Recently Katarina and Jakub, two of my favorite people in New York joined me for a Turkish-inspired breakfast, in spite of the freezing cold that separated us. They brought copious amounts of champagne and orange juice, and we feasted and siesta-d until the sun went down.
The menu for the day included labne, a rich, thickened yogurt, sweetened with honey and dates; beautiful roasted eggplant topped with a buttermilk sauce and pomegranates; and a mouthwatering Lebanese flatbread called manaaeesh, which is vaguely reminiscent of Italian foccacia bread.
The recipe for the eggplant can be found in Yotan Ottolenghi's spectacular vegetarian cookbook, Plenty, which my friend Andrew brought me from London last Christmas and which I have been poring and swooning over ever since.
So, per Katarina's request, below is the recipe for the flatbread, which comes from Ana Sortun's book, Spice. You can make the dough the night before and bake it so that it's fresh the next day.
The bread is rich with olive oil and covered with a heavy dusting of za'atar, a wild Middle Eastern mountain herb similar to thyme or oregano. If you can't find za'atar, you can imitate it by combining thyme, oregano, and marjoram. In New York, I found it at Kalustyan's, an amazing place where you can find all kinds of unusual spices.
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| Photo courtesy of http://insideoutnyc.wordpress.com |
