Lunch and labneh…but not together…

This is a recent pan full of loveliness that was my lunch one day last week…one of those creations you could just eat again…and again…and again…so here’s what I did…

I put some coconut oil in a pan over a medium heat and added a chopped red onion and cooked it for a few minutes, whilst I cut up two medium tomatoes; I added the tomatoes and cooked for a further few minutes; added some drained chickpeas; added a couple of tablespoons of my stock of rose harissa from the freezer; added chopped avocado that needed using up; then made a hole in the middle of it all and added eggs sprinkled with my rose harissa spice mix…

This was my quick fix when I came home hungry and ready for food and it was perfect! I ate it straight from the pan with gusto!! 

Having also recently made some labneh again, I thought I’d share that too…

Labneh is basically ‘yoghurt cheese’, used often in middle eastern and Levantine cuisines. It is often offered for breakfast or as part of a mezze with olive oil drizzled over the top, mine also has chilli flakes sprinkled over it. 

It is so easy to make, it’s basically just drained yoghurt. It’s nicest if you use full fat natural yoghurt to make it with, but I have also used low fat yoghurt in the past, it just makes it a lot sharper. 

Determine how you can create a contraption to drain the yoghurt over (you’ll see what I did in the photos) and then scoop your yoghurt into a square of muslin and hang it over your jug/bowl..

My muslin is tied tightly to the wooden handle of a spatula that fits across the top of the jug; then put it in the fridge, preferably overnight…

This was what I took back out of the fridge the following morning. 

Then scrape the lovely labneh from the muslin into a bowl and eat immediately or store in the fridge and use like any other soft cheese…

As you can see it really does firm up without becoming solid..

With the liquid that you drain from the yoghurt, you could throw it, or use it to cook vegetables in or add to recipes. I added mine to some spiced spinach dough for making flatbreads.

I like my labneh plain and unadulterated, but you can add salt before draining the yoghurt if you prefer, or play around with other flavour additions, sweet or savoury based on your taste. 

This was some of that labneh on top of some of my experimental spiced spinach dough and topped with roasted tomatoes..

Mmmmmm….might have to go and make some more!! 

Black garlic studded bread rolls and labneh..

I’m so proud of these rolls and so excited to share them with you and bring them to this week’s Fiesta Friday..Angie’s blog party extraordinaire rolls on in its 57th week of fabulousness this week 😀..I hope everyone gets to try one!
I basically added chopped black garlic to my standard wholemeal bread dough, gently kneading it into the dough once the dough had proved to mix it through, shaped the rolls, let these prove again whilst the oven heated up, and baked as usual, and the outcome was a bread roll studded with bursts of the black garlic sweetness – almost like sweet bread with raisins or dried fruit. A big fat YUM! 

I tried these with my homemade labneh: labneh is a middle eastern cheese which is basically made by straining yoghurt, and that’s pretty much it! You can use any kind of yoghurt, I often use a 0% fat greek yoghurt so I create 0% fat cheese for myself, but I’ve also used whatever plain yoghurt I’ve had in the fridge.

You literally just spoon the yoghurt into muslin, add any flavourings you fancy, then hang it to strain overnight and by the next day it’s done! I, of course, tried this with black garlic too..

As I don’t have a cool frame to hang it on, I tie up the muslin and hang it over the handle of my jug to catch the juice – make sure to tuck in the rest of the muslin otherwise the liquid travels down the fabric and all over your fridge shelf, as I found out…! It worked really well with the black garlic cloves, just chop some into the yoghurt and let it do its work, when you come to use the labneh you will see that the cloves almost melt into the cheese and spread easily with it.


I made a selection of flavours including smoked paprika and za’atar..

I even added some goji berries to another portion and made a sweet cheese which was lovely!
The black garlic version went very well atop a roasted sweet potato for lunch..

I hope you’ve enjoyed my black garlic experiments this week, do check out what else I’ve done with it in previous posts this week on here and on Instagram, and don’t forget that you can still receive a 10% discount and free delivery in the UK from Balsajo Black Garlic until the end of tomorrow, 28th, by inputting ‘foodbod’ as a discount code. 

Have fun, happy partying and happy weekend xx