Alayet Banoora (Jordanian Tomato and Pepper Ragu)
Summer is in full swing, and my kitchen is flowing with fresh tomatoes and peppers. I also came upon a big bag of long skinny green peppers from Weee! which turned out to be quite spicy in a quick Chinese stir-fry with shredded pork (more on that in separate post). Last weekend, I read an article in WSJ about amping up summer vegetables with Middle Eastern spices. An interesting idea, and their photos looked enticing. The following is my version of Alayet Banoora, a Jordanian tomato and hot pepper ragu, and a lentil rice dish called Mujadara. I should know better that WSJ recipes, with no reader reviews and most likely never tested, are not reliable. But after some tweaking, I ended up with the most amazingly tangy, jammy, smokey and spicy ragu! An absolute keeper for any season! My finishing touch of adding fried Polish kielbasa bits to the Middle Eastern vegetarian ragu elevated the dish to its crowning height.
Alayet Bannora Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive or canola oil
2 tsp of cumin seeds
15 cloves of garlic (frozen Spanish garlic from Restaurant Depot), sliced
1/2 dried red pepper or 1/2 tsp hot red pepper flakes
3 large long spicy green peppers (see below), seeded and cut into chunks, optional
2 large red peppers and 1/2 yellow pepper (optional), rough cuts
3 1/2 pounds fresh tomatoes (I used one large heirloom from Whole Foods and 5 hot house cluster tomatoes from ShopRite), roughly chopped —can substitute with two 28 oz canned whole tomatoes
2 organic Kielbasa links from Costco, cut into small cubes.
2 tsp of Diamond kosher salt
Instructions:
In large sauce pan over medium heat, add cumin seeds and cook for 2-3 minutes until fragrant (cumin seeds can take the heat and you may cook a minute or two longer to smell the fragrance)
Add garlic slices and hot pepper flakes in oil and cumin mixture, cook until fragrant but not burnt (frozen garlic takes a few more seconds to come back to life beautifully)
Add spicy and sweet pepper pieces and cook for 3-5 minutes until peppers start to wilt a bit but garlic pieces are not burnt
Add chopped tomatoes, stir to mix, and bring to boil
Turn down heat and cook, covered, for 30 minutes
Take off lid from sauce pan, and continue to cook for 15-20 minutes until the ragu reaches a jammy consistency. The WSJ recipe only cooks the ragu for a total of 30 minutes, which is runny and far from jammy. To make this dish right, you will need to pay attention to the consistency after taking off the lid.
Fry Kielbasa pieces in a separate pan to brown them slightly and let grease leach out
Add fried Kielbasa pieces to ragu and cook for 10 more minutes to meld in the flavor.
Notes: Serve with Mujadara (lentil rice)
Ingredients and Instructions for lentil rice: Equal parts of long grain rice (I used basmati) and Mosoor lentil (which seems hardier than red lentils). The mistake I made was following the WSJ recipe and precooked lentils for less than 10 minutes. My lentils fell apart miserably and turned into mush. Next time, I would simply rinse rice and lentil together, add 1: 1.5 water ratio, and cook in quick rice setting in a rice cooker. Add geniuses amounts of olive oil, salt (about 1 tsp), and fresh ground black pepper for flavor. The lentil rice is delicious and goes very well with the ragu. Just bad texture this time.
