Frugal Floozie Friday - Zamaan Cafe

I've enjoyed several lovely meals with loved ones, recently, at Zamaan Cafe - today's Frugal Floozie Friday feature. Good food, good service, good prices ... what more do you need?

The Baladi pictured above - hummus topped with tomatoes, red onions, black olives, parsley, and feta - was rich, creamy, and presented beautifully. (Hummus is a fairly bland-looking beige food, most of the time; this was enticing!) Served with a generous portion of pita bread, it was large enough to share but good enough to guard selfishly against those who might want to help deplete your supply. At only $4.99, it falls within our mandatory $5 per person budget either way. Craig was happy to help me polish off the serving, which was larger than I could finish on my own despite my being a hearty eater.

The meat pies are tender, with a soft rather than stiff dough; the filling is enhanced with onions, tomatoes, and spices. Often these can be dry, but at Zamaan Cafe they are very moist and full of flavor. At $3.99, they are an excellent value. Spinach pies are available, too, for the same price.

A plate of grape leaves - either meat-filled or vegetarian - costs $4.99. The latter variety - stuffed with rice, parsley, onions, tomatoes, spices and olive oil - are tender, and feature a bright tartness. Jeremy has never been a fan of these before, and yet helped me devour this plateful.

The falafel, at $4.99, was another excellent value. Jeremy polished these off without even offering me a taste! But since I was enjoying my small - in name only - Greek salad (a mere $3.99), that was okay.

A pastry case offers different varieties of baklava, as well as honey cake; desserts cost less than $2 each, some far less. The walnut and pistachio treats pictured here cost $1.29 each, and are a perfect way to end a meal.

For friendly service, great value, and delicious food, try Zamaan Cafe!

Zamaan Cafe
3580 Plymouth Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
734-213-3350
Monday - Saturday: 10:30 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Sunday: 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.



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Lentil Salad with Red Pepper Hummus Dressing

I was poking through my pantry recently, and I found I have a lot of lentils ... 3 bags of lentils - brown, yellow and red.  And it seemed to me that if I have this many lentils at my disposal, perhaps I should actually make something with them!

And so, on one of our recent warm, sunny, Spring-y days, I made a light and nutritious salad rather than a warm and hearty soup which might have been the option had I cleaned out the pantry only a few days earlier when the high was 40F rather than 70F.

This salad offers gorgeous colors, vibrant flavors, and tremendous health benefits.  Serve it on its own for a light meal, or as an accompaniment to meats or fish.

How great is it when one simple recipe provides so much?

Lentil Salad with Red Pepper Hummus Dressing

1 cup brown lentils
1/2 small red onion, chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/2 small cucumber, seeded, chopped
1/2 small orange pepper, chopped
1/2 small yellow pepper, chopped
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
2 tablespoons red pepper hummus
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
generous pinches of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place lentils into a medium saucepan and cover generously with water.  Bring to a boil, then turn heat to "low" and cook for 25-30 minutes until lentils are tender; drain, rinse under cold water, and place into a medium bowl.

Add onion, tomato, cucumber, peppers, and feta to the lentils.  Combine the hummus, oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper; pour over the salad and stir to combine.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish.

Lenten Friday: A Simple Salmon Salad

Back in 2007, I created a Super Duper Double Decker Salmon Salad Sandwich for a contest sponsored by Arnold Breads. (It was named a finalist for the Detroit area, and I even got to present it on one of the local morning news shows, which was a lot of fun!) The salad was made from scratch with fish poached in wine, and lots of lovely additions to the mix (a ginger dressing, carrots, etc.). It was really good -- even Jeremy, who loathes most fish and isn't too keen on vegetables -- really liked it.

But I just wanted a simplified version the other day, something to dip toast triangles into or to stuff into pita bread. I cut to the chase with a can of salmon, some minced cucumber, a little lemon juice ... and my secret ingredient.

I love mayonnaise, and it is sublime mixed with tuna or salmon or chicken or ham to make a creamy salad. But sometimes you don't want all of the fat that comes with it, and the healthier substitutes can have an odd taste. Mayonnaise also spoils if you keep it out too long, and these sorts of salads are perfect for picnics and other warm weather activities.

And so, how to have a creamy salmon salad without what most would consider to be the requisite mayonnaise???

Hummus. Red pepper hummus, to be specific, since the depth of flavor and the richness of the color perfectly complement the gorgeous sweetness and the coral hue of the fish.

This is a ridiculously easy and immensely flavorful salad for sandwiches, stuffing into hollowed tomatoes, serving as the centerpiece on a green salad, or any other way in which you'd like to eat it. It's nutritious, too ... how 'bout that??? And it's great for those poor folks who have egg allergies, as well.

Spring is here (for most of us, anyway!), so it's time to start lightening up the menu. Nourish and nurture yourself ....

Salmon Salad

1-1/2 cups salmon, flaked
1/4 cup red pepper hummus
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch of salt
generous sprinkling of lemon pepper
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2" piece of cucumber, peeled, seeded, chopped into 1/4" pieces

Stir everything together. That's it!

Silvio's -- So Much More Than Just Pizza!

Tom and I had planned to go to Silvio's Organic Pizza a couple of weeks ago, after the Vital (A)(R)(T) exhibit that one of his digital photographs had been shown in; but the food was so bountiful and beautiful at the reception that we got sidetracked and found ourselves eating dinner -- hummus with pita chips and vegetables, fruit, egg rolls, salad, and an array of cookies and brownies -- at the buffet table provided. So this past Thursday night, after I met Tom downtown after work and we were debating our dinner options, Silvio's was the perfect choice.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am the least decisive person on Earth, especially when food is involved. I can make life-or-death decisions instinctively on the spur of the moment, and have unfortunately had to do that more times than I like to contemplate. So my theory is that when I actually have choices to peruse and the luxury of time in which to do so, my brain goes into paralysis.

Thus, in surveying the beautiful simplicity found in Margherita pizza (tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil) or Pesto pizza (basil sauce, pine nuts, parmesan); the novelty of the exotic Grape (with Fontina and -- of course! -- grapes); or the generosity of stuffed pizzas (vegetarian or tuna with rapini or cod, just for starters), my mind started to swirl as my soul cried out for all of it. Tom, fortunately, was able to hear potatoes calling him, and so we indulged in the sensuous -- on every level -- and seductive #9: Thinly sliced potatoes covered with blue cheese and mozzarella, with just a sprinkling of fragrant rosemary ... sigh.

Our pizza was brought right to us, with the cheese still bubbling from having only left the oven moments earlier. It smelled amazing, with the rosemary wafting through the air; and when we bit in, you could hear the crisp crust crunching but not resisting. It was hot but not sear-the-roof-of-your-mouth hot, and it held together both when cut or when folded (rather than the cheese oozing off and the entire slice deconstructing and falling apart). And the taste was incomparable, a combination that was perfect (a lot of carbs, yes, but carbs that worked in unison) with no one flavor overriding another. This was so, so much more than just "pizza" -- that stuff you can buy for $5 from a franchise or something you can toss into a microwave to turn to goo. This was a true vision of beauty and love, interspersed with kisses from Tom ... :)

Dessert was yet another indulgence -- a crisp round of puff pastry with a luscious creamy filling, delicately sprinkled with confectioners' sugar. Tom eats very nobly -- a former vegan and vegetarian, adores spinach and kale, eats organic food almost exclusively; and yet, he has a sweet tooth and loves baked goods. So the exceptional array of pastries was as tempting to him as it was to me, the girl who doesn't just have one sweet tooth but a full 28 of 'em (having had 4 wisdom teeth pulled decades ago). Tom had made the difficult decision of choosing from among the croissants and bombas (paczki-like filled "doughnuts") and strudels, thank goodness -- I'd likely still be there, 3 days later, if the job had been delegated to me! We hated to break into it, as gorgeous as it was; and yet, it called, it beckoned, it seduced us ... there was no way to resist, and it was so good that I literally picked at the flaky little crumbs left on the plate after the treat had been relished.

There was live music from a guitar-playing trio, warm and efficient service, and food so fabulous that it is difficult to fully describe. Silvio's ... sigh. Repeat visits will be inevitable ....