Chermoula pimped goats cheese..and other things..

After my first foray into creating an aubergine boat and filling it – just like you would bake and fill a potato really – it’s become a feature of my lunches recently, as the photo above shows: this was a roasted whole aubergine filled with chermoula mixed with yoghurt, and again it was a delight and I fully recommend it, but on this occasion, it’s that’s filling idea that this post is going to focus on… 

 
Whenever I make chermoula I tend to pimp it in various ways; the sauce is traditionally served with fish or chicken, but in my vegetarian world, it becomes so much more..the wonderful mix of fresh parsley and coriander, with garlic, paprika, olive and lemon juice just offers up a world of opportunity to me..although, don’t get me wrong, unpimped and drizzled over roasted sweet potato is heavenly..but playing is fun too..

 
Just stirring it into freshly made tahini sauce or homous is so good! They are, after all, flavours from the same part of the world. Tahini, lemon juice, garlic…you just can’t go wrong. 

I also often stir it into yoghurt or quark, as per the filled aubergine at the top of the post, and this week took it a step further and utilised the basics of the sauce rcipe, pimped it and created a ‘chermoulaesque goats cheese’.. 

On this occasion, I mixed up an enhanced version of chermoula, details below, and mixed it with soft crumbly goats cheese and left it a couple of days to develop and see what it would do. And it was good!!! 

I included dried tomato flakes and dried red pepper flakes in the mix, so they took on any moisture and helped to create a thickened soft cheese. The tanginess of the goats cheese works perfectly with the tang of the lemon juice, just as it does with quark, or labneh, so if you’re not a goats cheese fan, try an alternative. I throughly enjoyed the outcome, and stirred some through some warm cooked freekeh for my lunch..  And with freekeh and leftover chunks of roasted sweet potato the next day.. Flavour flavour flavour!! So much flavour, goodness and joy in one dish! 

It’s good on its own and probably lovely spread on some toast too 🙂 

This is how I made it: 

Ingredients

Half a bag baby spinach

A bunch of coriander

A bunch of flat leaf parsley

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp ground roasted cumin

1 tsp mild paprika

Pinch cayenne pepper (optional)

1-2 tbsp dried red pepper flakes

1-2 tbsp dried tomato flakes

150 ml olive oil

100-150ml lemon juice 

150g soft goats cheese log

Method

Chop up the spinach, parsley and coriander with the garlic and spices in a blender until finely chopped, then stir in the rest of the ingredients. You may need to feel your way with the olive oil and lemon juice. 

Then stir in the goats cheese until completely incorporated and put it all in a bowl or pot and store in the fridge for 1-2 days until you’re ready to use it.  

  Sticking with the same idea, I also stirred up some goats cheese a few days later with just some red pepper flakes, tomato flakes, cumin, paprika, garlic, lemon juice and olive oil and created another version of the cheese idea.. 
Again, very tasty!!!!  

And perfect on a baked sweet potato… (with my homous on the other half)

I cannot tell you just how good all of these flavours have been this week! 

And just to top it off perfectly..my week started with the arrival of a ‘new’ set of beautiful Art Deco cutlery that I bought on Etsy and was delivered from the US on Monday; it is so beautiful, I am in heaven! I have used it every day since and it makes me smile constantly..I love it!!! You will definitely be seeing it time and again.. 
 
I hope you have enjoyed my ideas, happy Friday and happy weekend! I’m taking a pot of my chermoula cheese to this week’s Fiesta Friday, hosted this week by Angie and the lovely, inimitable Jhuls, and hope that they like it 🙂