I have been on a breakfast recipe kick ever since I found a sale on raspberries. The raspberries were great, but I have decided to keep going with breakfast recipes that don’t involve them. The first is this Middle Eastern Tahini, Date, and Cardamom Bulgur Wheat Breakfast Bake. I loved the story about this recipe, and it sounded so good. What really got my attention was that it uses bulgur wheat. I have found a couple of bulgur wheat recipes here, but neither is for breakfast. Bulgur for breakfast with dates, honey, and all the other ingredients sounds like something I would enjoy, so let’s give this Middle Eastern Breakfast Bake a try!
This casserole is kind-of like bread pudding and kind-of like baked oatmeal. It’s custardy, which makes it really comforting and indulgent-feeling. An exotic blend of Middle Eastern spices with a special emphasis on cardamom perfectly seasons the dish, and a garnish of pistachios and honey perfectly accentuates it.
The Ingredients
I regularly make tabbouleh and a chicken dish with coarse bulgur so it’s always in my pantry. My pre-shopping look-see turned up a few more ingredients. Coconut palm sugar, tahini, sea salt, ground cardamom, water, vanilla extract, and honey were also in my pantry.
That left me to shop for a few things, but I found most of them at my usual grocery store. They had milk, eggs, and dates, but no raw pistachios. All the pistachios they stocked were roasted with or without salt. I had to turn to the internet to get raw shelled pistachios.
The final ingredient was the Middle Eastern Cake Spice Mix. The recipe is only available in the author’s cookbook, which I don’t have. She does include a substitute mix in the recipe’s notes, but she also says it isn’t quite the same.
I was prepared to use the substitute spice mix, but I found something better the night before I wanted to make this recipe. It’s called Lebanese 7 Spice Blend (Sabaa Baharat), and I had all of the ingredients on hand. Some of the spices (like black pepper and cumin seeds) sound like they are best with savory dishes, but trust me this mix works beautifully in this Middle Eastern Breakfast Bake.
The Process
This isn’t a complicated recipe, and it was easy to make. It began with adding the bulgur, spices, palm sugar, tahini, and milk to a 2-quart pan and stirring it constantly while it heated over medium heat. It took about 15 minutes for the cold milk to come to a simmer.
Once I saw a few bubbles, I kept stirring for an additional five minutes. After that, I removed the pan from the stove, covered it with a lid, and let it sit for 10 minutes. I was able to grease an 8'x8' baking dish with tahini and prep the water, eggs, vanilla, and dates while the pan rested.
This recipe doesn’t require an 8″x8″ baking pan, so you can use whatever you have on hand. It will need to hold at least 8 cups (2 quarts / 64 ounces / 1.9 liters). My pan was that size and this recipe filled out to the top.
Once the net few ingredients were mixed in, I added them to the prepared pan, covered it with foil, and refrigerated it overnight. I intended to bake the casserole the next day, but it ended up sitting in my refrigerator for two days. Thankfully, this recipe says it can be refrigerated for up to three days before baking.
Baking this recipe was the easiest part! I preheated the oven and added the pan right out of the refrigerator. There was no need to let it come up to room temperature. I had a warmed Middle Eastern Breakfast Bake 45 minutes later, and all I had to do to finish it was add some chopped pistachios and honey on top.
Timing
This recipe listed 20 minutes to prep, 45 minutes to cook, and a title time of 1 hour 5 minutes. Here’s how my time was spent:
- 4 minutes to prep Step 1
- 22 minutes to cook
- 10 minutes to rest
- 6 minutes to prep Step 2 (done during rest)
- 1 minutes to mix in Step 2 ingredients
- 1 minute to pour into baking dish
- 45 minutes to bake
- 1 hour 23 minutes minutes total*
*Time for refrigeration (12 hours to 3 days) is not included.
Things went smoothly, but I managed to take longer than the time listed. I have a feeling it was in Step one since it took a long time for the bulgur mixture to come to a simmer over medium heat.
