Tag: Beirut

Lockdown Lebanese Essential Indulgence

June 24, 2020 by samara cuisine

Comfort food is needed in uncomfortable times. Being confined to my house during the pandemic returned me to the teenager I once was when war made stepping outside too dangerous. Now – just as then – I took refuge in sweet, simple food – recipes that puzzled me even as the best way to enjoy them was just to go to the shops and buy them readymade. I am talking about basics – bread, hummus, za’atar, syrupy sweets and even […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, hummus, lockdown, shakshoukeh, turkish delight

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you can’t go home again – 1960s Lebanon

February 1, 2018 by samara cuisine

I came late to the party in Lebanon and to the wrong address. I was born in the 1960s when Beirut was a flourishing cosmopolitan city with an exciting touch of the exotic, but I grew up as it fell apart in the 1970s and the 1980s. Not that I would have known much about those halcyon days. My parents and I, swiftly followed by my sister, slept in one room in a small apartment a minute’s walk away from […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, Lebanese recipes, memory and culture, memory and culture • Tags: 1960s jetset, Beirut, hamra

red lights and green lines — more street food with mana’ish

January 22, 2016 by samara cuisine

I‘ve recently been working with a cafe near where I live in London. It’s in a charming little cobbled street that leads to the Thames. The best seller is the soft Lebanese pizza — mana’ish, topped with cheese, meat or thyme. That’s jibneh, lahim bil ajeen and zaatar to give them their proper Arab names. And just writing them reminds me of a very different street in Beirut where my family used to get its own warm, fresh mana’ish. It […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, Lebanese recipes, memory and culture, memory and culture, recipes • Tags: Beirut, Georgina Rizk, Miss Lebanon, street food, zaitounay bay

moufatka – the ugly duckling of Lebanese puddings

November 2, 2015 by samara cuisine

There’s no way around this. It’s no beauty. In fact it’s downright ugly. Maybe it’s the colour — a rather ill-looking brown — or the texture. But moufatka dares you to like it. That may be one reason why you don’t find it in Lebanese restaurants. This is very much a dish that you make at home and bring out on special occasions. But that’s what makes it such a treat for those who see past its unfortunate looks. Even […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes • Tags: Beirut, lebanon, pudding, twickenham, world cup rugby 2015

Araa wa batinjan mahsi — season of harvests

October 30, 2015 by samara cuisine

The smell of wood smoke at night, mist on the water meadows at dawn and strange suburban trees heavy with incongruous fruit — that’s what the season of harvests means to me here and now. It’s been a good year with plenty of sun and rain. My small garden is witness to it. A lemon tree that has struggled through two winters has produced large and succulent fruit. I hesitate to pick the lemons as I don’t know when or […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes • Tags: aubergine, Beirut, Bekaa, harvest, lebanon, marrow

flayfleh mahshiyeh (stuffed peppers) – or the time of ghosts

October 29, 2015 by samara cuisine

The time of ghosts is almost upon us. Halloween and All Souls Day. It’s one of the gravest times of year — when autumn begins to turn towards winter. In London, we have slate grey skies and speckles of rain. The clouds look like an utterly endless, empty sea — the cold Atlantic, not the Mediterranean I grew up beside. When I was a child in Lebanon, we didn’t have Halloween celebrations. We had a day almost a month later, […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes • Tags: Beirut, halloween, lebanon, recipe, stuffed peppers

Namoura — or abdel halim and lou reed in beirut

March 23, 2015 by samara cuisine

What is the soundtrack of a city? In Beirut, it’s probably the clanging and drilling of construction workers eternally raising up new high rises. It’s a kind of music that starts early in the morning and doesn’t let up all day. It’s the heartbeat of the city, as much as the traffic and the hooting and the thumping from late night discos and hotels, not to mention the calls from the muezzin competing on Sunday with church bells. The cacophony […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes • Tags: Beirut, david bowie, john cale, johnny hallyday, lou reed, soundtrack

aish al saraya – or the bread of the palace

March 7, 2015 by samara cuisine

Much of what I cook comes out with a twist simply because of my impatience. Some people cook like musicians following every note on the page. For me, it’s always been about playing by ear. If something catches my fancy, I want to make it immediately without getting caught up in detail about measurements and traditions. I just want to get it on a plate and see what happens. I first started doing this when I was a child in […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, bread crumbs, lebanon, Ottoman Empire

Mughrabieh – or anamona

February 19, 2015 by samara cuisine

So. I’ve been living in England for what is half my life now. But I wouldn’t call myself British. I am not going to start putting up recipes for Sunday roasts or a full English here. When the latest horrors happened in Paris, at least one of my friends seemed to get the wrong end of the stick and started posting on Facebook: Je Suis Lebanese. I don’t think that made sense in any way. But I guess it felt […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, family name, personal identity

Daoud Basha — or growing up in the shadow of the Holiday Inn

December 22, 2014 by samara cuisine

It sticks up like a scarred and angry finger into the sky. It was a frightening shape always on the edge of my very limited world when I was growing up. But strangely enough, it was also protective in a way. It provided a kind of shelter for us in our sixth floor apartment from the rockets and shells and tracer fire coming towards us from East Beirut during the war. So, I owe the Holiday Inn at least a […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, Holiday Inn

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Barazik — or a tea that never happened

October 16, 2014 by samara cuisine

There are meals you never had, but which you wish had happened. I imagined when I was learning and practicing recipes in Beirut in my teens that I would serve them at various occasions that were never very likely, not just because I was a girl and had little freedom to invite anyone home but also because the war made any such gestures all but out of the question. One thing I would like to have done, but that was […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: American University of Beirut, Beirut, brian keenan, hostage, kidnap, Rafik Hariri

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Foul moudamas — and Sunday morning in Beirut

August 16, 2014 by samara cuisine

I am trying to remember whether I could hear church bells on Sunday mornings when I was growing up in Beirut. You certainly should have been able to hear them. There are churches in downtown not far from our apartment. The muezzin from the mosques was always nearer and more urgent. But there must have been the sound of bells, too, but I can’t be sure now. I think they went silent during the war, which after all lasted most of […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, church bells on Sunday mornings, East Beirut

Shish Taouk and the passing of time

July 9, 2014 by samara cuisine

This is one of the most evocative ruins in Beirut. An Italian restaurant that was once famous for its pasta in Phoenicia street just behind the sea front. It’s been derelict for years. Next to it is a car park, which will probably be transformed into a new high-rise soon. One of the tallest buildings in the city is already almost finished behind it. Like a lot of things in Beirut, the restaurant was both fun and tacky. Its name […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, Quo Vadis

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Another side of the Bekaa — Lebanon and Syria

June 3, 2014 by samara cuisine

Welcome to Arsal. This is in a very different part of the Bekaa from where I used to go as a child. There are none of the lush orchards or fields of wheat here. Nothing to wax lyrical about. Its desolate rocky landscape rises a little above the Bekaa just after Baalbek. I have no memories of this or other such places where people live harsh, uncompromising lives far from the glamour of Beirut. A young artist in Achrafieh, one […]

Categories: Lebanese recipes, memory and culture • Tags: Beirut, Bekaa, lebanon, President Assad

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From Beirut to London in 100 Dishes

keeping my arab heritage alive through food

Tag: Beirut

Lockdown Lebanese Essential Indulgence

you can’t go home again – 1960s Lebanon

red lights and green lines — more street food with mana’ish

moufatka – the ugly duckling of Lebanese puddings

Araa wa batinjan mahsi — season of harvests

flayfleh mahshiyeh (stuffed peppers) – or the time of ghosts

Namoura — or abdel halim and lou reed in beirut

aish al saraya – or the bread of the palace

Mughrabieh – or anamona

Daoud Basha — or growing up in the shadow of the Holiday Inn

Barazik — or a tea that never happened

Foul moudamas — and Sunday morning in Beirut

Shish Taouk and the passing of time

Another side of the Bekaa — Lebanon and Syria