by Anissa Helou
Sugared Almonds
NOQL-E-BADOMI
AFGHANISTAN
Sugared almonds are very much part of any celebration, whether it is Eid or weddings or circumcision rituals. And of course you can buy them ready-made with the icing dyed in different pastel colors—pink, sky blue, or green—or white. If you want to tint these, add a drop or two of your choice of natural food coloring to the syrup before coating the almonds. You can also make this with toasted chickpeas (see Variation).
SERVES 6 TO 8
3⅓ cups (500 g) blanched almonds
2½ cups (500 g) raw cane sugar
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
2. Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast in the preheated oven for 6 to 7 minutes, or until golden brown.
3. Put the sugar, ¾ cup (180 ml) water, and cardamom in a medium skillet and bring to a boil over medium heat. Let bubble for 2 minutes, until the syrup thickens slightly.
4. Put half the toasted almonds in a large skillet and place over low heat. Add the syrup, tablespoon by tablespoon, to the skillet and after adding each tablespoon of syrup, shake the almonds to coat them evenly. After adding about half the syrup, stir the nuts with a spoon as they will no longer easily shake in the pan. By the time you have used half of the syrup, the almonds should have become completely white or whatever color you have chosen. Transfer the sugared almonds to a large serving bowl or a container and repeat the process with the remaining almonds and syrup. Serve as a sweet snack or with dessert. Store in an airtight glass jar where they will keep for a week, possibly longer.
SUGARED CHICKPEAS: Replace the almonds with 3½ cups (500 g) roasted chickpeas, which you can buy already toasted from a Middle Eastern store. Just make sure they are unsalted.
Grape Leather
PESTIL
TURKEY | SYRIA
This recipe comes from my great friend Filiz Hosukoglu in Gaziantep, Turkey, where they make this grape leather (pestil), more or less the same way my aunt used to make it in Mashta el-Helou in Syria. The time to make pestil is September when the grapes have ripened and are ready to be picked. Here is Filiz’s description of how her grandmother made pestil: “The grapes are brought home, washed, then transferred into a rectangular-shaped container (called sal) made of stone or wood. White soil (a kind of soil with 50 to 90 percent calcium carbonate) is spread over the grapes. This white soil decreases the acidity of the grape juice and helps it to settle. Mostly men with wooden sabots on their feet press the grapes to get the juice out.” When I read Filiz’s note, it immediately brought back childhood memories of when my aunt made malban (the Arabic name for pestil) and how she allowed us children to trample the grapes. I personally don’t remember men participating in the making of malban. It was only my mother, my aunt, and our female cousins—in those long gone days there were only family members living in Mashta el-Helou—who every summer set about making industrial quantities of malban. Once the juice was strained, it was boiled and skimmed off. I can still see my mother and aunt in the courtyard tending to a huge pot in which they boiled the grape juice. They kept stirring the juice until it reached the desired consistency, then they poured it over white sheets and spread it thinly using an implement similar to a plasterer’s trowel. Before doing this, they gave each of us children a soup bowl full of the boiled-down grape juice, which we wolfed down in no time before swarming around my mother and aunt to watch them spread the concentrated juice. It took a couple of days for the juice to dry and become “leather,” at which point everyone went back to work, peeling the grape leather off the sheets, cutting it into squares, and folding it like handkerchiefs before being stored in wooden boxes to use in winter months. This malban was our sweet snack of choice wrapped around walnut halves. Here is Filiz’s recipe, which you can make in your kitchen, spreading the thickened juice on silicone baking mats instead of cotton sheets. Pestil lasts a whole year, until the next grape season.
SERVES 8 TO 10
4 tablespoons wheat starch
2 tablespoons raw cane sugar
2 tablespoons grape molasses (pekmez)
1. Mix the wheat starch with 2 cups (500 ml) water in a medium saucepan. Add the sugar and grape molasses and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let bubble gently for about 15 minutes, until the mixture is very creamy.
2. Spread the pestil with a spatula over ½ sheet pan lined with a silicone baking mat. Let dry either in a very low oven or on your kitchen counter. Once dry, cut into large squares and fold like handkerchiefs to serve. Store in a closed container in a cool place where they will keep for one year, possibly longer.
Grape Juice Pudding
FRESH BASTIK
TURKEY
Here is a recipe from Filiz’s mother, which she served when she had unexpected guests and didn’t have anything sweet in the house to offer them. It is delicious and quick to prepare.
SERVES 6
1 cup (120 g) wheat starch
2½ quarts (2.5 liters) grape juice from fresh sweet white grapes
Pistachio slivers and/or walnut halves, for garnish
1. Put the wheat starch in a medium bowl. Add 1 cup (250 ml) water and whisk together until well blended. Put the grape juice in a large pot and place over medium heat. Whisking constantly, slowly add the wheat starch mixture. Bring to a boil, stirring or whisking constantly so as not to have lumps as well as to avoid the juice sticking to the bottom of the pot. Let bubble gently for at least 15 minutes, or until the juice has thickened and coats a spoon thickly.
2. Pour into 6 individual shallow bowls. Garnish with slivered pistachios and walnut halves and serve hot, at room temperature, or chilled.
Orange Blossom Jam
MORABBA AL-ZAHR
LEBANON
You need to live in an area that grows oranges to be able to make this jam. I normally pick my blossoms in Sicily, but in Lebanon you can buy them in the market when they are in season. The jam is incredibly beautiful, with the white blossoms turning a pastel pink because of the added natural colorant. In Lebanon, where sweets makers use the jam to garnish cream-filled sweets, the jam is colored a violent red, which I find a little too intense, not to mention completely unnatural. The delightful, subtle floral flavor of the blossoms makes this jam a perfect topping for delicate cheeses like ricotta
MAKES TWO ½-PINT (250 ML) JARS
2¼ pounds (1 kg) orange blossoms
4 cups (800 g) raw cane sugar
A few drops of natural red food coloring
½ cup (125 ml) lemon juice
1. Pick the petals cleanly off the blossoms, trying not to tear them. Put them in a medium saucepan and cover the blossoms with water to about ¾ inch (2 cm). Bring to a boil over medium heat and continue to boil for 30 minutes, until they have softened but still retain their shape. Drain and rinse under cold water, then let soak in a fresh bowl of water.
2. Put the sugar and 6 cups (1.5 liters) water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the coloring and simmer for 30 minutes, until the syrup has slightly thickened. Let cool.
3. Drain the petals well and add to the syrup. Let soak for 24 hours in a cool place or the refrigerator. Drain the petals in a sieve set over a clean medium saucepan to collect the syrup. Place the syrup over medium heat and boil for 10 minutes, then add the petals and let bubble gently for 10 more minutes. Add the lemon juice and let bubble for another 10 minutes, until the petals have become translucent and have turned a lovely pastel orangey pink color.
4. Transfer the jam to two sterilized ½-pint (250 ml) jars and cover with wax paper. Close the jars and let the jam cool before keeping in a cool place or the refrigerator where it will keep for a year, until blossom season comes around again. Serve as a garnish over creamy sweets or as with any other jam.
Mint Tea
SHAY NA’NA’
MOROCCO | TUNISIA
The making of mi
nt tea in Morocco is surrounded with ritual, with the task of making and serving it falling to the man of the house. And if the tea maker is a stickler for quality, he will always use pieces of sugar hacked from a cane sugar loaf wrapped in gorgeous purple paper to sweeten the tea. He will also add the sugar to the pot rather than to the individual cups. That said, you don’t really need to do either to produce an excellent mint tea.
SERVES 4
2 teaspoons green tea leaves
3 tablespoons raw cane sugar
¼ bunch mint (2 ounces/50 g)
1. Rinse a teapot with boiling water, then discard the water and add the tea leaves. Add a little boiling water and swirl around a bit before draining the water (this was done traditionally to rinse the tea of any impurities, but there is no need for this now except to stick to tradition).
2. Add 3 cups (750 ml) boiling water to the tea and stir in the sugar. Crush the mint a little with your hands, then add to the pot. Push the mint down into the liquid with a spoon. Let infuse for a few minutes before serving in traditional Moroccan tea glasses, which are small and narrow and often made of colored glass that is beautifully decorated with paint and/or gold.
Turkish Coffee
QAHWA
LEBANON | SYRIA | JORDAN | PALESTINE | TURKEY
Whenever you are offered Turkish coffee in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, or Palestine, you will be asked how you like it. If you want your coffee without sugar, you will ask for it to be murr (meaning “bitter” in Arabic). If you like it a little sweet, you will ask for it to be wassat (meaning “medium” in Arabic) or mazbout (meaning “correct” in Arabic), and if you want it really sweet, you will ask for it to be helou (meaning “sweet” in Arabic). I know only one of the Turkish words describing the degrees of sweetness, and that is sada, which means “plain” or “without sugar.”
Turkish coffee is always “cooked” to the taste of the guest, except when there is a funeral or a sad or solemn occasion when only bitter coffee is served.
1. To prepare coffee medium-sweet, measure 1 teaspoon of very finely ground Turkish coffee and ½ teaspoon sugar for each demitasse (about ¼ cup) coffee cup of water. If you want it sweet, increase the quantity of sugar to 1 teaspoon. Put the water in the rakweh (a special coffee pot with a protruding flat spout to make pouring the coffee easy) or in a small saucepan, preferably with a spout. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Once the water has come to a boil, stir in the coffee and sugar, reduce the heat to low, and wait until the coffee foams up. Take off the heat as soon as it starts rising, let settle, then return to the heat. Remove as soon as the coffee foams up again and repeat another two or three times, until there is no more foam. Some people like their coffee foamy and they take it off the heat after the first or second foaming.
2. If you don’t have the specific small, narrow cups with a handle that are used for Turkish coffee, use espresso or demitasse cups. Arrange the cups on a tray, then pour the coffee into them and pass the tray around to the guests. Rural people also use round cups with no handle in which they pour a very small amount of bitter coffee, which they call shaffeh (meaning “one sip”). These cups are the same ones used for the Arabian Coffee.
Arabian Coffee
QAHWA
ARABIAN GULF
Hospitality is an absolute must among believers in Islam who are reminded by the Prophet Muhammad of the high status of those who treat their guests well. He said, “Let the believer in God and the Day of Judgment honor his guest,” thus making hospitality a right rather than a gift, and as such the duty to supply it is a duty to God. And the first sign of hospitality in Arabia, where Islam came into being, is coffee. The coffee served in the Arabian Gulf differs slightly from one country to the next but all versions are made with very lightly roasted beans and are flavored with spices such as saffron and cardamom. It is also “cooked” longer, making it a very different coffee from the Turkish version. Serving it is also different from the way Turkish coffee is served and it follows a ritual. When the coffee is ready, it is poured in a dalla, a large jug with a prominent spout and a lid to keep the coffee hot. The coffee pourer holds the small handleless coffee cups stacked in the right hand and the dalla in the left and goes around pouring a little coffee, less than half of the cup, and handing a cup to each guest. The guest keeps the cup in his/her hand and unless he/she shakes the cup from one side to the other to indicate he/she has had enough, the host will keep refilling the cup. Throughout the coffee drinking, the cup should stay in the drinker’s hand. If the guest places it on the table, it means he/she has a request to make and will not drink the coffee until an answer is received.
SERVES 8 TO 10
2 tablespoons ground Arabian coffee
2 tablespoons ground cardamom
A few threads of saffron
1. Bring 4 cups (1 liter) water to a boil in a pot. Add the coffee and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. Add the ground cardamom and saffron to the thermos (dalla). Pour the coffee (grounds and all) into the thermos. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes for the grounds to settle.
3. Serve in the traditional cups.
Arabian or Indian Milky Tea
KARAK/CHAI
ARABIAN GULF | INDIA
Chai in India and karak in the Arabian Gulf are two names for the same cardamom-flavored and heavily sweetened milky tea. When I was in India, I stopped at chai vendors whenever I passed by one to have some chai, never worrying about the hygiene because they had a wonderful system of disposable terra-cotta cups. Once you drank your tea, either you or the vendor would throw the small terra-cotta cup onto a heap of broken cups. Far more ecological than using disposable paper cups, even if I didn’t really get to the bottom of how they recycled them.
MAKES 2 CUPS
3 green cardamom pods, smashed
1 inch (2.5 cm) fresh ginger, smashed
2½ teaspoons Assam tea leaves
2½ teaspoons raw cane sugar
¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon (200 ml) whole milk
Put ⅓ cup plus 1 tablespoon (100 ml) water in a saucepan with a pouring spout. Add the cardamom and ginger and bring to a boil over medium heat. Add the tea and sugar and let bubble for 1 minute or so. Add the milk and bring to a boil. As soon as the milk threatens to boil over, remove the pan from the heat. Let the milk settle and return the pan to the heat. Again let it almost boil over and remove from the heat. Repeat once more, then strain into two cups. Pour the karak from high up into one cup and again into the other so as to aerate it. You can also transfer the karak to a thermos to keep hot for serving later or to a teapot to serve more elegantly. Serve hot.
Acknowledgments
With every book that I write, I add to the list of wonderful people from around the world who have helped with my research; on top of that list are my faithful friends who never tire of letting me tap in to their expertise, contacts, or whatever else I need. And, of course, my beautiful mother, Laurice Helou, is ever present with her encyclopedic knowledge of Lebanese foodways.
The list of those I would like to thank for this book is long, but first I need to thank Nicole Aragi, my agent in New York, who immediately loved the concept, and my publisher Dan Halpern, who commissioned the book soon after he read the proposal. Then as the book progressed, Gabriella Doob, who was a dream editor; Rachel Meyers, a great production editor; Suet Chong and Renata De Oliveira, who did a wonderful job designing the interior; and Sara Wood, who created a lovely jacket. Thank you, too, to Miriam Parker and copy editor Kate Slate.
In London, my thanks go to my agent Caspian Dennis, and to another dream team with whom I worked on the recipe photographs. Kristin Perers shot the beautiful photographs in her equally beautiful studio with the help of her assistants, Sam Harris and Sophie Bronze, and her son, Ben Cook, who always helped when he was around. Claire Ptak was a great partner in cooking and styling the recipes. And Domingues Pinto (or Mida as we all call her), my wonderful housekeeper, helped us prep and clean without ever complaining about the heavy
workload. Also Victoria Allen at Props Ltd for her wonderful collection of props, some of which we used in the photographs.
I also owe special thanks to Amy Dencler, head chef at Chez Panisse and tester extraordinaire, for testing almost all the recipes in the book in her American kitchen. And young Chiara Bosco, who was a delightful recipe-testing assistant in Trapani, and her parents, Agata and Gino, and sisters, Francesca and Anna, for being willing tasters.
My thanks to Helen Saberi for letting me use some of the recipes from her Afghan cookbook, Noshe Djan; Carolyn Phillips, for allowing me to use her Uighur Scallion Pancakes recipe from All Under Heaven; and Fuchsia Dunlop, for giving me her Kashgar kebabs and noodles recipes and for always being there whenever I had questions about Muslim Chinese food or needed help with my Muslim China trip. I am also grateful for the help of Evan Sung and Pierre Thiam for my trip to Senegal.
And now for those I met or connected with on my travels. In Muscat, Felicia Campbell introduced me to various chefs and showed me around; Matthew Teller introduced me to Riyadh Al-Balushi, who very kindly sent me suggestions. Also Pallavi and Ekta at the Chedi hotel.
In Zanzibar, Fatma Alloo invited me for futari (breaking of the fast during Ramadan) and talked to me about Zanzibari cuisine. Everyone at Emerson Spice and Emerson Hurumzi, including Katia and Len, for their gracious welcome. Farid Bawazir, for being a great guide, and Haji, my driver. Nadine Toukan was the perfect traveling companion. Simai and his family let us spend the day with them while his mother, sister, and cousin prepared the food for futari, which we then shared with them. Bi Nasra and her daughter, both famous Zanzibari cooks, and Amir A. Mohamed, author of Zanzibar Traditional Cookery, spoke with me about Zanzibari food. And Said El-Geithy was our guide the first couple of days we were there. Also Rashid, from Emerson Spice, who graciously invited me to join him and his family for futari before I left.