Middle Eastern

Wild chicory is used for this Lebanese mountain salad. The sweetness of the caramelized onion topping is a contrast to the slightly bitter leaves. You can sometimes find bunches of wild chicory, which has long, dark green leaves, in Middle Eastern stores, but ordinary curly endive—what the French call chicorée—will do very well. The salad can also be made with dandelion leaves.

Use black-eyed peas or haricot beans for this dish. You can use frozen spinach (defrost it thoroughly). If using fresh, wash it well and remove the stems only if they are very thick.

These potatoes are normally deep-fried or sautéed in olive oil but they are equally good roasted. They are served cold, although I admit I like them hot, too.

Cooked in this way, in olive oil, the dish is normally served cold as a salad, but I also like it hot with rice or as a side dish with meat or chicken.

This dish can be served cold as a salad or hot as a side dish to accompany meat or chicken. It has a delicate sweet-and-sour flavor.

This dish is traditionally made with fried eggplants, but I like to roast them whole and then peel them and cut them into pieces. Serve them hot or cold.

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 is the simplest ever pumpkin soup where the pure, sweet taste of pumpkin is married with the slightly sharp one of yogurt. The large orange-fleshed pumpkins are winter vegetables, but you can find them throughout the year in Asian and Middle Eastern stores, sold by the slice, with their seeds and fibers removed, and wrapped in plastic wrap.

This is beautiful to look at and delicious.

For this fresh-tasting soup, I blend the tomatoes to a cream in the food processor without peeling them and cook them only a little. The egg and lemon finish gives it a creamy texture. The rice should be cooked separately and added just before serving as it goes mushy if it stays too long in the soup. Spearmint is commonly used but you can use other types of mint.

This is a very green and appealing herby salad, also born as the leftover filling of vegetables cooked in oil. It is meant to be very sharp, but start with the juice of one lemon and add more, if you wish, after tasting.

This bread salad is the favorite everyday, Lebanese salad. Sumac (see page 7) gives it a distinctive sharp flavor. The old traditional way was to moisten the toasted bread with water and a little lemon juice before soaking it further with the dressing, which made it deliciously soft and soggy. Nowadays, the toasted bread is broken into pieces and added to the salad at the last minute while it is crisp. You can buy purslane and small cucumbers (they have a better flavor than our large ones) in Middle Eastern stores.

This rustic salad from the Bekaa Valley does not feature on the standard restaurant menu. It began originally as the leftover, meatless filling for vine leaves. Make it with fine-ground bulgur.

There is a mystique around the preparation of this famous salad. I watched my friend Kamal make it in Beirut, and his main tip was that you must slice, not chop, the parsley, so that it does not get crushed and mushy. Use the fine-ground bulgur, which is available in Middle Eastern stores. These stores and Asian ones also sell parsley in tied bunches that weigh between 7 ounces and 10 ounces with stems. Mix and dress the salad only when you are ready to serve.

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.

This wonderful, creamy pie is somewhere between a savory flan and a spinach lasagne. The fillo turns into a soft, very thin pasta, so don’t expect it to be crisp and papery. It sounds complicated, but it is quite easy and really worth the labor. I am sure you will be delighted by the result. It can be made in advance and reheated. The pie is excellent when cut up into small pieces and served at a party. Use a package of fillo containing large-size sheets. (I used a 14-ounce package of sheets measuring 19 inches × 12 inches, minus 2 sheets.) The large sheets are usually sold frozen and you need to defrost them for 2 to 3 hours before using (see page 9 for information about fillo). The Turkish kasar, a sharp hard cheese, can be found in Turkish stores but mature Cheddar is equally good for the dish. From the supermarket, you can now buy packages of young spinach leaves, washed and ready to use, but you can also use not-so-young spinach and remove any thick stems, or use frozen leaf spinach.

This is a version of a surprising paste that you also find in Turkey. Pomegranate molasses (or concentrate) gives it an intriguing sweet-and-sour flavor (see page 7). Some like it peppery-hot with chili flakes or purée (see Variation below); personally, I like it with only a touch of ground chili pepper.

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.

This version of the famous dip—an unusual one with added yogurt—is particularly delicious and creamy. Serve with pita or Lebanese bread.

Hummus is popular in America now. It is the kind of thing you make to taste, adding a little more garlic, salt, or tahini as you go along. Serve it with warmed pita bread.