir in the olive oil and add the marinade and pork to a zip top plastic bag.
Press out as much air as possible, seal, and allow to marinate for at least two hours and up to overnight.
If roasting, preheat your oven to 400°F. The pork can also be easily prepared on a grill, or in an air fryer.
Roast or grill - turning once - until the meat is well browned and the internal temperature has reached 165°F. Exact Timing may vary depending on the cooking method and the size of the meat pieces – however is usually 25-35 minutes.
White Sauce
This sauce is great on …. Well, almost anything. I didn’t take a picture of it. Try as I might, there’s no way to make a bowl of white sauce photogenic. There’re even fewer ways to make an old slightly stained plastic squeeze bottle of white sauce photogenic – though it’s the best way to properly apply huge amounts of tasty flavor.
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
¼ cup Greek yogurt
¼ cup mayonnaise
black pepper and salt to taste
Peel, trim, and microplane or crush the garlic.
Add the garlic and lemon juice to a non-reactive bowl (glass or stainless steel) stir, then allow to rest for at least 15 minutes. The acid will tame the harsh raw garlic flavor.
Whisk in the mayonnaise and yogurt.
Rest in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before using.