In fact, it was very, very tasty. The mezze, that is. According to the Great God Wikipedia (which we all know is unimpeachably accurate…. {/end snark}), mezze is “a selection of small dishes served in the Mediterranean and Middle East as dinner or lunch, with or without drinks”. To me, as my boy Alton Brown would say, mezze is just, ermmmmm….good eats. And, it goes without saying, my mezze was going to be served with drinks.
And so it was a couple of weeks back, the day I made the pita bread I last shared with you. Because, good as homemade, fresh, pillowy pita bread is, that really doesn’t constitute a full meal, especially not a full meal for friends.
So, there was mezze. Really good mezze. Homemade falafel, made from dried chickpeas, mixed with fresh, lushly flavorful herbs and fried gently in olive oil. Tzatziki, too, creamy, thick Greek yogurt, mixed with more herbs and garlic and cucumber. Tahini sauce, to drizzle over. And a Greek salad, since that’s the direction we were leaning, more towards the Mediterranean end of the mezze spectrum than the Middle Eastern one. All dishes I’d made before, in one iteration or another, but never in this gathering of yummies, and not usually made totally from scratch, from hopefully quasi-*authentic* recipes.
My falafels had, previously, come from a box mix of dehydrated chickpea (garbanzo) flour and dried herbs. Reconstitute with some water, let sit, form and fry. They were….passable, but I knew I could do better. My Greek salads had been laden with extraneous ingredients. My tahini sauce had been from a jar. It was time to up the ante a bit, and try to see if I could concoct some semi-authentic mezze.
Oh, the teaser picture. For some reason (insert head-smack here), I didn’t get a picture of the entire table when everything was done, nor of the finished sandwiches with the falafel patty on the pita, drizzled with the tahini sauce, and the tzatziki and dressed with lettuce, tomato and onion. I *think* I tried….and the shots I got were out of focus and/or poorly lit. It did sort of all come together very quickly at the end, and it got rushed. Too many tasks, too few hands, too much potential to burn down the house with hot oil. So, up there we gots the tahini sauce (in the small bowl to the bottom left), the tzatziki (in the medium-size bowl to the bottom right) and the Greek salad up top.
We’ll see the falafels later….