8 cloves of garlic, crushed
¼ teaspoon salt
juice of ½ lemon
¼ cup olive oil
2 or 3 tablespoons Greek (or strained) yogurt
1. Pound the garlic with salt in a mortar and pestle, and gradually drizzle in lemon juice and olive oil, blending until you have a creamy paste. Alternatively, puree in a food processor.
2. Mix in yogurt. If you like, add more yogurt and olive oil to soften the garlic flavor. Keep in refrigerator until ready to use.
Serves 4
ATAYEF
SWEET DESSERT PANCAKES
These small stuffed pancakes come in various forms: filled with sugared walnuts and deep-fried, or served soft and stuffed with walnuts or a cream called ashta that’s similar to English clotted cream. I prefer the blini-like, non–deep-fried version, and I adore both fillings. Note: Since ashta (made from the skin of long-simmered milk) is hard to find outside the Middle East and rarely made at home even there, Lebanese home cooks often substitute a “fake” version. Below is a common method for mimicking ashta that has been a hit when I’ve tried it, and no one has been the wiser.
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon active dry yeast
1¾ cup sugar, divided
1 cup finely chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons orange-blossom nectar, divided
4 pieces crustless white bread (optional)
2¾ cups half-and-half (optional)
½ teaspoon lemon juice
vegetable oil for frying
¼ cup candied rose petals or chopped pistachios (optional)
1. To prepare the pancake batter, combine flour and yeast in a mixing bowl. Gradually add ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons water and keep mixing, using a wooden spoon, until smooth and well blended. Cover bowl and set aside for one hour; batter should rise and the surface should show small bubbles.
2. Meanwhile, prepare the walnut stuffing, and the cream stuffing too if you’d like. For the walnut stuffing, mix ¼ cup sugar, chopped walnuts, and 1 tablespoon orange-blossom nectar. Combine well and set aside. For the cream stuffing, shred the white bread into bite-size pieces with your hands, and put them in a small saucepan. Add the half-and-half, stir with the bread pieces, and bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until you have a creamy consistency. Set aside to cool.
3. Make the ater (sugar syrup) by combining the remaining sugar with ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons water, along with the lemon juice, in a saucepan over medium heat. Boil, stirring occasionally. Keep on the heat, and after 3 minutes add the remaining orange-blossom nectar. Allow to boil for another several seconds. Set aside to cool.
4. Grease a skillet with vegetable oil and place over medium heat. When the oil is very hot, pour in a tablespoon of the pancake batter to create a thin circle of about 3 inches diameter. Use the back of your spoon to quickly coax the batter into a round shape, before it starts to cook on the bottom (which happens within seconds). Cook pancake for 1 to 2 minutes on one side only; bottom should be firm and lightly browned and the top dry and bubbly. Repeat until all batter is used up; set pancakes aside to cool for 15 minutes.
5. When cooled, top each pancake with 1 tablespoon of the walnut or cream filling; you can fill half the pancakes with one stuffing and the rest with the other, if you’d like to serve both varieties. Fold pancakes in half and pinch the bottom edges together, and leave the top open like a cone.
6. Arrange the filled pancakes on a platter, drizzle with the ater, and top with candied rose petals or chopped pistachios (optional). Serve at room temperature.
Serves 4
MOUFATTAKA
STICKY RICE AND PINE NUT CAKE
Moufattaka is sold in certain Beirut pastry shops on urb’it Ayoub (Wednesday of Job), a now-obscure holiday in late April that commemorates the day when the prophet Job healed himself by jumping into the sea. The dessert is said to be appropriate for the holiday, since it takes the patience of Job to make it. That’s a big exaggeration to my mind, because even though you do have to keep stirring the ingredients until they reach the desired texture, the process doesn’t take all that long and is fairly simple. The result, a sticky-sweet rice pudding shaped into a cake, involves savory ingredients one rarely associates with dessert, namely turmeric and tahini. Unusual and beguiling, moufattaka is an ingenious little confection, and when I’ve had it at the occasional Beirut dinner party, its yellow color has made for a striking presentation.
1 cup rice, preferably long-grain
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons tahini
2 cups sugar
5 tablespoons pine nuts, divided
1. Boil the rice according to package directions. Set aside.
2. Stir the turmeric into 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons water, and bring to a boil.
3. As soon as the water-turmeric mixture starts to boil, add the cooked rice.
4. Reduce the heat to low and cook, uncovered, for approximately 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Take off heat and set aside. (Rice may still be a little wet, which is fine.)
5. In a bowl, mix tahini, sugar, and 4 tablespoons pine nuts. Stir well.
6. In a saucepan, combine the tahini mixture and the turmeric rice.
7. Stir frequently over medium heat for about 40 minutes. In the last 10 minutes, turn heat down to a simmer.
8. Remove from heat, and spread evenly on a round platter. Garnish with remaining pine nuts and leave to set in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. Serve at room temperature.
Serves 6
Acknowledgments
I’m deeply grateful to my extended family in Lebanon, the United States, England, and elsewhere. Listing them would take up an entire phone book, and I feel lucky to have such an enormous clan of generous, loving, cheerfully eccentric people who mostly get along well, certainly one for the record books. I owe eternal gratitude to Jamal, Mariana, and Samir Abdelnour, my beloved and endlessly supportive father, mother, and brother (respectively), and to the cousins, aunts, uncles, and their families (you know who you all are) who have made life in both Lebanon and the States sweeter. The same goes for my dear friends in New York, in Beirut, on the West Coast, and elsewhere, who have helped me get through this past year with a sense of humor and purpose. When I packed up and left my life in New York to move to Beirut, you all gently reassured me that I’d find everything pretty much the same when I came back to visit—yeah, right. Some of you had the nerve to have kids, change cities, find love, or make other big changes in your lives while I was away, and for that I’m grateful too. Your stubborn unpredictability—and your strength, loyalty, and love—are always an inspiration.
Speaking of the people in my life who made momentous changes while I was away: At the top of that list is my brother, Samir, who with his lovely wife, Laila, added the magical Marlena Josette Abdelnour to our family.
I owe deep gratitude to my agent, Jason Allen Ashlock, for having the vision to decide that my plan to move back to Beirut could turn into a book, even before I’d fully realized it myself. My editor at Broadway Books, Jenna Ciongoli, has been a pleasure to work with—enthusiastic and brilliantly incisive—and I thank her and the whole team at Broadway for their unwavering support during a difficult, madcap year.
For looking over early versions of my manuscript and giving invaluable comments, I owe huge thanks to my immediate family and to my friend and exquisitely insightful reader, Jennifer Paull.
For reading and commenting on the first draft of my manuscript, and not cringing (too much) at being in it, I thank Richard Gilman, who has given me more courage, calm, strength, and outrageous laughs than he knows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SALMA ABDELNOUR is a writer and editor based in New York City. She has been the travel editor of Food & Wine, the food editor of O, The Oprah Magazine, and the restaurant editor of Time Out New York. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Food
& Wine, Travel + Leisure, Afar, ForbesLife, and other publications, and has been anthologized in two volumes of Best Food Writing. She has taught writing courses for New York University’s continuing-education department and for Gemini Ink, and has appeared in television segments about travel and food for CNN, CNBC, the Fine Living Network, and elsewhere. She divides her time, or aspires to, between Brooklyn and Beirut. Look for her online at Salmaland.com.
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