Berenjak's mazeh and kebab sets
What do we need to know about Berenjak Bazaar?
As the name suggests it's a store - or what they'd describe as an online Persian corner store, tied to the restaurant of the same name in Soho. Here, you'll find everything you need for a great night in, from store cupboard essentials if you feel like cooking from scratch to cook-at-home meal kits and their handy bottle shop. So if you're looking for sour cherry jam, a bottle of the popular Iranian orange drink, Merinda or simply a Middle Eastern meal kit, this is the place to go for it.
What's on offer?
In the kit section, there's a variety of kabab kits, along with a mazeh box and a Ghormeh Sabzi kit to make the lamb stew which is Iran's national dish.
We opted to try out both their kabab and mazeh kits for two. Here's how we got on.
The mazeh kit's a selection of the restaurant's starters. There's four in total, Mast O Khiar (Natural yoghurt, cucumber, mint and green raisins), Kashk e Bademjoon (Coal cooked aubergine, whey, walnuts, dried mint and onions) which needed warming up and the rest were simple plating jobs. The set also includes a large amount of sangak bread to scoop the dips up with.
Hummus - a very silky version made with black chickpeas, tahini and scattered with walnuts and somagh. This comes in a piping bag which should let you pipe a perfect dome (we didn't quite achieve that).
Black truffle olivieh - we loved this dish of corn fed chicken mayo salad with potato, egg, salted cucumbers and black truffle.
The kabab kit for two features two pouches of pre-marinated meats. You are ideally supposed to cook these on the BBQ, but it was pouring the night we had it, so we did it on our oven grill instead and that worked perfectly fine.
The set arrives in a huge, long box - the reason for which becomes clear when you open it as there are four of their bespoke metal skewers for making your kebabs. The chicken thigh jujeh kebabs are pretty straightforward - just thread those on your skewers and away you go. But here's how we constructed the lamb koobideh kababs.
First, you have to make the lamb mince into a long sausage and then press it around the flat skewers (1) before making ridges (2). That's probably the trickiest bit, but there's a very clear video to follow, and then it just a simple grilling job (3) before your kababs are ready to eat.
The set also comes with onions to prepare a salad with somagh, parsley and lemon along with tomatoes for grilling and some clay-baked lavash bread to put on top of the grilled meat at the end of the cooking process. And here's the final result.
Anything to drink?
There's a wide variety of drinks available on the Berenjak Bazaar website - including both soft and strong options. We particularly liked our cocktail (below).
Berenjak's preserved lemon margarita (£15) made with their own cold-distilled preserved lemon tequila and some mezcal - the very best kind of boozy homage to Capri-Sun.
Overall thoughts:
If you're looking for a way to elevate your BBQs this summer, we can't recommend this highly enough. With all the interesting herbs, spices and marinades each set includes, it's so much more delicious than simply bunging some chicken breasts on a grill or opening a tub of supermarket hummus.
Hot Dinners were sent this meal as a gift. Prices correct at time of publication.
More about The Berenjak Bazaar
Delivery range: Nationwide
How much: The mazeh kit is £25 for two and the kebab kit is £30 for two.
Find out more: Find the shop here, and follow them on Instagram @berenjaklondon.
Subscribe to be the first to get the news from Hot Dinners
