African

The combination of spinach with chickpeas is common throughout the Middle East, but the flavors here are Egyptian. You may use good-quality canned chickpeas. It is good served with yogurt.

This is one of my favorites. You will need a large shallow pan that can go to the table. In Morocco the cooking is finished in a wide earthenware tagine which goes on top of the fire. Serve it with plenty of warm bread.

This is a Moroccan version of a dish you find in many Middle Eastern countries. Serve with bread.

Tagine barkok, made with or without honey, is one of the most popular fruit tagines of North Africa. It is eaten with bread. Restaurants in Paris accompany it with couscous and bowls of boiled chickpeas and boiled raisins (see page 377).

Rutab is the Arabic word for dates. You might find this dish too sweet. In Morocco it is made with fresh Tafilalet dates, but you may use the Tunisian or the moist dried California ones available in America. Serve with bread.

The dish derives its name from the Arabic word for apricot—mishmish. Only a tart natural—not sweetened—dried or semi-dried variety will do. Fresh apricots may also be used, in which case they should be added at the end and cooked for a few minutes only, so that they don’t fall apart. The reason why there is fresh gingerroot rather than the ground spice which is usual in Morocco is that the recipe comes from Paris. Serve with bread.

They call it the Tunisian cassoulet.

This Tunisian dish, more commonly made with dried chestnuts, is more to my taste with fresh and even frozen ones. While Tunisia has been sympathetic to Western ideas, and although it was subjected to a massive immigration of French and Italian peasants when it became a French protectorate, it has sustained Arab cooking in its most ancient form. This beautiful and fragrant stew is an example.

This Moroccan tagine is easy to make with the frozen artichoke bottoms from Egypt and frozen skinned fava beans (both really good) available in Middle Eastern stores.

Here is another Moroccan tagine. Buy the peas fresh and young, in the pod, when you can. Some supermarkets sell fresh shelled ones that are young and sweet, and frozen baby peas—petits pois—are also perfect to use.

A homely Egyptian dish using beef. Serve with rice or potatoes.

This is a common and much-loved dish of Egypt. You also find it in other countries. Use small okra—they are much nicer than the tougher large ones—and serve with rice or bulgur. Traditionally, okra is put in to cook at the same time as the meat, so that it becomes extremely soft and falls apart, but these days it is not uncommon to add it at a later stage, so that it remains firm. That is the way I like it.

The popularity of tagines means that they have eclipsed other methods of cooking in Morocco, such as steaming, where the meat becomes very tender and succulent. Serve choua with mashed potatoes and with vegetables such as zucchini or eggplants.

In Egypt this is the favorite kebab. It is also mine. I love the soft, moist texture of the meat, and the flavors of parsley and onion. The traditional way of preparing it is to chop all the main ingredients by hand, then to chop them together. They still do this in restaurants (where it is called kofta kebab or kofta alla shish)—but you can achieve good results with the blade of the food processor if you do each ingredient separately. For a moist, juicy kofta you need a good amount of fat. Most of it will melt away in the heat of the broiler. You will need skewers with a wide, thick blade to hold the ground meat and prevent it from rolling around. If you find it difficult, you can always shape the meat into burgers.

My aunt Latifa and uncle Mousa lived in a villa in a suburb of Cairo. It was large and housed their extended family. There was no oven. Much of the cooking was done over a mangal (portable outdoor grill) and a Primus oil heater, and trays were sent off daily to the baker to be cooked in the bread oven. This dish was sent to the baker.

Chicken with rice-and-ground-meat stuffing or hashwa is a classic festive dish of the Arab world. The old way was to boil the stuffed chicken first, then briefly roast it to give it a golden color. These days it is more common to cook the stuffing separately and to roast the chicken. For a large party you can make double the quantity, shape the stuffing in a mound in a large round oven dish, cover it with the cut-up pieces of chicken, then heat it through, covered with foil, before serving.

The last time I ate this famous Moroccan dish was in a restaurant in Paris where there was an evening of Arab poetry and tales accompanied by musicians. It was not the best example of the dish, but I always find it enjoyable. I love the special flavor of preserved lemons. At every vegetable market in North Africa, and now also in the south of France, you can see stalls laden with huge piles of soft lemons oozing with juice beside several varieties of olives. The two are often used together. The pulp of the preserved lemon is discarded, and the skin alone is used. The word mqualli alludes to the way the chicken is cooked, with oil and only a little water.

A magnificent dish, and a stunning example of the way Moroccans mix savory and sweet. Chicken pieces are first stewed with lemon juice and saffron, then baked with a topping of almonds and honey.

This Moroccan tagine is one of my favorites. The chicken cooks in the juice of the tomatoes, which reduces to a sumptuous, thick, honeyed, almost caramelized sauce. And it looks beautiful too.

An Egyptian delicacy.