♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to the Ezba restaurant in the Galilee Valley.

We make a couscous with chicken and chickpeas that's delicious.

Then a quick recipe for muhammara, which is a walnut bread dip.

And finally, with Reem Kassis, author of The Palestinian Table, a chicken and potato tray bake.

So please stay tuned as we transform chicken with the flavors of the Middle East.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect.

We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Good.

How are you?

♪ ♪ - Where are we going this morning?

- So we're going to this restaurant called Ezba, and it was opened in the early '90s.

It was one of the first restaurants that catered to people who wanted to enjoy home cooking outside of the house.

It's him and his wife who run the place, Habib, and his wife is Minerva.

♪ ♪ So he cooks a lot of the traditional rustic dishes.

His wife is going to show us maftoul, which is...

It's similar to couscous, but much larger grains.

And maftoul means roll, because of the movement that you make with your hands when you're rolling the flour around.

- So just water and the flour in the bowl.

- Water and flour, yeah, you start out with a bit of bulgur just so the flour has something to wrap around, and you keep rolling and rolling until you get these pearl-shaped pieces of dough.

♪ ♪ So the challenge here is that you want every grain of bulgur to be wrapped in flour.

What you don't want is to end up adding too much water or too much flour and having grains that are just flour and water.

So that's where it's challenging.

And you have to keep rolling.

And she's at a point where she knows just by touch how much flour and how much water.

Are you willing to try?

- Oh, yeah.

I'm gonna get this the first time.

I'm gonna mess...

I don't want to mess that up.

Should I do a separate one?

- I think you'll be fine.

(speaking world language) She says it's okay.

She'll fix it.

Don't worry.

Go for it.

- Okay, okay.

All right, so... - No.

- No.

See?

I... That was five seconds.

- Clockwise.

- This way?

This way?

- (speaking world language) - The same direction that she was going in, yeah.

- I see.

Okay.

Now you feel it and tell me what... it needs.

- You need water.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ A little more?

- No.

♪ ♪ - Chris, you're better than me.

I don't even know how to do this.

- Better than someone who's never done it is not saying very much.

You've never done this?

- Never done this, no.

- Reem?!

You wrote the book on this.

- My mother and grandmother do it.

They probably don't trust me yet.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This is the moghrabieh that we just saw Minerva rolling the maftoul inside with the chicken and the chickpeas... - It's... Yeah, I can't wait to try that one.

Shall we dig in?

- Yeah!

♪ ♪ - Everything was delicious.

- It was so good.

How should I say thank you?

- Shukran.

- Shukran.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ So I was in Galilee, the valley in Northern Israel, a few months ago, and I went to the Ezba restaurant, and they made maftoul, which is barley, and they roll it in flour, as we saw.

Very difficult to do, but it ends up being like couscous.

And they make a dish which, where they cook onions, they cook chicken, they put them together with chickpeas and the maftoul.

And we had, I don't know, a dozen different dishes at the restaurant.

I mean, a tough life, you know.

But, but this was my favorite, it was really good.

So we brought that back here, and we thought we'd adapt it and make the dish here.

- Okay.

I mean, I would pay to see you sit down with a pile of barley and three flours, and get to work.

But I realize that probably is not gonna happen.

- It depends how much you pay.

I'd be happy to do it.

So go ahead.

- Well, we're gonna... We're gonna make a little bit easier version that we can have for lunch.

So, to get started, we poach some chicken in water.

You can see it's just at a very bare simmer.

You want skin-on, bone-in chicken, because that's gonna add a lot of flavor and body to the broth, and you don't want to overcook it.

But this has been hanging out here for just 20 to 30 minutes.

We have some onions, some bay leaf, and now we have this delicious broth.

So first, we're going to remove the chicken.

- Now, in the restaurant the pot was about this big.

- I'm sure.

- Because they were making it for quite a few people.

But, and the, the aroma in that kitchen, everything was fresh, it was local-- it was great.

- Okay, so now I'm gonna strain the cooking liquid, and we only need about four cups.

The rest you could save for a soup.

I wouldn't discard this, it's so good.

But we're going to use four cups just to cook the couscous.

- I'd just like to point out-- because we argue about stocks all the time-- if you make a stock with water and bone-in, skin-on parts, you have a lot of flavor.

- And fast, right?

I mean, this is 20 to 30 minutes.

All right, so we have about four cups.

And since you're the expert, Chris, I'm gonna put you to work.

We're gonna remove the skin.

And we have a couple of forks here.

We're gonna remove the meat from the bone, and chop it up, and then we will move on to the next part of the recipe.

- Okay.

♪ ♪ - Nice work with that chicken, Chris.

You did good.

So now we have quite a bit of onion here.

This is, like, two or three medium onions.

And we're gonna cook it for seven to ten minutes.

You just want to take the edge off, maybe get a little browning to build some flavor.

It's going to continue to cook when we cook the couscous, but you don't want crunchy onions.

- Well, I should mention, at the Ezba restaurant, this dish had a ton of onions.

I mean, they had a big vat of them.

But onions was not just a little bit of sofrito at the beginning.

It was actually a key ingredient in the recipe, so... - All right, so now, onions are soft.

I'm gonna add some spices.

So we have nutmeg and cinnamon and cumin here.

So really warm spices.

And some garlic.

(sizzling) And we just want to let those bloom about 30 seconds till it's nice and fragrant.

Could you hand me the salt, Chris?

- Mm-hmm.

- Thank you.

Gonna season it with some salt and pepper.

All right, and now, I'm gonna add the pearled couscous... And the reserved broth here.

(pan sizzling) So, Chris, this won't be exactly the same as that barley coated in the three flours, but the pearled couscous is really nice here.

It has a little bit of a chewy bite to it.

Really nice texture.

So I'm gonna let this come up to a boil, and then I'm going to turn it down to a simmer, cover it, and let it just go for five to eight minutes.

You do want to check on it so it doesn't get overcooked, and then we're just about done.

- Okay.

- Mm...

Smells pretty good.

- Oh, that does smell good.

- Right?

You can see that the couscous looks nice and chewy.

I just want to see if it needs any more salt and pepper.

Mm!

So good.

I actually think the seasoning is on point.

So I'm gonna add the chicken.

Can you hand me the pomegranate molasses?

I'm gonna add the chickpeas.

This is just a can of chickpeas.

I'm gonna add a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses to give it some nice tang, which really balances out those earthy flavors.

- I was getting worried, because I saw that bowl, and think if you dumped that in there.... - Yeah, that wouldn't be so balanced.

Just half the parsley.

We'll save the rest to make it look beautiful.

And then we're gonna make this even prettier.

We're going to drizzle on a little bit more of the pomegranate molasses for some extra tang.

And then sprinkle on a little bit more parsley.

- It looks great.

Oh!

You know, it has so many layers to it-- I know I say this all the time-- because there are spices, there are different ingredients, different textures, which is also one of the reasons I love this, because it has the couscous and the chicken.

- And it's really just a handful of ingredients.

Most of them you'd have in your pantry.

- So pearl couscous with chicken and chickpeas.

It's really four different things-- onions, chickpeas, couscous, and chicken.

You make your own stock, which is very easy to do, it's just simply cooking the chicken for about 20 minutes.

Lots of big flavors in here.

Lots of complexity, a lot of textures, but an easy recipe.

And we should say thank you to Minerva and Habib-- thank you-- from the Ezba restaurant.

Great recipe.

♪ ♪ You know, lots of recipes don't translate very well from the origin to the United States, but there are a few recipes that really do with almost no changes.

One of them is a dip called muhammara.

In Arabic, that refers to the reddish color of the dip.

And that's because it's made from walnuts, roasted red peppers, and some bread to thicken with some spices and oil.

Now, there are two kinds.

One is, you toast the walnuts first, and I think that gives you a very heavy flavor.

I don't really love it.

I had a great version at a little restaurant near the Sea of Galilee in Northern Israel, and it wasn't toasted.

The walnuts were not toasted.

It was very fresh and lively, and that's the kind of muhammara we're gonna make now.

Now, the first thing you want to do when you do this very often in any kind of Middle Eastern cooking is toast the spices.

So this is four teaspoons of ground cumin.

Put that in a skillet.

Put the heat up a little bit.

This is just going to take about 30 seconds.

You don't want to overdo it, but just when it becomes very aromatic, that adds a lot of flavor.

I can already start to smell it.

If you let it go too long, it's going to darken, and it'll burn very quickly, especially if you're dealing with a ground spice.

Now we have the first two ingredients: pita bread, a seven-inch pita, torn into rough pieces like that, and a cup of walnuts.

Again, not toasted.

(lid clicks) And we'll process this for about 45 seconds.

(whirring stops, lid opens) Nice and fine.

But you don't process it so long the walnuts get oily, it'll start to clump up like sand.

So this is nice and light.

So we have our four teaspoons of cumin, which have been toasted-- those go in.

We have two 12-ounce jars of roasted red peppers.

It's much easier to buy these than to do it yourself.

Make sure you pat them dry.

They have a lot of oil on them, as well.

Now we have the rest of our spices.

This is Aleppo pepper.

Obviously, this comes from, or used to come from, Aleppo, Syria.

No longer because of the war.

You can find it now from Turkey.

It's called silk chili.

But it's very fruity, it's not that strong, and that is, it's not that spicy, not that hot.

It has a nice, fruity flavor.

If you can't find it, you can just leave it out.

Some red pepper flakes, about half a teaspoon, kosher salt, and black pepper.

And we'll put those in.

And we'll give it another 30 to 45 seconds.

♪ ♪ So now we're gonna add two other ingredients-- lemon juice to brighten it up and pomegranate molasses.

Pomegranate molasses is just pomegranate juice which has been cooked down, so it has a thicker molasses texture, and we'll process that for just a few seconds.

(whirring) Now we'll add six tablespoons of olive oil to finish.

We'll drizzle that in while the processor's running.

If you can get a really fruity, light olive oil, that's great here.

You don't want something that's got a lot of catch in the back of the throat.

This should be a light, fruity spread.

So this looks fabulous.

I'm gonna drizzle it with a little bit of olive oil.

You can also add a little bit more pomegranate molasses on the top, if you like.

We have a little parsley, as well.

So it looks nice and bright.

Let me take a little bite just to see.

The secret really is not toasting the walnuts, I think.

It keeps them nice and light.

The lemon juice, the pomegranate molasses, just a few minutes in a food processor.

Muhammara, it's the perfect dip, it's easy to make.

It tastes absolutely great.

So this is a recipe that translates nicely from the Middle East to your home.

And we love it here at Milk Street, and we think you'll love it in your home, as well.

♪ ♪ What are we cooking today?

- So we're cooking a chicken and potato bake.

Very simple.

It's spiced with allspice, olive oil, my mother's nine-spice mixture.

♪ ♪ - You know, the idea of a tray bake is something I heard just recently, about a year ago, from Nigella Lawson.

But I guess it's not really an English thing, because we're here in a Palestinian kitchen and you're doing tray bakes.

- We call it saniyeh or sawani, plural.

It just literally means tray.

♪ ♪ - Families have their own spice mixtures.

It's not like there's one, you know, ras el hanout, or something.

- No, no.

- So you have a nine-spice mixture.

What, what's in that?

- Pimento, allspice, cinnamon.

There's nutmeg, there's mace, there's cloves, there's cardamom, there's cumin, there's coriander, and black pepper.

- I mean, this is richly colored, looks great.

- Well, let's try it and see if it tastes as good as it looks.

So these are all legs.

So the meat should be juicier than using... - You can't overcook it.

- I love the crispy skin.

Let me get you some nice crispy potatoes, as well.

Do you want me to show you how I do it?

- Mm-hmm.

You mean squeezing the garlic?

- I just squeeze it out.

And then it's kind of like your own sauce.

- Mm... Great flavor.

There's no pre-cooking.

- Mm-mm.

- There's the marinating of the chicken, throw it in the oven, and you're done.

- And also, the chicken doesn't overcook.

So let's say you have company coming and they're late.

You just, you keep the oven on, but at a lower heat, and it'll be fine-- because of the juices, it'll keep it moist.

And even on a weeknight, it's super-quick.

You come home from work, you throw it in, and within an hour, it's done.

♪ ♪ - You know, years ago I swore I would never do baked chicken parts again.

But every time I swear off something, I ended up doing it anyway.

So, when I was visiting Reem Kassis in the Galilee Valley, she made a tray bake, which just means on a sheet pan, and it was unbelievably good.

And it was because her family has a spice mix with nine different spices, and she roasts these whole spices every couple of months, and keeps them fresh, and uses it on everything.

So the takeaway here is, make your own spice mix, and, and she puts it on everything.

And it's just this go-to way to take something as boring as baked chicken parts and turns them into something-- I made it for Christmas, actually-- just great.

You've made it recently.

- I have made it a bunch of times.

It's part of my repertoire.

It's our favorite kind of recipe, right?

It's simple, but packs a ton of flavor, and a lot of that is because of this really great spice blend.

And that's what we're gonna make here.

So we have nine... beautiful... - Nine, count them.

- They're beautiful spices.

We're using whole spices that we're gonna toast and then grind ourselves.

That's the best way to get a lot of flavor out of your spices.

We have allspice, we have black pepper, cardamom pods.

We have coriander, cinnamon sticks that we broke in half, cumin seed, some cloves, nutmeg-- it's a piece of nutmeg that's just kind of cut in half-- and then we have blades of mace, and this is something that's kind of unusual.

You don't see it very often.

Typically, we find ground mace.

So if you can't find blades of mace, you can just add ground mace to your spice blend after it's already ground up.

So I'm gonna put these in a cool skillet.

And we do that when we toast spices so that we don't overcook them and burn them.

So I'm just gonna drop all these guys in here.

- Well, you want to just say a word about why we're starting with whole spices?

- So we're using whole spices here.

We are allowed to toast them in the pan.

We get a lot of flavor out of it.

We're gonna grind them ourselves.

And then you can keep this spice blend for up to three months.

We're gonna make probably about a cup of this.

- Whole spices that you toast and turn into ground spices is about 20 times better than buying ground spices at the supermarket.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- All right, so I'm just gonna turn this on over low to medium heat.

Again, we don't want these spices to burn.

So we're gonna toast these really just until we can smell them.

And then you want to immediately take them out of the pan and let them cool.

We want to make sure that they're cool before we put them in the grinder.

Some of the steam that comes off that can affect its texture and flavor.

So I have all those spices that we toasted.

They cooled.

They're in this spice grinder.

We're gonna grind them up.

(whirring) (whirring stops) All right.

(laughs): Smells amazing.

- Wow.

- It's so different than if you just put a bunch of ground spices in a bowl.

Wouldn't have this amazing smell to it.

So I'm going to take a couple of tablespoons of this and add some olive oil.

Some salt.

And this is pomegranate molasses.

It has a really fruity floral kind of flavor and taste.

It's one of the things in here-- not just the spice blend-- but pomegranate molasses is what makes this such a special chicken and potato dish.

If you can't find pomegranate molasses, you can substitute with some honey and lemon juice.

All right, now we're gonna add our chicken and potatoes.

We're using bone-in, skin-on chicken parts.

You don't want to use boneless, skinless here.

That will definitely overcook.

We're using a pretty hot oven, and you can use whatever parts you want.

We're using whole chicken that we cut down.

But if you prefer just thighs, or if you prefer breasts, you can do what you want.

- You know, when people, people tell me I can do whatever I want, they never mean it.

- It's never true.

- Bitter.

- (laughing): No!

Just experienced, that's all.

- And then we have some red potatoes.

These are on the, on the larger side, because we want these nice wedge shapes.

They're gonna cook at about the same rate as the chicken.

So I'm gonna add those in there and get them nice and coated.

I like to use my hands, because it's a little bit easier to get everything coated with this.

So we're ready to add everything to our tray for our tray bake.

The first thing we're gonna do is add the garlic that we're going to use to make a pan sauce with later.

And I'm gonna put the garlic in the middle of the pan.

And then I'm gonna arrange the chicken kind of around the garlic, like a chicken wall for the garlic.

And it's going to protect the garlic from burning in this hot oven.

And then we can just arrange the potatoes kind of around the chicken.

- So, me being me, I would just dump it all onto the sheet pan instead of doing this.

But is the chicken around the garlic really key here?

- Yes!

- Okay.

- Are you doubting me?

- No, I'm always looking at a recipe, going like, "Do I really have to do that?"

- It really is important, because if we put the garlic kind of strewn about on the sheet, it's not insulated from all of the heat.

This is a 450-degree oven that we're using here, which is pretty hot.

So you really do want to protect your garlic.

But it's gonna get really nice and sweet and soft as it roasts in there, and then we'll use it to make a really, really great and simple pan sauce right on this sheet.

It's gonna take 30 to 40 minutes or so, and we'll come back, and we'll enjoy our sheet tray chicken and potatoes.

♪ ♪ So look at this meal on a sheet tray.

It looks beautiful, am I right?

- And you did not lie, because the garlic is not over-roasted.

- It's beautifully browned, right there in its little safe haven.

- Yeah.

- So I'm gonna take the chicken and the potatoes off.

The skin is actually really nice and brown.

You can still smell all of those spices.

- Well, this is sort of like spatchcocking a chicken, right?

I mean, you're cooking it in one layer, so the white and dark meat, you didn't have to worry about... - Yeah, it's really great.

So, as I said, we're gonna make a really great simple pan sauce right here on the sheet tray.

And it's going to start with the garlic.

So I'm gonna mash this up, pour some water on here... And use that to just sort of deglaze the pan and just try and scrape up as much of that flavor that's on that sheet as I can.

We have, some of that spice mixture's on there, a little bit of the chicken.

All of that is great flavor for our sauce.

- So this is two things.

It's an absolutely absurd concept, making a sauce on a sheet pan, and it's a great idea, because it actually works, right?

I mean, it's my favorite thing.

- All right, so I'm just gonna pour this over the chicken.

What kind of chicken do you like-- leg?

- Well, I choose white meat when I know it's a great cook.

I like white meat.

- Whoa!

Phew!

- If I'm not so sure, I'll go, I'll go for dark meat.

- I'm going to take a leg.

Not because I don't trust myself, but...

So... - There you are.

- We will finish with a little drizzle of pomegranate molasses.

A little parsley.

For me, that's salad, so... All of the food groups are represented here.

- We have our green vegetables.

Is that what you're saying?

Oh, this is juicy.

Oh...

This is like when I first had it with Reem Kassis.

I was going, like, you know, "Baked chicken parts?"

You know, I didn't quite get it?

And then I took a taste, and it was, like...

It was just amazing.

And I've made this dish many times.

So it's a little ode to homemade spice mixes.

- Exactly.

- Right?

So if you're anything like me, you've probably gotten to the point in your culinary career where baked chicken parts is just not part of your repertoire.

But I got to tell you, this is just amazing.

The spice mix makes it.

Also the pomegranate molasses.

So a chicken and potato tray bake.

Very easy to do.

Just throw it in the oven for about 40 minutes.

Little spices on top, and you're good to go.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪