This sounds kind of weird but it tastes good. The inspiration came from a dish I had at the Arab Syrian friendship Club in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus. We ordered mezes, which means something like 'little snacks' and they are quite small, but there are hundreds of them. This was just one of many dishes which appeared on the table. The waiter kept bringing new things even after we were all full. We ate as much as we could but in the end the table looked much the same as it had at the beginning of the meal.
I was impressed by the variety and quality of fruit in Cyprus. Most of the stuff in shops is locally grown and very fresh. It's also very cheap. Cypriots don't yet seem to have got into the habit of dropping their tangerines through holes and discarding those that are too big or too small. Now they've joined the EC it can only be a matter of time, but for the moment, the fruit is all different sizes and shapes. Very pleasing to the eye.
Sveta and I did a bit of wandering around various parts of the island and we saw fields of bananas and orchards with tangerines, oranges, lemons and grapefruits. We even saw avocado trees, but no cherries. Mabe they grow there, but the original dish we had in Nocosia didn't have cherries in it anyway. It had pomegranates. Not that we saw any pomegranates either, but I suspect they do grow on the island because I've seen them in Turkey and the climate is similar. One of our companions at the dinner table, who knew a bit about Syrian cooking, said that pomegranate syrup was used as opposed to the fresh juice. In Kazakhstan, I decided to give the recipe a shot and went to buy a pomegranate. I was thinking maybe I could simmer the juice to make syrup, but in the end I couldn't find one. There were lots of cherries around so I decided to use some of them instead - same colour, same kind of taste, also a type of fruit. I wouldn't call what I do an exact science.
Like good cheese, fine wine and Ashy Macbean, this dish gets better with age. Granted, the timescales are not quite the same, though. Here were only talking days. Leave your olive, walnut and cherry pate in the fridge overnight or longer and it will taste much better.
1 can of green olives
A large handful of cherries
A large handful of shelled walnuts
2 cloves of garlic
A few sprigs of mint
A quarter teaspoon of chilli powder
A half teaspoon of ground coriander seed
A pinch of ground cinnamon
A dessertspoon of olive oil
Salt
Grind the garlic first then add the walnuts and grind until they are beginning to form a paste. Remove the stones from the cherries (you can get a special machine for this but I just use a knife). Chop the cherries, olives and mint and mix all the ingredients together to form a stiff paste. That's it. To do 'mezes' serve this dish along with a selection of other mediterranean or Middle Eastern dishes, for example humus, tabuleh, stuffed cabbage leaves, pliau, cucuk or mutabl.