Herbs & Spices

Although this is not a pickle, I am including the recipe because it is a very useful sauce to have at hand when required, and it can be prepared in advance and stored in jars. It keeps for months if the surface remains covered with a film of oil.

This easy pickle makes a ready delicious mezze.

A Greek Eastertime specialty, especially renowned on the island of Siphnos. Mizithra, a soft, fresh, unsalted cheese made from sheep’s milk, is used there, but a bland, unsalted curd or cream cheese may be substituted.

Although not my favorite pastry, makroud is very popular in North Africa, especially in Tunisia, which is a land of dates. The pastries are usually deep-fried in oil, then dipped in warm honey. I prefer the lighter baked version.

This Moroccan pastry is a very long coil (hence the name m’hencha, meaning “snake”) of fillo pastry filled with a ground-almond paste. It is stunning to look at and exquisite. I give very large quantities, because it is the thing to make for a grand occasion, but of course you can make it smaller and reduce the quantities. The flavor is better if you grind the blanched almonds yourself rather than use commercially ground ones.

Fine-grained sweet couscous, called seffa in Morocco and mesfouf in Tunisia, is served hot, accompanied by cold milk or buttermilk. I like to eat it for breakfast. There are many versions. Dried fruit such as dates and raisins, and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pistachios, can be added, and the grain can be flavored with orange-blossom water or with cinnamon, honey, or sugar. A particularly wonderful version is with fresh grapes. The most common, seffa be zbib, is with large black or golden raisins. Seffa be tamr is with dates and walnut halves. There is also one with pomegranate seeds. Here is a basic seffa/mesfouf followed by possible garnishes. Serve it in bowls and pass round a jug of hot milk to pour over.

An Egyptian breakfast of boiled whole wheat, with hot milk poured over and sprinkled with sugar called belila, is turned into a celebratory dish on the 10th of Moharram (the first month of the Muslim calendar), when it is embellished with a flower fragrance and with nuts. Unless it is very young, wheat remains chewy even after lengthy cooking, so I use barley, which is less common but softens relatively quickly.

The name means “Ali’s mother,” and it is the most popular sweet in Egypt. I had never heard of it when I lived there, but now it is everywhere. People in Cairo say it arrived in the city from the villages of Upper Egypt, but there it is said to be from Cairo. One joker explained that it was a bread pudding introduced by a Miss O’Malley, an Irish mistress of the Khedive Ismail. Go and believe him! People find all sorts of ways of making it—with pancakes, with thinly rolled-out puff pastry, with pieces of bread, and with fillo pastry. Fillo gives the most appealing texture, and it is good to bake the pastry initially rather than fry it in butter as is usual in Egypt.

A friend described the flavors of a pudding she tasted in an Iranian restaurant, and I applied them to the classic crème caramel. It is magnificent.

This intriguing rice pudding made with water—not milk—called zerde in Turkey and sholezard in Iran, has a delicate flavor and pretty, jellylike appearance.

Yogurt with honey is eaten for breakfast and as a dessert. Choose a scented honey. Adding ginger is unusual but delicious.

These very thin, soft breads, which you can roll up, are like Bedouin skillet breads. They work very well for me in a skillet, and I finish them under a broiler, but you can also bake them. For the topping, you can buy ready-made zaatar mixtures, which contain thyme and the tangy spice sumac, in Middle Eastern stores. You need only add olive oil. But it is easy enough to make your own zaatar mix at home. My favorite is simply thyme and sesame seeds with salt and olive oil. The quantities here make for a richer than usual topping. Serve the breads for breakfast, with labneh (see page 112), as a snack with a salad, or as an appetizer, cut into wedges.

There are many North African semolina breads. I love this crusty, crumbly one with a rich aniseed flavor.

This is a meat stew with pasta. I am assured that it only tastes right if small Italian pasta called “orzo,” which look like tiny bird’s tongues or largish grains of rice, are used. In Egypt, families used to make the pasta themselves with flour and water, rolling tiny bits of dough into little ovals between their fingers. A friend recalls spending hours doing this with her brother every Sunday as a small child.

This Armenian specialty makes a hearty main dish. It has a pure and fresh quality and is an entirely different experience from eating an Italian or Asian pasta dish.

This Egyptian village dish usually made with pigeons (hamam) is just as good, and easier to make, with a good corn-fed chicken. Ferik is young green wheat which has been harvested before it is ripe and set alight between layers of straw. The moist young kernels are separated from the charred chaff and straw by threshing, then washed and dried and coarsely ground. There is a pleasant roughness and a lingering smoky flavor about this grain. You will find it (also spelled frika) in Middle Eastern stores. It needs to be washed in 2 or 3 changes of water.

Sour little red berries called barberries (zereshk in Persian) and yogurt give this chicken-and-rice dish an exciting flavor and texture. The woman who wrote out this recipe for me more than thirty years ago added a comment that it was the most famous and traditional of Iranian dishes.

This is one of the most popular sauces in Iran and a favorite of mine. Dried limes and the herb fenugreek give it a unique and delicious bitter-sour taste. Flat-leaf parsley, chives, and in some versions dill and cilantro complete the symphony of flavors. Fresh fenugreek can be found in Iranian and Oriental stores in the summer, and packets of dried fenugreek leaves are available the year round. Only a little is used, because it is very powerful. The dried limes can be found in Oriental and Indian stores in various forms, whole, broken into pieces, and powdered. To make them yourself, see page 44. If you can’t find the powdered one, add an extra whole one. Serve with plain rice steamed in the Persian manner (page 338) or the quick and easy boiled and steamed rice (page 339).