Dairy

This salad brings back for me memories of the garlands of islands floating in the deep blue sea, the plaintive sound of the bouzouki, and the sugar-cake houses.

The salad is made in the Lebanese mountain villages with a fermented goat cheese, but you can use a strong, crumbly goat cheese.

This strong-tasting Egyptian salad made with feta cheese is good with ful medames (page 328).

You need good feta cheese for this. Serve with pita bread to dip in.

This refreshing Iranian salad has a pure and delicate flavor.

This popular Turkish salad can be served as a cold summer soup. We sometimes used to drain the yogurt through a fine cloth to thicken it (see page 111), but now you can buy a thick strained Greek variety.

This version has a delicate flavor and is rather creamier than most. My mother discovered it in the Sudan, and has made it ever since. It can be a dip or a sauce.

The name of this dish, which means “his mother’s milk,” implies that the meat of a young animal is cooked in its own mother’s milk. It can be made with small lamb shanks or with knuckle of veal (osso buco) or slightly fatty, cubed meat. I have used lamb shanks. Serve it with plain or Vermicelli Rice (page 304). The yogurt makes a wonderful, soupy sauce—so provide spoons, too.

Traditional shish barak are tiny tortellini-like pies with a meat filling that are first baked and then cooked in a yogurt sauce. This “new-style” version of large, individual, coiled pies is inspired by Kamal Mouzawak (for his vegetarian alternative, see the variation). It is an exciting mix of flavors, textures, and temperatures and makes a beautiful presentation. The pastry used in Lebanon, rakakat, is different from fillo—it is softer and more pliable, like a paper-thin pancake—but fillo will do very well. Use the large sheets measuring about 19 × 12 inches that are normally sold frozen; see page 9 for hints on using fillo.

A number of dishes that go under the general name of fatta all have in common a bed of toasted bread, soaked in stock, and a topping of yogurt. The name denotes the manner of breaking up crisp, toasted bread with your hands. To me, they recall a special person, the late Josephine Salam. Many years ago I received a letter from her from Beirut saying that she had a number of recipes she thought I would like. On our first meeting, at Claridge’s tearoom in London, where a band played Noël Coward tunes, she offered to come to my house and show me how to make fatta with chicken. We made that and many more meals together. It was the time of the civil war in Lebanon, and as she came and went from the country, I received an ongoing account of everyday life in the ravaged city. Her daughter, Rana, has become an artist and designer. For her thesis at the Royal College of Art in London, she asked me to give a lecture on the history of Middle Eastern food. She had ten portraits of me painted on cloth by a poster-painter in Egypt (he used photographs I gave Rana) and hung them around the college to publicize the event. She laid out foods and spices as in a souk, put on a tape of sounds and music recorded in an Egyptian street, and passed around Arab delicacies. When she visited me a few years later with her husband and new baby, I offered her the fatta with stuffed eggplants on page 300.

This dish is complex and requires time, but it has dramatic appeal and it is quite delicious with layers of different textures and flavors. I like to add two ingredients that are optional: pomegranate molasses (see page 7), which gives a brown color and sweet-and-sour flavor to the tomato sauce, and tahini (see page 7), which gives a nutty flavor to the yogurt. Look for small eggplants, 4 to 4 1/4 inches long, which can usually be found in Middle Eastern and Asian stores.

These melt-in-the-mouth cheese pies make good party food. They can be eaten hot or warm. You can make them in advance and heat them through before serving. Use fresh or frozen and defrosted puff pastry.

This simple herby omelette can be served as a light main dish accompanied by a salad. It can be served hot or cold. To serve it as a mezze, cut it into small wedges, or make tiny pancakes (see Variation).

A layer of chickpeas, spread over bread soaked in their cooking broth, smothered in yogurt with an elusive taste of tahini, and topped with pine nuts may sound heavy but it is surprisingly light and delicate in the eating, and the mix of textures, temperatures, and flavors is a joy. The bread must be the very thin flat bread known as khobz halabi, which is sold by Lebanese bakeries. You need either 1 large one measuring about 12 inches in diameter, or 2 smaller ones; or use 1 pita bread instead.

The dressing of pomegranate molasses and vinegar gives the eggplant slices a sweet-and-sour flavor. Serve them hot or cold, with the yogurt and tahini topping at room temperature.

This Anatolian peasant soup with the delicate flavor of mint and saffron is magnificent. I make it when I have a roast chicken carcass or, better still, when I have two and have remembered to retain the cooking juices and melted fat.

I made notes about this recipe and a few others at Haci Abdullah’s restaurant in Istanbul. It is a cool summer soup using rural staples, and it takes only minutes to make.