Daring Cooks February Challenge: Mezze

Probably one of my favorite challenges, hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums, this challenge is called Mezze which really means a whole bunch of side dishes with pita bread which is presented as a type of communal eating at one's leisure. Yes please. I love the idea of slowly eating a bunch of different items when you please. No pressure of people asking why you haven't finished your 8 ounce steak, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and broccoli. Well, ahem Mom, it's because I've been tasting these mashed potatoes for more time than I would like to consider, salting and whipping and buttering and mashing-tasting, tasting and re-tasting! Okay? Sorry. My friend Kassi put it perfectly at Thanksgiving when she saw my meager plate and called it the "cooks plate". Thanks Kassi for understanding :) She understood that as someone who cooks constantly you are also eating constantly. Trust me and just ask this extra 20 lbs I've grown to know. But that's not how we do things in North America. We are a people of large portions and don't get me wrong, I like to eat large portions. Just not all at one sitting.

But back to the challenge of the Mezze which is essentially a variety of snacks, where we were only required to make our own pita bread and hummus. Love it. Next, there was an option of any of our choices of side dishes and I chose a little ditty of baba ghanough and tzatziki.

While I loved this challenge for all of the reasons above, the pita bread was a total bust for me. The dough recipe itself was great but the cooking instructions proved to be less than favorable for me. The oven method that was recommended resulted in more of a pita chip than pita bread. I was looking for the bread so in a second attempt, rather than the oven method I used the stovetop with a cast iron skillet. This way you would follow all of the same instructions for the pita bread except after rolling the pita bread out into rounds, heat a skillet to medium high heat and place the rolled out pita onto the hot skillet. Fry in the dry skillet on one side about 30 seconds or until golden brown, flip the bread and fry another 20-30 seconds or again, until golden brown.
Click a href="http://www.veggienumnums.com/2008/07/mezze.html">here for the>original Pita Bread and Hummus Recipes from Veggie Num Nums

Another of my favorite dips are Baba Ghanoush and my favorite Tzatziki from Kalyn's Kitchen