Lebanese Summer Recipe: Marbled Pomegranate-Yogurt Ice Pops

posted on: May 26, 2016

By LAUREN PELLEY
The Star.com

Lebanese cook Salma Hage hails from Mazarat Tiffah — otherwise known as Apple Hamlet — in the mountains of North Lebanon’s Kadisha Valley. For more than 50 years, she’s been cooking for her family, including 11 siblings in her younger days, honing her culinary skills and accumulated hundreds of traditional recipes, from classic tabbouleh to lamb kofte. These recipes became her first book, The Lebanese Kitchen. Now, Hage is back with a new tome of all-vegetarian, Middle Eastern dishes.

The book: More than 140 recipes fill the pages of The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook, $49.95, spanning breakfast to dessert and featuring the flavours of sweet fresh figs and rich dates, salty feta and crumbly pistachio. While much of the more than 270-page book uses easy-to-find fruits and vegetables, a helpful glossary also explains the more exotic ingredients, like zaatar (a variety of Middle Eastern herbs) and shanklish (a Levantine cheese similar to feta).

The quote: “For me, along with my family, cooking is the thing I love most in life. I never imagined that most of the meals I cook would become almost completely vegan, and totally vegetarian.”

The tester: Sure, I love cooking, but I often bumble through it. Case in point: Using a spoon to scrape and scoop seeds out of a pomegranate, leading to juice spraying everywhere (on my table, on my shirt … yeah.) Don’t make my mistake and follow Karon Liu’s how-to guide for properly seeding a pomegranate.

Recipes I’m dying to make: A salad with freekah — that’s an ancient grain native to Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Egypt — pomegranate and feta cheese sounds like a delightful mix of flavours, while the roasted butternut squash with spicy tahini dressing would make a lovely side-dish in the fall.

With warm weather here at last, it’s the perfect time to test this ice pop recipe. The ingredients are easy to source though finding moulds proved surprisingly tricky. The recipe calls for six moulds. I found a package of four at Winners and adjusted. If you can’t find moulds, use hard plastic tampered cups and Popsicle sticks. The combination of cool, creamy, vanilla-flavoured yogurt pairs well with the tangy sweetness of the pomegranate and the marbled effect is eye-catching. Kids will love these and they’re sophisticated enough to offer grown-ups at a summer dinner party, too.

2/3 cup (160 mL) pomegranate juice

2/3 cup (160 mL) plain Greek-style yogurt or Labneh

1 tbsp (15 mL) honey

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped and reserved, pods discarded

Seeds from 1 pomegranate

Pour equal amounts of pomegranate juice into ice-pop moulds, filling each halfway. Put tops on (or insert Popsicle sticks). Freeze for about 1 hour, or until juice is beginning to harden but is not completely frozen.

In a bowl, combine yogurt and honey and vanilla.

Remove moulds from freezer. Remove tops (leave sticks). Fill each mould almost to top with yogurt mixture. To get a marbled effect stir briefly. Top with a sprinkling of seeds. Replace tops. Return to freezer for several hours, until completely frozen.

To remove ice pops from moulds, run under hot water until treat slides easily from mould.

Makes 6 ice pops.

Source: www.thestar.com