Looking for a healthy party appetizer or a nice side dish at dinner? These baked asparagus wrapped in halal-certifiedDeli Halal Oven-Roasted Turkey Breast slices are so delicious and nutritious that you’ll serve them over and over again for gatherings, or even as a side dish to your dinner spreads.
If you’ve read this site before, you’ll know that I’ve been a fan of Deli Halal products since they first came out a few years ago. Now, they’ve re-launched and are available in stores across the United States. This is so super exciting because not only are they hand-processed, truly halal deli meats, but they don’t contain any of those nitrites or nitrates that you find in so many deli meats, halal or not.
Chop off the tough bottoms of the asparagus sprigs. I like to do this at an angle.
Once cooked, the asparagus sprigs will soften quite a bit.
Roast the bundles in the oven for 15 minutes. Let cool and serve on a platter with fresh herbs, slices of lemon, olives or any other similar types of toppings or condiments such as garlic-mayonnaise or spicy mustard (both recipes you can find in the My Halal Kitchen cookbook).
Have you ever come up with a dish that is so tasty you think you invented it yourself, only to find out later that it’s actually one of the great national dishes of not one but many different nations?
Well, that happened to me when I thought I was a culinary genius for coming up with the most delicious breakfast egg dish I’d ever eaten. I was simply using leftover ingredients that I had on hand from my mostly Italian/Sicilian/Mediterranean cooking. Well, little did I realize that everywhere from Palestine to Turkey to Lebanon and Algeria, everyone has been making this dish, or something very similar to it: Shakhshouka (also spelled Shakshuka).
In Turkey, the same ingredients (onion, peppers, tomato sauce) are used but the eggs are scrambled and the dish is called Menemen. An Italian version might use leftover tomato sauce, and in Algeria or Morocco they spell it Chakchouka. In some Middle Eastern recipes they add nutmeg; I do not ever put nutmeg in mine.
I recently worked on a video project for American Muslims for Palestine called Turning Tables, so watch out for that to be published in the near future. I was asked to make a Palestinian recipe or one that was inspired by Palestinian cuisine, so I decided to make my version of Shakhshouka, inspired by the cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen by Laila Al-Haddad, which now has a new and updated version.
Gently warm the olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the onion, green and red peppers and jalapeno. Cook until the peppers have softened. Add the sea salt and ground pepper as they cook.
Add the tomato paste and swirl around the pan to dissolve it as much as possible. Add 1-2 teaspoons of water to thin it out. Add the paprika. Cook until the water has mostly evaporated.
With a wooden spoon, carve out 4 round spots in the pan and crack one egg into each spot. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let cook until the white membrane of the eggs have cooked and whitened.
Remove from heat and drizzle the dish with olive oil, the crumbled feta and chopped parsley. Serve family style on a hot plate on the table, with fresh and warm pita bread.
Bismillah and Sahtein!
You can see a slightly different, faster version that I made for breakfast recently and posted on my Instagram page:
My friend and sister Zainab Ismail is a powerhouse of a teacher of Prophetic foods (the foods that the Prophet Muhammed, peace be upon him, used to eat). She always posts really beautiful photos of sunnah foods on her Fit for Allah Facebook and Instagram pages and recently posted a photo of dates with cucumbers because this combination is a sunnah. it’s also said to make a person gain weight, which is not a bad thing for people who actually need to safely put on a few pounds/kilos. It should be done healthily and safely, right?
*That said, I need to make a disclaimer here and say – this information is NOT intended as medical advice. Please seek professional medical attention when necessary.
It’s also interesting because the reason for combining the two is a way to gain weight. Well, who really wants to gain weight? I wouldn’t think so, but in terms of calories, fasting in Ramadan would actually be a great time to gain highly nutritious calories. This is one way to do it.
According to Tib-e-Nabi (Medicine of the Prophet), there are not only numerous benefits to cucumber and date alone, but the combination proves a healthy, complementary marriage of nutrition.
Cucumber is insipid and tasteless, and dates are sweet which results in the cucumber also tasting sweet. Both are opposite to each other & cucumbers are rich in water contains.
Tib-e-Nabi
Combine Medjool dates with fresh cucumber and add some mascarpone, creme fraiche, sour cream, or labneh on top. Or, to keep it dairy-free, simply toss it in a salad with oranges, cucumbers, add some other greens, if you like. You could even add some extra virgin olive oil, too. There are so many ways to eat clean, healthy, and Halal. Bismillah!
On the dairy side of things, I have already included links to individual products, but I’d like to say that my favorite dairy products (USA) come from several key sources. These are places I have been to personally, visited and spoke with farmers and locals– and seen the cows! So, I believe their farmers and businesses, many of which are co-ops, should be supported so that they can continue to bring us the very best of what they do.
I also show you how to make your own mascarpone and creme fraiche in the My Halal Kitchen cookbook, and there is a recipe for homemade labneh on this site.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links at no extra cost to you.
This recipe seemed to be buried under my nostalgic ode to Ohio in a post I wrote years ago after a memorable trip to visit my family. I spent a lot of time with my late Sicilian grandmother and my aunts on that trip. It was a fantastic time of year because so much of the summer harvest was still bearing fruit and everyone was happy and generous, eager to cook and enjoy the rustic countryside of Ohio that I grew up with and have loved and missed over the years.
This recipe for Sicilian Swiss Chard is one that my aunt made in just a few minutes. I never really knew that it was something my grandmother liked to make and eat because it wasn’t one of those things she made for the Sunday dinners, which were more family-style meals (think lasagna or pasta with meatballs), so I learned something new about her during this visit- and I also learned that I had unknowingly inherited a love of greens and that learning how to make something this simple would be one of the healthiest types of dishes in my repertoire to date. It’s something I have made over and over again, with spinach or kale instead, and it saved me many times when I lived in Turkey and there was an abundance of greens to cook. I hope you’ll enjoy it and prepare it for yourself and your family, too.
Serves 2
Ingredients
1/2 pound ripe tomatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces. I recommend this Italian boxed variety if you don’t have fresh tomatoes on hand.
1 bunch red or green-stemmed Swiss chard, cooked and drained of all water. Substitute spinach or kale if you don’t have Swiss chard. (Always choose organic/pesticide-free on the greens, if possible).
One of my neighbors passed on some of their long garden green beans to me, which I relish so much- anything from home gardens, without chemicals and given with a warm heart and smile is absolutely golden.
Since real organic, super fresh foods tend to break down quickly, I processed them the same day by immediately boiling them in salted water for 20 minutes. While they were cooking, I peeled and chopped fresh tomatoes (if you only have canned chopped tomatoes, use those but drain the juices), added a healthy dose of really good olive oil, crushed up 3-4 garlic cloves, and some super fresh chopped parsley.
Divine on its own as a salad, it’s also an absolutely lovely side dish to meat or fish. With it being so super simple to make (especially in this heatwave) it also tastes nice cold, too. I’ve been making this type of salad for years, always thinking it was a “Sicilian” way of making these summer beans, but maybe it’s just a common Mediterranean style because I’ve seen a lot of Turkish recipes go pretty much the same. Either way, wherever it originated or wherever it’s most common just doesn’t matter- it’s simple, healthy and delicious. That’s what matters….
I promise you this is a super easy side dish for any night of the week or any morning when you have some time to make that breakfast even just a little bit special. It doesn’t involve peeling potatoes (who has time for that!) or chopping them into super fine pieces just to make them quick-cooking.
My oven-roasted potatoes are so much easier and quicker and such a fantastic side dish to meats and fish, breakfast eggs, and more. Just get the smaller potatoes (aka: baby potatoes) which cook faster, especially when quartered, so it’s like doubly-quick.
To make, simply quarter each one, place in an oven safe pan, sprinkle sea salt and drizzle olive oil on top, bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven and add dried parsley for sure- squeeze a little fresh lemon juice on top and add a bit of slightly roasted minced garlic (optional). They’re yummo, I swear…
