Breakfast with the girls

Sunday morning, quiet streets, the birds chirping on the branches of the trees, my  girls lazing around, listening to music, singing and even jumping around. Feeling homesick myself, I decided to do their favourite Palestinian dishes fried nabulsieh cheese and Shaa'rieh with sugar. 

Grilled Nabulsieh cheese 

Nabulsi cheese is a Palestinian white brined cheese. Named after its place of origin, Nablus, its produced from sheep milk and  is white and rectangular in shape. It becomes soft and elastic when heated. It can be eaten fresh as salty table cheese or can be fried in oil. My girls like theirs grilled on a hot plate with no oil!!!

Shaa'rieh with sugar 

A dessert made of very thin vermicelli pasta stirred in oil until golden, and then cooked with water until soft, ( same way you would cook rice) it is eaten with sugar and sometimes people like to add chopped pistachios and shredded coconut too. Back home, every friday my parents would have shaa'rieh for breakfast. 

Shaa'rieh was also known as Knafet el Fo'ara or Poor Man's Knafeh, because it didn't  have cheese (it being an expensive commodity in the old days, they did without it) hence this simple dessert came to be. 

Knafeh with Nabulsieh cheese

 Knafeh is a dessert famous in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, each country has their own recipe and method of creating this dessert but all of them are based on the same ingredients a vermicelli -like dough,  cheese (a mix of Nabulsieh cheese and Akkawi cheese)  and a sugary syrup. I'll probably get into the details of making it later in my blog.