

Allspice
"Everything is in there: it gives you a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, that pepper-y, clove-y taste, all of these different flavours out of...
Feb 12, 2024


No date syrup - so ...
"If you can’t find mulberry pekmez, use date syrup instead." Yotam Ottolenghi I put that quote at the top of this post, because it...
Feb 2, 2024


Tawook - it's just chicken
"The whole is not merely the sum of the components. It comes back to the same thing - the spirit of cooking." George Haddad This was a...
Jan 28, 2024


Flummery
"The word 'flummery' later came to have generally pejorative connotations of a bland, empty, and unsatisfying food. From this use,...
Sep 11, 2023


Watermelon, feta, mint
"I know, I know. Yet another watermelon, feta, and mint salad recipe. Do we need one?" J. Kenji López-Alt/Serious Eats Indeed, but then...
Aug 14, 2023


Ottolenghi fish - a lucky dip
"One of my favourite recipes. Serve at room temperature with a chunk of bread." Yotam Ottolenghi Well possibly - here are a couple of...
Aug 2, 2023


Mishmash
Mishmash "untidy or confused mixture of different things" Macmillan Dictionary "a random bunch of odds and ends" Vocabulary.com...
Jul 5, 2023


"Remove the skin and seeds from the peppers"
"Ajvar preparation is somewhat difficult, because it requires considerable manual labour, particularly for peeling the roasted peppers." ...
Jun 4, 2023


Knafeh
The picture above is from the latest Coles Magazine and featured in their Cooking Club segment - in which one of the' ordinary' people...
Apr 16, 2023


Breaking my own rules
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it." Henry David Thoreau For the last few years I have made myself a little set of...
Mar 24, 2023


Middle-Eastern then and now
"Fusion is just a way of describing what we are doing today. When you think of the Ottoman Empire, that's exactly what they were doing –...
Mar 21, 2023


Rambling around a bread challenge
"the satisfaction of one answer merely leads to asking another question, and so on into infinity." Alberto Manguel David bought this...
Jan 4, 2023


Mint sauce(s)
"when done right, mint sauce is the key to turning casual summer dinners into something special." Salon.com I spent the morning weeding...
Dec 5, 2022


Chicken and dates from New York
"The “prunes were very much Marrakech tagines; the green olives were Marbella, Spain.” That sounds about right. But, the sugar is pure...
Nov 22, 2022


How we discovered Middle Eastern Food
"It is the fruit of nostalgic longing for, and delighted savouring of, food that was the constant joy of life in a world so different...
Oct 24, 2022


A man well ahead of his time
what to do with watermelon and pomegranates Still life with a watermelon and pomegranates is the title of this painting by Paul Cézanne. ...
Oct 17, 2022


The evolution of preserved lemons
"Preserved lemons are not great if you have a short attention span." T. Susan Chang/NPR Kitchen Window I have bookmarked this rather...
Oct 7, 2022


Dukkah - how did we do without it?
"a deeply fragrant, crunchy mix, neither paste nor powder, but somewhere in between, and deeply, headily scented. ... Sometimes I tip it...
Sep 30, 2022


Fatima's fingers - Greg Malouf or Coles?
"Dubai’s a really tough place to be cooking Middle Eastern food. Middle Easterners have not embraced anything modern about their cuisine...
Jul 5, 2022


Black mark to Ottolenghi - or was it me - or maybe it was God?
"An invocation to God is murmured before kneading the dough, another before placing it in the oven." Claudia Roden - A Book of...
Apr 5, 2022

