photo by mb

Middle Eastern walnut pepper spread (vegan)

recipe by m-c

just the recipe

what I was looking for

a spread to keep in the refrigerator for healthy snacks

what I made

A Middle Eastern spread called "muhammara" from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking, pages 102-103.

At my house, we like to keep a spread in the refrigerator at all times for making healthy snacks. Often the spread is hummus (based on chickpeas) or baba ganoush (based on eggplant), both of which come from the Middle East. Imagine how my ears perked up when I read Heidi's description of a Middle Eastern spread called muhammara. "Why it plays second-fiddle to hummus and baba ganoush escapes me," she wrote. (Margaret's friend the Middle Eastern shopkeeper says the name is pronounced moo-HAHM-ah-rah.)

grades for my version

healthy B Walnuts, peppers, olive oil -- all good things. But the nuts and the oil should make this a topping rather than a meal in itself, which I seem to want.
fast C Lots of steps.
easy B If you're familiar with toasting nuts and roasting peppers, this recipe is easy; but if you're doing them for the first or second time, expect a learning curve.
cheap B Walnuts and red bell peppers and olive oil aren't cheap.
delicious A Makes every vegetable it touches delish.

yield

Approximately two cups.

equipment

   a toaster oven

   a food processor

I like to get a handle on a new dish by looking it up in several cookbooks in order to play compare‑and‑contrast. Sure enough, there it was, muhammara (spelled several different ways), in three other cookbooks I own, sitting right there on my shelves:

photo by m-c

OK, so now I have four different versions of the same dish. I like to divide the recipes up into main components and seasonings, and list the ingredients alphabetically, so as to keep an open mind about proportions and quantities. I roughly scale the recipes, and highlight the biggest proportion of an ingredient in yellow, the smallest in grey. When everybody wants the same, as in the hot peppers in the flavorings, I leave them all white.

main ingredients

  Ghillie Başan Claudia Roden Heidi Swanson Sonia Uvezian
breadcrumbs --- 1 slice, no crusts
whole wheat
lightly toasted 		¼ cup
whole-grain
not toasted 		⅔ cup
pita
toasted
olive oil 2 Tablespoons ½ cup ¼ cup ¼ cup
+ 1 teaspoon
roasted
red peppers 		2 --- 2-3 6
tomato paste --- 1 ½ to
2 Tablespoons 		¼ cup ---
walnuts 1 cup
not toasted 		1 ¼ cup
not toasted 		¾ cup
toasted 		2 cups
not toasted
yoghurt ½ cup

well drained 		--- --- ---

flavorings

  Başan Roden Swanson Uvezian
black pepper to taste --- --- ---
chile 1 teaspoon dried flakes
or 1 small fresh 		1 teaspoon dried flakes
or a pinch of cayenne 		1 Tablespoon dried flakes
or 1 small fresh 		1 small fresh
cumin --- 1 teaspoon ½ teaspoon ---
garlic 2-3 cloves --- --- 1 tiny clove
lemon juice of
½ lemon 		--- --- 1 Tablespoon of juice
pomegranate molasses --- 2 Tablespoons 2 Tablespoons 2 Tablespoons
sugar --- ½ teaspoon --- ---

(Salt is left off this table.)

Everybody agrees, it's got to have walnuts or it's not muhammara. And it's got to have olive oil. Breadcrumbs or drained yoghurt could bulk it up. Roasted red peppers seem to be controversial -- none for Roden, 6 for Uvezian. Everybody wants it to have a little chile bite; some people want a little garlic; lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, and sugar make it sweet and sour, but just a little.

In everybody's version, all you do is assemble the prepared ingredients in your food processor (or in a deep bowl for your immersion blender) and let rip till the spread has reached the consistency you want -- smooth and creamy in Heidi's version, chunky in mine.

Having completed my investigation, I followed Heidi's recipe almost to the letter, but with an easier mind than I had on first reading. After all, I still hadn't tasted the muhammara in anybody's version, but I felt I had taken its measure.

And was it good?

So good.

photo by m-c

Use it as a topping for cooked vegetables (think eggplant slices, or winter squash) and as a dip for raw ones (cucumber, celery, bell peppers, bok choi, jicama).

photo by m-c

assembling the ingredients

My favorite way of toasting nuts.

My favorite way of prepping bell peppers.

My favorite way of roasting bell peppers.

My favorite way of making pomegranate molasses.

ways to spell the name of the dish

photo by m-c

book nerd notes

I found this recipe less well written than most of Heidi's. It was only after reading the other people's recipes that I understood muhammara as a /*walnut/* spread. Her ingredient list reads:

1 Tablespoon red pepper flakes, or 1 small red chile
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¾ cup toasted walnuts

etc.

Listing ingredients in the order that they're used is generally a good idea, but sometimes that order can obscure the character of a dish. I've seen cookbook writers artfully pull a main ingredient up to the top of an ingredient list by having the first sentence in the method read, "Remove the [main ingredient] from the refrigerator." Or sometimes they'll divide the ingredient list into components, main and other, so as to emphasize what the main ingredient is. Or they'll use the title or the subtitle to tell us what the main ingredient is.

Heidi doesn't use any of these tricks to help us understand this mysterious thing called "muhammara." And there's nothing about the method that requires that the red pepper and cumin come before the walnuts. On the contrary, all the ingredients for the spread get blended together. It would have been just as easy to list the walnuts first.

All this is in the "Homer nods" category of book criticism -- even the greatest of writers make mistakes. If Super Natural Foods weren't so well thought out and well written, a mistake like this would be one among thousands, scarcely worth comment.

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