For Supper Club: International remix edition we wanted to take each dish and make it a spin on a classic. The menu, managed by this month’s host, Leah, ended up including:
- Greek nachos – with minced lamb, cucumber, tomatoes, olives & yogurt-mint sauce on top of homemade pita chips
(using all the good stuff Leah brought from Spain)
- Homemade hummus, with roasted eggplant chips
- Arugula, asparagus & prosciutto rolls
- Our honey-balsamic Peaches (and figs!) with feta and graham crackers (homemade by someone other than us but still delicious) for dessert
Both the nachos & the asparagus rolls were inspired by Mark Bittman’s recipes (here & here). There are a lot of ingredients here, but don’t let that scare you off – the processes are fairly simple, particularly if you have a Magic Bullet (MB) or a small food processor handy! Also, the adjusted recipes we made were more than enough for five people.
For the nachos, you will need:
- 4 pitas, cut into triangles
- about 8 oz ground lamb
- 1/2 cup yogurt (not low fat!)
- 1 medium white onion, chopped
- juice and zest of one large lemon
- half a package of Greek feta cheese
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- salt, pepper to taste
- 2 tomatoes, chopped
- 1 large cucumber, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 jar kalamata olives, roughly chopped
- 1 bushel of mint (about 1/2 cup when chopped)
1. First, make the pita chips – season and sprinkle with olive oil and bake at about 350F, flipping halfway through. We like ours crunchier so they went in for about 15 minutes.
2. In the MB, combine feta, 1 clove garlic, lemon juice, yogurt, 1/4 cup olive oil, lemon zest, mint & any seasonings you like (a little bit of salt & pepper are somewhat mandatory!). Pulse until smooth, combined, and pretty green.
3. Heat up a large skillet with a little bit of olive oil to medium-high heat. Add in chopped onions and 1 clove of garlic (finely chopped) and cook until translucent, stirring from time to time.
4. Season the lamb with salt, pepper and ground cumin. Add to the skillet and combine with the onion and garlic mixture. Keep stirring and breaking up the minced lamb as it cooks, about 10 minutes.
5. On a large platter, layer in the following order: pita chips + lamb + mint sauce + cucumbers + tomatoes + olives.
The eggplant chips are super easy and I make them all the time.
You’ll need:
- one eggplant
- 2 cloves garlic
- salt, pepper
- olive oil
- any other herbs/spices you like
1. Preheat your oven to 375F and spray/coat a baking sheet.
2. Slice an eggplant as thinly as you can, season with garlic, salt, pepper and anything else you like. Place on baking sheet and drizzle very lightly with good olive oil.
3. Bake (you can flip them half way through) for about 30 minutes until the eggplant starts to take on a roasted, golden-brown color around the edges.
4. Dip into hummus or have with our tangy yogurt dip.
We made a team effort at precise rolling of the not-sushi asparagus rolls (arugula, asparagus, olive oil, lemon juice – dressed and rolled in sheets of thin-cut prosciutto) but they turned out to be slightly deconstructed.
No less delicious, I should say. And we used the leftover arugula and blanched asparagus, since it was already dressed, as a tasty side salad.
Dessert continues to be popular, I wonder why 🙂 [The recipe is linked to an earlier post above]. This time we added beautiful, seasonal figs into the peach mix.
Thank you, Val-pal, for the gorgeous photos! Can I please officially invite you to be the designated S&H photographer whenever possible? I’ll bake you salty cookies.
– K
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