Hello! Ramadan begins tomorrow, and Tanya Sichynsky has compiled a collection of 21 recipes to enliven suhoor meals and iftar celebrations. There are beautiful, centerpiece mains — like Tejal Rao’s lamb biryani, a generous dish of layered lamb chops, mint and cilantro, basmati rice, saffron milk and fried onions — and equally lovely sweets. Yvonne Maffei’s dates with cream and chopped pistachios, a five-star, five-ingredient recipe adapted by Julia Moskin, would be a wonderful dessert, as would this namoura (syrup-soaked semolina cake).
Amanda Saab’s recipe for namoura, adapted by Tejal, is simple to make and assemble: First, you make a simple sugar syrup with lemon juice and lavender extract (or rose water or vanilla extract). While that cools, your cake batter — melted butter, semolina flour, sugar, plain yogurt and baking soda — goes into your trusty 9×13 baking dish for a quick bake in a 400 degree oven. The cooled syrup gets drizzled over the fresh-from-the-oven cake, and you get a beautiful, gently scented treat that only gets better as it sits.
Featured Recipe
Namoura (Syrup-Soaked Semolina Cake)
You probably noticed that there are no eggs in this wonderful cake — a boon to anyone whose store shelves are a little bare these days. If you didn’t catch yesterday’s newsletter, Melissa Clark shared some excellent eggless versions of otherwise eggy recipes, and you can find Genevieve Ko’s smart guide to egg substitutions here.
The egg yolk is optional in these boulèts (epis-spiced meatballs), a recipe from Elsy Dinvil adapted by Korsha Wilson. The torn bread soaked in evaporated milk (or unsweetened coconut milk) keeps the meatballs plenty juicy and bound together, and the sauce — a deeply spiced mix of tomato paste, epis, chile and onions — brings plenty of richness. Pair your meatballs with rice or fried plantains (or both!) for a warming weekend meal.
With March and its glimpses of spring just around the corner, I am excited for asparagus and snap peas and all the radishes. But I’m not yet ready to give up my kabocha and cabbage and all things stewy. For the kabocha, I’m thinking of this roasted squash with chickpeas and hot honey situation from Melissa, which calls for butternut or honeynut squash. “You can’t resist this easy squash-chickpea recipe,” Melissa wrote, and, judging by the five stars and well over 6,000 reviews, she’s right.
For the cabbage: charred cabbage with miso browned butter, an Andy Baraghani banger. “There’s no excuse for not having cabbage in the fridge at all times,” Andy writes. “It’s affordable, it keeps forever, and keeping it stocked means you can have a perfect dinner side in just 30 minutes.” Hear, hear. Also: If you chop up your miso-brown-buttery cabbage and toss it with noodles, you have a really nice noodle dish.
And I think a giant batch of Dan Pelosi’s chicken stew is in order, a classic mix of onions, carrots, celery, potatoes and green beans in a savory broth made silky with heavy cream. Will I add a splash of soy sauce and serve it over white rice? Yup, and I’ll also stash half of the stew in the freezer for those inevitably gray and not-springy March days.
