Oven Bake

Before cooking, the meat-spice mixture requires a rest in the refrigerator to bring all the flavors together and to give the kebabs their requisite melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. If you cannot get a baking pan of just this size, something a bit smaller or a bit larger will do. (You could also use a 6-inch-square cake tin and cut the kebabs into rectangles—in which case, bake for only 30 minutes.) Serve these pâté-like kebabs with drinks, offering flatbread pieces or crackers to eat them with, or serve them as part of a meal with vegetables or salads. They need an accompanying chutney, such as the Peshawari Red Pepper Chutney, page 243, or the Bengali-Style Tomato Chutney, page 244.

There is nothing like sitting down for an evening drink with these chickpeas by one’s side. Since they come out of a can, no hard work is involved. I like to use organic canned chickpeas, but any kind will do. If you have access to an Indian grocer, do sprinkle the chickpeas with some chaat masala at the end. It gives them an extra spiciness. But this is not essential. These are best eaten the day they are made.

When I was growing up in Delhi, my mother regularly deep-fried cashews for us in a karhai (wok). She would scoop the nuts up from the hot oil with a slotted spoon and leave them to drain on a crisp sheet of brown paper—the same kind she used to cover our schoolbooks. My father ate them with his evening whisky-and-soda and the rest of us nibbled on them with our soft drinks. I have now taken to roasting the cashews instead. Nothing could be easier.

Black pepper is native to India. Long before India had red chilies to make foods hot, it relied on black pepper. This recipe harks back to a period that is still part of India’s present.

The eggplants are usually fried, but for those who want to broil them, that too can be done, as they are then cooked further in a tomato sauce.

Tunisia is famous for fish couscous. This uncommon one is elegant and aromatic, with the mingled scents of saffron and quince. Have the fish cleaned and left whole. It is usually steamed in a separate steamer, but it is better to bake it in foil in the oven, which is a way of steaming it.

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 exquisite and also very easy. The quinces are hard and take a long time to cook before you can even cut them up and stuff them, but you can bake them hours—even a day—in advance. I use very large quinces, weighing a pound each. Serve as a hot first course.

The round, sweet orange-fleshed pumpkins are the ones to use for this dish. The amount of stuffing you need depends on the size of the pumpkin. If you wish to make it without meat, increase the quantity of rice.

Serve cold as a first course. Choose peppers that can stand on their bases.

This old classic is prestigious in the Arab world. In Egypt, during their season, artichokes were sold by vendors who brought crates to the kitchen door, and our cook pared the bottoms. Nowadays I use frozen artichoke bottoms that are so good you cannot tell they are not fresh. Look for them (a flat-cup variety) as produce of Egypt in Middle Eastern stores.

This is to be served hot.

This version of the Tunisian meshweya (page 85) can be served hot or cold. I prefer it cold.

You can serve these hot or cold.

This famous Turkish dish is served as a cold appetizer or first course. Conflicting stories are told about the origin of its name, which means “the Imam fainted.” Some say it came about when an imam (Muslim priest) fainted with pleasure on being served it by his wife. Others believe that the Imam fainted when he heard how expensive the ingredients were, and how much olive oil had gone into the making. The dish is part of the range of zeytinyagli (cooked in olive oil) dishes Turkey is famous for. It can be cooked in a saucepan or in the oven.

These eggplants—the Turkish name means “slashed belly”—represent a main dish to be served hot with a rice or bulgur pilaf. The Syrian and Lebanese version is with the meat filling on page 306.

You need waxy new potatoes for this. Large ones can be quartered, baby ones can be left whole or cut in half. I don’t bother to peel the very small ones. Serve hot or cold.