Lemon

A delicious Turkish dish—the rich meat is offset by the cool yogurt.

This was a regular at my aunt Régine’s dinner parties. It is similar to dishes featured in medieval manuals. The French would call it a galantine.

Grilled chicken on skewers is part of the Arab kebab-house and restaurant trade. The flavoring here is Lebanese. Look at the variations for alternatives, and be careful not to overcook, as chicken pieces dry out quickly. Leg meat remains juicier than breast meat.

On a visit to Egypt, a hostess who invited me for dinner told us how she had run after the ducks that had escaped as she carried them home. There are many dishes of duck and chicken with quince in the Arab world. This one has the flavors of Morocco. The quince slices acquire a wonderful caramelized taste when they are fried.

This is very popular in Syria and Lebanon and can be served cold with salads such as tabbouleh (page 76) or hot with rice.

A specialty of the port of Salé, this is one of the rare fish couscous dishes of Morocco. The eel is usually cooked in a saffron broth, but I prefer to sauté the eel and serve it with a small portion of couscous (see page 375). The honeyed onions beautifully complement the delicate flavor of this fish. Have the eel skinned (the skin is tough and inedible) and cut into pieces or filleted by the fishmonger.

An old Arab dish, popular in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt. It is very lemony, and sometimes saffron is replaced by turmeric. All kinds of fish can be used. Serve with plain rice, or rice with vermicelli (see page 340).

Although Turkey is surrounded on three sides by sea, it is not very strong on fish dishes. Seafood has not been part of the old Anatolian cooking traditions. Even in the coastal resorts, where seafood restaurants have mushroomed with the tourist trade, locals are not interested. The exceptions are Izmir and Istanbul, both famous for their fish markets and fish restaurants. The usual fare, like everywhere in the Middle East, is grilled or deep-fried fish. Swordfish kebab is a Turkish specialty, but other countries use other firm-fleshed fish, such as monkfish and tuna.

The honeyed onions make an enthralling accompaniment to a delicate fish.

A ubiquitous sauce in Syria and Lebanon, served with fried and grilled fish as well as with cold fish.

This is particularly delicious with grilled fish.

This is the common all-purpose dressing for fish. It can also be used as a marinade.

You find the egg-and-lemon finish, also called bel tarbeyah, in all Middle Eastern countries. In Greece it is the famous avgolemono. Use skinned fish fillets—white fish such as cod or haddock—or have a mixture of seafood including peeled shrimp and, if you like, a handful of mussels (to clean and steam mussels, see page 198).

In Greece it is made whenever chickens are boiled. In Egypt we called it beid ab lamouna and shorba bel tarbeyah. The stock can be prepared in advance, but the rest must be done at the last minute.

Trid is described as the poor man’s bstilla. It is also said that the Prophet would have liked it best. He is known to have been fond of onions, and here a huge mass is reduced to a creamy sauce. I prefer it too.

I like to make this Lebanese salad with basmati rice, because the grains stay very separate.

The combination of raisins and pine nuts was brought by the Arabs all the way to Spain and Sicily.

Tomatoes are banadoura in Arabic and tamatem in Egypt.

This is a homely version of the very green parsley-and-mint salad with buff-colored speckles of bulgur wheat you find in all Lebanese restaurants all over the world. Like many items on the standard Lebanese restaurant menu, it was born in the mountain region of Zahlé, in the Bekáa Valley of Lebanon, where the local anise flavored grape liquor arak is produced. Renowned for its fresh air and its natural springs and the river Bardaouni, which cascades down the mountain, the region acquired a mythical reputation for gastronomy. In 1920 two cafés opened by the river. They gave away assorted nuts, seeds, olives, bits of cheese, and raw vegetables with the local arak. Gradually the entire valley became filled with open-air cafés, each larger and more luxurious than the next, each vying to attract customers who flocked from all over the Middle East with ever more varied mezze. The reputation of the local mountain-village foods they offered, of which tabbouleh was one of the jewels, spread far and wide and became a national institution. What started as a relatively substantial salad, rich with bulgur, was transformed over the years into an all-green herby affair. When the first edition of my book came out, I received letters telling me I had too much bulgur in that recipe. One letter from Syria explained that mine was the way people made the salad many years ago, when they needed to fill their stomachs. You see, many of my relatives left Syria for Egypt a hundred years ago, and that was how they continued to make it. The following is a contemporary version.