Give us this day our daily bread… Although my family is Muslim, I went to a Catholic school with nuns when I was a child — so I grew up knowing Christian prayers better than the Koran. But whether it’s Christianity or Islam, bread plays a central role in each — as a symbol, a giver of life. And of course in the Arab world — in Lebanon — it remains the essential food. The dishes that are most closely […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
My grandfather used to keep pigeons — not for sport — but to eat. My grandmother made pies and stews with them. I haven’t put any of them here — as unless you are hunting wild pigeon, it’s not that simple to get hold of them here in England or in Lebanon. One of the recipes I’ve already posted should, ideally, be made with pigeon — bistilla. But I’ve always made it with chicken. Just like in London, pigeons […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Back to cooking… I have already talked in an earlier post about how I developed a seriously sweet tooth as a child, aided and abetted by the treats my father would take me on when we went downtown. How I would stand with him as I guzzled down my little pudding with coconut shavings and nuts. This is what I was talking about — moughli. It was, I think, the first pudding recipe I got just right. I didn’t […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
From dawn to dusk, the Corniche in Beirut is like an Olympic event for posing. You see pretty much every type of Beiruti parading there. I used to be able to see it from my window. That’s not possible any more as high rise apartment buildings now completely block the view. It seemed strange to have all that life going on out there when I was often stuck in our flat — first because I was a child, then later […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
David Niven, Ann Margret, Laurence Harvey, David Hemmings, Richard Attenborough — all cavorted briefly through Lebanon in the 1960s when it was a glossy, self-consciously exotic setting for sub-Bond spy films or spy spoofs. None of the films are all that memorable. But like the many films that were set in and tried to exploit the Swinging Sixties in London, they now have a touch of melancholy that gives them a texture and weight they lacked at the time they […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
There are a few dishes that anyone who knows anything of Lebanese cuisine will be familiar with. Most form part of what is Lebanon’s major contribution to food — the mezze. That of course is the sumptuous, dizzying series of plates that come to your table almost as soon as you have sat down in a Lebanese restaurant. There are hundreds of possible dishes, but several that are essential. Of these, tabbouleh stands out. It symbolises all that is best […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
The smell, the feel, the look of this cheap, delicious Lebanese cake all fill me with an intense nostalgia. I can still remember debating with myself as a teenager in Beirut with the latest bombardment of shells intensifying around us whether I could just keep working a little more in our kitchen in our sixth floor apartment on the recipe that might finally deliver the perfect sfouf. That or racing down to the basement where everyone in the block would be […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
I think I may have learnt the basics of cooking through beans. That’s partly because they play such a big part in home cooking in Lebanon. I remember my father bringing home various varieties of beans. We would remove them from their pods if they were fresh. I would then try to copy what my mother or grandmother made. I would have long conversations on the phone with my mother while she was out working and I was in our […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Aisha Khanoum, lamb cutlets, lebanon
Okra looks very tempting when you see it fresh in a Lebanese market. But the perennial problem with okra — and the thing that puts some people off it for life — is the slime that can appear when you heat it and cook it. I know this, because I have felt exactly the same way. But there are methods to stop the slime, which comes from something called mucilage that is found inside the plant. You need to […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Up in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, you can still see artichokes growing wild as they have done for thousands of years across the Mediterranean. What is most striking about them as you drive through the valley bordered on both sides by high mountains — a few still with a smattering of snow on them — are the purple thistle-like flowers. One of the first plants I tried to grow when I got a decent garden here in London […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Now we are moving away from poor man’s dishes. For me and my friends in Beirut, the idea of mulukhia is a party in itself. I am not quite sure why, but it always seems like a big social event when we make the dish. Perhaps it’s because of the whole rigmarole over sourcing the mulukhia leaves– which are also known as jew’s mallow — and then preparing them. My father gets the spinach-like leaves from a farm in […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Clearly, this is not the most photogenic of Lebanese dishes. It needs as much soft focus as an ageing diva from the golden age of Hollywood. It is said in Beirut that if you can’t make a plate of mujadara, you better keep out of the kitchen the rest of your life. It is just about the cheapest and most basic meal you can make — a feast only for the poorest of the poor. But it is extremely […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
This is a poor man’s dish in Lebanon. We have many types of lentils that are grown in the Bekaa valley. They range in colour from green to reddish brown. When I was a child, my grandmother used to make this dish for us with green lentils that grew in her village. She used burghul — cracked wheat — rather than rice, though. As a Beiruti, I know the dish as Moudardara, although it is also called Mujadara. But […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
This is getting down to the real basics of Lebanese food. The combination of vegetables with meat and rice is a staple that every Lebanese home plays variations on throughout the working week. They are not the most glamorous of dishes but they’re healthy and the ingredients are always available and fresh. Sometimes during the war, there was no bread, but we never ran short of beans, spinach or rice. This is not the kind of dish you would […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Salads in Lebanon are as vibrant, varied and colourful as the markets I can remember going to with my mother to find our ingredients. We would go every day, but the best was Saturday. That is when my father would get up at dawn to make sure he was there in time to get the absolutely freshest and most delicious vegetables and herbs. He’d gather up enough to last us the rest of the week. He might even pick up […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
This is a salad I lucked upon as I mixed various ingredients together. Its mix of carrots, beetroots and orange is very un-Lebanese. We have several wonderful salads, but none like this. I discovered that it was actually a classic Moroccan salad recipe after I first made it. The salad goes very well with bistilla. It is best in summer — as it is beautifully crunchy and refreshing. Ingredients 4 carrots grated 1 cooked (boiled) beetroot diced 1 orange peeled […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
It took me time to appreciate Moroccan food. It is a very different proposition from Lebanese cooking, which doesn’t mix sweet and savoury in the same way. But the richness of the flavours won me over just as the extraordinary, shape shifting landscape of Morocco seduced me on a drive through the heart of the country a decade ago. I tried tagine for the first time there beside a lagoon during Ramadan. One of my children was almost swept […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
I grew up in the midst of a war in Beirut for much of my childhood and all my adolescence right through to my mid-twenties. My world was reduced to just one part of the city — in and around Hamra and Ras Beirut in the west of the city. So, even my perspective on my own country was narrow. In terms of cooking and food, it meant that I was not exposed to much outside our own Lebanese […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Moroccan food
I was lucky enough to grow up with a wonderful view out to sea. Indiscriminate building in Beirut means that view now barely exists. But I have always felt happiest by the sea, although the Mediterranean can rage and storm in winter in Beirut in ways that used to frighten me. One of the best things living by the sea brings is the freshness of the fish. That is not always helped by some of the techniques used by […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
A confession. The real inspiration for my lifelong love and fascination with Lebanon’s cuisine has a sticky, sweet origin — puddings. I think that’s partly because they were rare, for special occasions — Eid, birthdays, marriages and funerals. One of my best memories dates to just before the war. My father would walk with me downtown to one of the old colonial squares that would soon be rendered out of bounds and then destroyed by the fighting. We would go […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Well, as I was saying, I tried to grow a pomegranate tree in London. The bush grew but the pomegranates didn’t. But someone has had more success than me. The picture shows a pomegranate tree with fruit ripening on it in Richmond in south west London. It’s a hobby of mine to track down fruit trees, both ordinary and exotic, in unusual, urban places. I’ll be posting more — but would love to hear if anyone else has found incongruous […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
Now — the naming of dishes in the Middle East, let alone their provenance, always seems likely to set up a new and deadlier conflict than any seen there so far. For the Lebanese, this aubergine-based dish is Moutabal. But it is perhaps better known as Baba Ghanouj. I’m not a big fan of aubergine, so in this one case at least, I am not ready to die in the trenches for its identity as a Lebanese dish. I’m with […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: aubergine, Baba Ghanouj, Lebanese food, Moutabal, pomegranate seeds
Lebanon is my home. I left it many years ago, but it is still with me in its scents, its flavors and its textures. The wonderful freshness and generosity of its food has always stayed with me as a key part of who I am. I want to share some of the pleasure and pride that I have in my culinary heritage, both with younger generations who may not have had the luck to learn these dishes as I did […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
I have been making this slightly spicy dip for years. My friends have always told me that I have got the recipe wrong. But they still love it so I have never changed it very much. The mouhamara you get in a restaurant is very heavy on the walnuts and to my taste a little dry — more like a paste than a dip. I think I may have got the ingredients mixed up when I first made the dish, […]
Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture
From Beirut to London in 100 Dishes