Baharat (بَهَارَات) literally meaning ‘spices’ in Arabic, is a common ingredient in many Lebanese and Levantine dishes. Like most Middle Eastern spice blends, every region or family has their preference as to what they like to add; baharat can sometimes contain nutmeg in place of allspice, or even the addition of paprika. Feel free to…
My husband does not cook. I am actually unsure of how he managed to survive for so many years on boxed macaroni and cheese and frozen pizza, but somehow he did. And believe it or not, some days I don’t want to cook (but I don’t want to eat pizza or macaroni and cheese, either),…
While cabbage is technically a cool season vegetable, I always seem to crave cabbage salads in the heat of summer. Coleslaw is an American summer tradition but I have always found most coleslaw perhaps a little too sweet, and too mayonnaise heavy. In summer I crave refreshing salads, and this one probably ends up on…
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…
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,…
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…
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 –…
