Middle Eastern

This makes a good side dish. The Arabs brought it all the way to Spain and Italy.

Chicory is one of the vegetables believed to have been eaten in ancient Egypt. It has a pleasant, slightly bitter taste when it is cooked. In this Lebanese mountain dish, wild chicory is used.

Spinach, like most vegetables in the Arab world, is also cooked with tomatoes. Almonds are a special touch.

In the Middle East it is the more available lamb’s sweetbreads (sweetbreads are the thymus gland) that are used, but calf’s sweetbreads are much more delicate, with an unusual creamy-tender texture. You must start the initial preparation a few hours before you want to cook them, as they need lengthy soaking.

This is good hot or cold, as a first course. The Moroccan play of flavors, which combines preserved lemon with honey, garlic, turmeric, and ginger, makes this a sensational dish. I make it with the frozen Egyptian artichoke bottoms that I find in Oriental stores.

Serve with mashed potatoes.

This Lebanese specialty is served as an appetizer, but it is also good as a main course accompanied by mashed potatoes. Calf’s liver has a better flavor and texture, so use it if you can.

Serve with salad.

A delicious Turkish dish—the rich meat is offset by the cool yogurt.

Serve with potatoes.

This dish is loved all over the Middle East and in the Balkans for its rich, gelatinous texture. It is sometimes served as a soup. Christians also use pig’s trotters. Serve with bread and a light salad.

This is good hot or cold. Serve with yogurt and salads.

For a grander presentation, people make potato croquettes with the ingredients, using the ground meat and nuts as a filling and sometimes dipping in beaten egg and flour before deep-frying. But it is far simpler and just as good to make it in a baking dish. It makes a delicious and filling dish for a large group.

A popular way of serving kibbeh nayyeh, which makes it more of a grand dish, is with this ground-meat sauce. Veal is popularly used.

Because of its whiteness, this is a festive dish served on the New Year to augur a year full of happiness. It is served hot with rice in winter, and cold in summer.

These are the most prestigious and popular kibbeh. The preparation requires skill and application. The art lies in making the outer shells as long (at least that is what we thought in Egypt, for I know now that the Lebanese prefer a small, oval, stocky shape) and as thin as possible. The crisp, light, tasty shells should crack to divulge a juicy, aromatic meat filling. Serve hot or cold with tahina cream salad (page 67), baba ghanouj (page 65), and other salads.

Serve as an appetizer accompanied, if you like, with a sauce called keema, the recipe for which follows this one.

A delicious Turkish specialty to be served hot with rice or bulgur.