Breakfast in Syria is an event in itself. There’s no concept of a “quick bite” – that is a horrid Western innovation. Blasphemy, really. Breakfast is meant to be enjoyed, eaten slowly, in the company of family and friends, and then extended for at least two hours with cup after cup of hot, sweet tea.

I had my first experience with a full Syrian breakfast when my family and I went to Syria in May 2006, when Ameir and I had our Nikah.

There’s an art to it. The whole family sits together, most often on the floor with a medda (spread) laid out before them. There are no plates. Breakfast is eaten communally – everyone has a piece of bread and dips it into the various items. Thus, each dish must be laid out in a pattern, such that each person can reach each plate with their little chunks of bread. If there are a lot of people, there are two or three or four iterations of each dish, and the pattern is spread symmetrically all the way down the medda.

The symmetry is not to be taken lightly, as I learned. As a new bride at my in-laws for the first time, I naturally tried to make myself useful around the house. So, as Fatimah plated all the dishes, I helped Ameir and Maryam’s cousins carry them to the medda. Once I got there, I just set them down sporadically. They’d smile and say “Shukran.” I’d say “Afwan” and walk away for another plate, happy that I helped. When I came back with another, I noticed that the plate I had put down earlier had been moved. I thought nothing of it, and put down the new plates. “Shukran!” “Afwan!” Third sets of plates in hand, I noticed that the second set had been rearranged. Finally, I got it. I just laughed, and then just started handing the plates to the cousins to let them arrange them symmetrically. They laughed too – because of the language barrier, they couldn’t really explain what I was doing wrong, but they politely let me keep doing it without making me feel bad.

Every morning, Fatimah would lead the production of a kingly spread of cooked and fresh plates. Served hot or warm were baid – scrambled eggs; fool – warm, cumin-spiced fava beans topped with fresh tomato, onions, and parsley; tis’iyyah – yesterday’s hummus and bread cooked together with a tangy tahini sauce; mana’eesh, flatbreads topped with zaatar, ground beef, or feta and cheese; and falafel, fresh from the shop on the street corner. Everything got a healthy drizzle of fruity extra virgin olive oil, maybe even from Jiddo’s (Ameir’s grandfather) farm.

The morning after Ameir and I got married, Ammo (my father in law) made fried liver as a special hot plate. I am not a big red meat eater, and I especially have trouble with organs. My father in law is extremely hospitable and generous, and he naturally offered me the plate. I declined, and he thought I was just being shy. “Ameir!” he said, “Give her a bite!” Ameir knew I didn’t like liver, but out of respect for his father, he couldn’t say no. I gave Ameir the “please, no” look, but he had to do it – he tore a piece of bread, picked up a piece of liver, and put it in my mouth. “How is it?” asked Ammo eagerly. Without chewing, I smiled and nodded. “Wonderful!” he said, and turned back to talk to my father.

Meanwhile, I jabbed Ameir in the leg, motioning him to give me a napkin. I carefully released the liver into said receptacle. A few minutes later, Ammo turned back to me and Ameir. “Ameir, give her another bite!” But instead of watching this time, he turned back to laugh with my dad. Spared! It really was a hilarious scene, even at that time. Now, don’t get me wrong – he’s an expert at fried liver. But I just couldn’t do it. Thanks anyway, Ammo!

Cold plates include all kinds of fresh vegetables, sliced and served separately – radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, whole green and black oil-cured olives, scallions, flai-flai (a peppery green similar to alfalfa), and an interesting little thing called ajoor. Ajoor are kind of dwarf watermelons; they’re light green with ridges. Inside, they’re about the color and taste of a cucumber, but are crispier than cucumbers.

Alongside all the vegetables are laban - thick yogurt sprinkled with dried mint and drizzled with olive oil; hummus drizzled with olive oil and topped with olives and chickpeas; slices of a mild-flavored Syrian cheese similar to mozarella, and a creamier cheese topped with tangy apricot or peach jam or sweet honey.

Next to each person sits a small, never-empty glass of shai, hot sweet tea. It’s a lighter brew, a golden amber color, so that the flavor of any fresh herbs – usually miramiyya (sage), na’na (mint) – comes through (and so you can drink as many cups as desired). The host will keep fill your cup the second it’s empty, needlessly asking “Soobik shai kaman?” – Should I pour you more tea? – as the cup is automatically refilled.

Also ever-flowing are the praises to the cook. Yaslamo eidaiki! May your hands be blessed! call out the breakfasters. Sahtain! Allah yasalmik! replies the chef – May you have two healths, and may God bless you.

An hour later, the plates are mostly empty. Leaning back against the sofa, you spend another hour nipping at the edges of the laban to pair with the four more cups of hot tea, reminiscing with your family about happy memories.

Every once in a while, a family should have a good Syrian breakfast. Leave the bowls of cereal or the pop tart. Forget the plates, spoons and forks. Spread a medda, sit on the floor and enjoy the food and family.

I’ve always wanted to master the simple chicken-and-rice dish that almost every food culture has. Murgh pilau, Dajjaj wa ruz, Arroz con Pollo, etc. So, after years of watching my mom do it, plus a lot of self-reassuring and instructional phone calls from my mom, i finally decided to attempt it.

Success! This was the most yummy one pot meal I’ve ever made. For the chicken, I used skinless chicken drumstick pieces. For the vegetables, I used eggplant, peas, and carrots. I guess this one was more Arab style then desi style because I put vegetables in it and toasted nuts on top. With some raisins and shredded carrots, it could be an Afghani murgh pilau. The possiblities are endless!

Koshari is Egyptian street food – and, really, isn’t street food always the best part of any cuisine? It’s based on kitchery – a very simple rice and lentil mixture served in Pakistan and India. When Desi workers came to Egypt, they brought kitchery with them, and I really have to say that the Egyptians perfected it.

It’s really very simple. Lentils are cooked in a savory tomato sauce, and then the dish is served in layers: rice, tomato-y lentils, then caramelized or fried onions on top. It’s eaten spicy, so hot sauce is served alongside. Fancier versions have chickpeas and other legumes too. I added extra veggies by putting eggplant in the rice.

I made this over at Amy Aziza’s house at a mini housewarming party to break in her new kitchen. Angela made empanadas, because she’s Puerto Rican and awesome like that. Natasha brought Charlie Chaplain. Emilie was beautiful and smiling. It was great!

Koshari

2 cups lentils (I like brown lentils Koshari, the same as for this Eggplant and Lentil Stew)
1 large can tomato sauce (28 oz I think?)
2 cups rice + 4 cups broth or water to cook it in
1 eggplant
A lot of garlic (a lot)
A lot of onions (a lot)
Salt, pepper, hot sauce
Paprika or cayenne, depending on your heat tolerance
Cinnamon
Olive oil
Hot sauce to serve

1. (before you do anything else, start this, because onion caramelization is best if it is done over a long period of time. If you forget, cheat and add sugar). Dice or slice a lot of onions and put it on a medium low heat with a bit of olive oil. Let it go. Keep coming back and stirring it. Add some sugar if you want to help the onions along. At the end, before you serve, turn up the heat so the onions get crispy on the edges.

2. Chop one or two onions and a bunch of garlic and saute in some olive oil until soft-ish. Add the lentils and an equal part of water and boil until the lentils are almost soft. Drain any excess water, and then add more garlic and the tomato sauce. Simmer until lentils are soft. Salt and pepper it.

2. Cut the eggplant into chunks and put it in a colander. Salt it and let it drain for 15 min at least (this gets the bitterness out). Pat dry, sprinkle with cayenne, black pepper, and cinnamon, and fry in batches.

3. Sautee an onion and garlic until soft. Add the eggplant, stir. Add the rice and stir. Add some cinnamon (this is a Magrebi – Moroccan – touch that I really like, but the cinnamon is entirely optional) and black pepper. Add the liquid (water or broth) and cook the rice normally.

To serve: Put down a layer of rice, then a layer of tomato lentils, then top with caramelized onions. Add hot sauce to taste!

Reposting with pictures! Sorry for the blurriness; I was trying a new setting on my camera which obviously did not work as well as I had hoped.

This is a traditional Syrian dish of zucchini hollowed out and stuffed with cooked ground beef, then baked with a tomato sauce. The filling I used here is the same thing I used for making kibbe, and it really turned out well.

Kousa Mahshi

1 to 1/2 lb ground beef (whatever one package is)
2 onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, diced or minced
1/4 or 1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 to 1 tsp cumin
Salt, pepper
Dry or fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
1 16 oz can tomato sauce
1 or 2 cups of broth (i don’t like to mix chicken broth with beef, so I used veggie broth)
7 green zucchini

1. Slice the zucchini lengthwise into two boats. Score the center and scoop out the flesh, leaving a rim around the edge. Try to get the ones with the bigger brown, round spot on the butt – these have more flesh, and you can use the zucchini you scoop out for other yummy things (or, you could make this feta stuffed zucchini by Veggie Venture)

2. Saute one onion and three cloves of garlic until soft. Add the ground beef and break it up so it cooks evenly. Add the walnuts, parsley, allspice, cumin, salt, and pepper. Mix in about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the tomato sauce. (I also added a good chunk of garlic-herb butter I had in the freezer. Shh….don’t tell).

3. Remove all that from the pan. Sautee one sliced onion and three cloves of garlic and add the rest of the tomato sauce. Let it simmer to flavor. Add the broth so it’s more liquidy, enough to pour into the pan and kind of braise the zucchini.

4. In two large 13×9 pans, divide the tomato sauce evenly. Lay the zucchini boats in the pan (I cut them in half so it was four little half-boats per zucchini – easier to serve).

5. Put about 1 tablespoon of filling into each boat (each full boat). If there is extra ground beef, let it fall into the sauce.

6. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or until zucchini is tender. To serve, put a few piece of stuffed zucchini into a plate and spoon the tomato sauce on top.

Dates are a staple of every Ramadan iftar. It just doesn’t feel like Ramadan unless you eat one of these soft, chewy, super sweet fruits. (I don’t consider those icky dry, pitted things you get in a plastic container from the grocery store to be real dates. Real dates are the big thick Medjool ones.)

Now, if you have dates like the ones we got as a gift this Ramadan, fresh on the vine, you want to just sit back and eat five or six of them with a cup of tea. These have a fragrance and texture unlike anything I’ve ever eaten – soft and perfumy, candy-sweet without being overpowering. Delicious, Subhanallah! (Thanks 3mmo and Fatimah!)

But the normal date eating can get a little boring, or at least too sweet after a while. Enter my friend Amna Baloch, who suggested filling the dates with Cool Whip. Oh. My. God. Long live Amna and may she be happy and healthy all her days InshAllah. The Cool Whip cuts tempers the sweetness of the dates a little bit with a pleasing creamy texture and it’s a surprising change from the regular iftar staple. My father in law especially loved these.

Before I introduce the recipe, I have to tell you about the Cool Whip trick.

The Cool Whip Trick: I’m sorry to say that I learned this trick from Sandra Lee, the terrifyingly annoying Stepford Wife Food Network TV Show host – but it’s an amazing trick. Giving credit where credit is due. Into 8 oz (one small container of Cool Whip) pour in two to three capfuls of vanilla extract and fold it in gently, taking care not to break the Cool Whip. Taste it – doesn’t it taste like you stood there and whipped some heavy whipping cream into soft peaks and softly folded in some sugar and vanilla? Use this wherever you’d use whipping cream – there’s no plasticy-artificial flavor that Cool Whip can sometimes get.

8 oz Cool Whip, defrosted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
Medjool dates (the big fat ones)

Pitting the dates – Using a sharp knife, make a lengthwise incision in a date. Don’t cut all the way through – you might actually be able to feel the pit as you cut. The date will quite obligingly split open. Remove the pit with your fingers and kind of open the date, making sure you don’t split it from the back.

Mix the Cool Whip with the vanilla and fold in some toasted chopped walnuts. (I used about 1/4 cup for half a Cool Whip container).

Fill it into a plastic ziptop bag and snip off the top. (fold the top down about 1 or 2 inches, then scoop in the cream. Fold the top back up and zip closed – see? no mess! Push all the cream to one corner of the bag. Snip off a very little bit from the tip and hold the cone gently in your cupped palm).

Take the pitted, split date in one hand and very gently squeeze some Cool Whip mixture into each (it only needs about a teaspoon).

Refrigerate until iftar time! You can make these an hour or so ahead of serving.

Two years ago: From the depths of darkness

Mr. Malik is a king of shawarma sandwiches. His kingdom is a number of shawarma shops across Damascus, and I had the priviledge of visiting one of the Malik Shawarma shops in the Jami’a Abu Noor district for a late night snack.

Shawarma is a very simple and very delicious meal – chicken marinated in special house spices and roasted vertically on a spit, then sliced and wrapped into hot pita bread. That’s it!

There’s not much more stuffed into a shawarma sandwich than the chicken – it’s really all about the slow-roasted, savory, tender chicken. Sometimes there is a layer of french fries and/or spicy sauce and/or a tahini garlic yogurt sauce, but the chicken is the star.

Mr. Malik, like most chefs, would not tell me anything about his secret house blend of spices, or how he gets the hundreds of pieces of chicken in perfect layers on the spit. “That’s the secret of the trade!” he told me.

When you ask for a sandwich, the guy will slice chicken off of the spit in thin slices. And do you know what he does next? Do you? Next, he lets the chicken slices sit….in the juices….that have been dribbling….off of the spit….all day long. The chicken gets all soaked and yummy and moist in the savory juices. And then, when he wraps the chicken into the pita bread, the bread soaks up all the juices from the chicken.

Midnight run to shawarma shop + strawberry milk from a classic Damascus juice shop (pictures below) + good Kung Fu move + family = awesome.

Chickpeas are not the most exciting legume ever. Sure, hummus has become popular at sandwich shops everywhere. (And, as another example of “lost in translation” cultural foods, “hummus” just means “chickpea” in Arabic, not “pureed chickpea-and-tahini spread”). And hummus-the-spread-or-dip is really a matter of personal taste (consistency? how much tahini? how much garlic? lemon juice?) so there is no guarantee that even “well made” hummus will be good.

BUT. There is one kind of chickpea food that I really do enjoy, almost every time.

“Wait, Cup of Tea,” you say. “Those look like donuts.” Well, authentic falafel like you can get in Syria have holes in the middle so that the little patty cooks evenly. Plus, you can also stick them on your index finger and eat around it (come on, you were thinking it. I also used to do that with Bugles. Remember those?)

Falafel is the plural of “filfil,” which means “pepper” in Arabic. The little golden brown, crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-and-savory-on-the-inside patties are popular at breakfast by themselves, or for other meals/snacks wrapped into a pita. The hearty, earthy taste and crunch of the little falafel rounds is highlighted by the fresh cucumber, tomato, and sour-sweet pickled radishes. Top it all off with a special sauce and….oh my…..you’ll miss it as soon as you walk away.

(All the pretty pictures won’t fit on the main page, so click for the rest of the post! (more…)

Ackawi is an Arab cheese packed in water; it has a texture very similar to buffalo mozarella (maybe a little saltier) but it doesn’t melt as readily. It’s a classic part of an Arab breakfast, wrapped in bread and dipped in honey or jam. This was an experiment in making something like mozarella sticks with an Arab flair, and I think it was a success! Ackawi doesn’t get gooey and melty when you fry it – it holds its shape, but is still soft. The za’atar-breadcrumb crust adds an extra crisp and an herby-savory tang, but is totally optional. You could fry it without the crust and then sprinkle with za’atar or even honey for a sweet snack.

Wait. What is this za’atar of which you speak? I’ll leave this one to Desert Candy. And she’s right about the best way to eat za’atar: dip bread in olive oil, then za’atar, consume. Repeat.

Recipe hiding in the link below. Also check out Fried Haloumi with Basil by Too Many Chefs.

(more…)

One year ago: Totaa

Think back to your idea of a traditional kitchen, filled with a bunch of women, sharing stories over big bowls of food while they prepare a big meal for their family. Kibbe is that kind of food. There’s a big pot of meat, a big pot of dough, and a bunch of hands rolling and filling and frying while the kitchen echos with laughter and stories.

My friend/mother-in-law, Fatimah, tells me that being able to make kibbe is considered the mark of a great cook in Syria. I’m definitely not there, but it was very fun spending an afternoon learning how to make this classic dish.

Everyone has their own recipe for kibbe (also called kubbe). There are two main ways to prepare it – in bars or in stuffed lemon-shaped dumplings. People from Shaam, especially Syrians, make the dumpling style. These can either be fried and dipped in plain yogurt to eat, or made with a cooked yogurt sauce called shakriya. You can also make them in a patty style and slow-cook them in a barbeque, then serve them with plain yogurt for dipping. I’ll show all three of these styles in this post. The hardest thing to do is stuff and shape the dumplings into the traditional lemon form. I’ll try to show as step-by-step of a process as I can, but really, it just takes a lot and lot and a lot of patience and practice to get it right – but it’s worth it!

Other great Kibbe posts

Kibbi Mihshiyya at Arabic Bites
Kubbe in Broth at Desert Candy

Recipe (and lots more pictures) here: (more…)

This is a beautiful dish with colorful layers of meat, vegetables, and rice. My mother-in-law made it for dinner a few nights ago and I was inspired to try it myself. It may look complicated, but if you can make biryani or arroz con pollo, you can make Makloobah!

“Makloobah” means “upside down” in Arabic – the dish is so named because you cook everything separately, then layer the ingredients into a large pot, then flip it upside down to serve.

Recipe after the link.
(more…)