Kamounet is one of those seasonings that every family has a different recipe for – some include cloves, some eschew them for allspice, it just depends on your tastes (or maybe what you have in the cupboard at the time). The only must in kamounet is why it’s called kamounet in the first place: kamoun…
I was recently invited to a potluck brunch, and as a person who doesn’t typically eat breakfast (coffee is my breakfast most days) I was a bit stuck. While I love traditional Middle Eastern breakfasts – like ful medames, or a plate of fresh vegetables, bread, and labneh, or a big skillet of shakshouka, I…
Sugary iced drinks and pine nuts are two of my daughter’s favourite things in this world and jallab, a fruity punch made with syrups and water over ice and topped with pine nuts is as perfect a summer beverage as she could wish for. While commercial jallab syrups are available they’re not easily found in…
Aubergine (or eggplant, if you’re American) is probably one of my favourite vegetables. Ever since I was a small kid I can remember being excited to see it on my plate, unlike my daughter who I still can’t convince to touch the stuff… Unless it’s ‘hidden’ in mutabbal. Mutabbal is probably what many people would…
Admittedly, I am not a big cheese person. Part of this stems from being lactose intolerant, so I didn’t grow up eating a lot of it as I always felt it made my stomach hurt. Cultured dairy, like yogurt, seems to be a bit easier on my stomach and so labneh, being made from yogurt,…
I am not typically a fried doughnut person, I generally find them too greasy or overly sweet, and so I figure my fried food intake should be best utilised for other things (helloooo, fries!). If I’m feeling the doughnut urge, a good cake doughnut is my choice – alongside a mug of black coffee, of…
Growing up, I remember there always being a salad on our table, and most nights – rice (it’s my father’s favourite food). In this age of low-carb and cauliflower ‘rice’ it seems to have lost its cachet, but I’ve come to feel that rice sustained so many cultures for generations that it still belongs on…
As a child growing up in Yorkshire, one of my favourite treats was an individual Mr. Kipling’s bakewell tart, with a glossy candied cherry in the centre. While I’d probably not say no to one if I found them in the United States (where I live now), I didn’t realise until adulthood how truly fantastic…
I took a little break from the blog over the American 4th of July weekend, though that doesn’t mean I wasn’t cooking. My husband always laments that when we’re invited to a barbecue or gathering, and we ask what we can bring – and they tell us we don’t need to bring anything – that…
Fattoush is a Levantine salad (it has been said to have originated in Syria) that is, for lack of a better description, a bread salad – in the same vein as the Italian panzanella. It happens to be one of my all-time favourite salads, and it tends to pair well with just about anything –…
