Dairy

A Turkish dish in which yogurt, an important feature in Turkish cooking, is flavored with cardamom and ginger.

In Tunisia, where egg dishes are ubiquitous, they call this a tajin because it is cooked in a clay dish of that name. It can be eaten hot or cold.

This simple herby omelet is particularly delicious. Use a good-quality feta cheese, or try another cheese. It can serve as a main dish or an appetizer.

This Turkish way of embellishing poached eggs is also good with fried eggs.

This is usually prepared in individual portions in two-handled frying pans and served in the same pans straight from the fire. You can, of course, use one larger frying pan, or as many as are convenient. In the Middle East, the hard, dry Greek cheeses kashkaval, kefalotyri, or kasseri and the white, firm, slightly rubbery halumi are used.

This is one of my favorite soups from Egypt.

A simple and delightful Armenian peasant soup.

In this lovely Turkish soup, the egg yolk and the flour prevent the yogurt from curdling. The rice is best cooked separately and added in before serving, as it gets bloated and mushy if left in the soup too long.

This wonderful creamy Turkish pie is something between a savory flan and a cheese lasagna. The fillo turns into a soft, thin pasta, so don’t expect it to be crisp and papery. It sounds complicated but it is quite easy, and you will be delighted by the lightness and the variety of flavors and textures.

The filling is a traditional one for the famous Greek pie. A milder-tasting alternative was adopted in Britain by my contemporaries from Egypt. Both make a lovely teatime savory as well as a snack meal accompanied by salad.

In Lebanon the turnovers with meat are the most prestigious, but we in Egypt always made cheese ones. No tea party was ever right without them. The recipe for the dough has been passed down in my family for generations as “1 coffee cup of oil, 1 coffee cup of melted butter, 1 coffee cup of warm water, 1 teaspoon of salt, and work in as much flour as it takes.” We baked the pies, but it was also common to fry them in oil.

The large, famous Greek pie is much quicker to make than the little triangles and cigars. It is not finger food but makes an excellent first course or main vegetarian meal.

These Tunisian fried parcels in a crisp casing of ouarka (see page 125) are ubiquitous appetizers in North African restaurants. You can use fillo to make them, although it is not quite the same. They should be served immediately, as soon as they come out of the frying oil.

These large individual pies with a Turkish filling make a wonderful first course. You need the sweet orange-fleshed pumpkin for this. It is sold in Middle Eastern and Oriental stores, almost all the year round, in large slices, with the seeds and stringy bits removed.

This is the most popular Turkish börek. The little rolls or “cigars” make ideal appetizers and canapés. It is best to use a thicker quality of fillo, which is not likely to tear during cooking. If the fillo sheets are too thin, use 2 strips together and brush with butter or oil in between. In this case you will need to double the number of sheets.

Many Middle Eastern dishes call for yogurt as a cooking liquid or sauce which needs to be cooked—boiled or simmered—rather than just heated. Salted goat’s milk yogurt, which was used in similar recipes in olden times, can be cooked without curdling, which explains why medieval recipes do not give any indication of ways of preventing yogurt from curdling. Cooking, however, causes yogurt made with cow’s milk to curdle, and stabilizers such as cornstarch or egg white are required to prevent this.

In Turkey all kinds of vegetables, including cauliflower and green beans, are dressed with a nut sauce called tarator. Here celeriac and carrots make a good combination of flavor and color, and yogurt is a refreshing addition to the sauce.

Yogurt often accompanies these Turkish fritters.

This common Turkish way of serving eggplants is simple and quite delicious.