Cinnamon

A delicious pilaf that may be served with most Indian meals.

This is a pot roast. It is a specialty of Sri Lanka’s Burgher community, which owes its origins to a happy mixture of European colonialists, mostly Dutch but some Portuguese and English as well, with the local population. Burgher cuisine is a glorious by-product of this union. Here, a simple pot roast has been made wonderfully Sri Lankan with the addition of roasted coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds—the main ingredients in Sri Lankan curry powders—and, of course, coconut milk. Some people add a little simple lime pickle, or tamarind water or vinegar, to give it a tart edge. I have used red wine vinegar. A few simple steps are required here: The spices need to be roasted and ground. Then, after the meat is browned, everything goes into a pot and is braised slowly in the oven. The meat is sliced, and some of its own sauce is ladled over the top. It may then be served with rice, noodles (Sri Lanka has exquisite rice noodles, so Thin Rice Noodles would work), or mashed potatoes, if you prefer.

You need a fair amount of the fresh mint and cilantro here so the meat really tastes both lemony and herbal. The ginger adds to the fresh, cleansing feeling. Serve with flatbreads or rice. For a snack, this ground meat, or keema, may be rolled up in flatbreads along with finely sliced shallots, chopped tomatoes, and, if you like, chopped fresh hot green chilies. Today, in the Western world, this would be called a “wrap.” As children we wrapped this keema in a chapati (a whole-wheat flatbread) and my mother called it a batta.

Our family eats this so frequently that, along with a moong dal, rice, a yogurt relish, and pickles, we consider this to be our “soul food” meal. Nothing fancy here, only the homey and soothing.

Bhuna means “browned”—actually, the process of browning. So in this dish the meat has a browned look to it, and whatever sauce there is, it is thick and clings to the meat. This is a family recipe that comes via my niece, Abha. If you like, two slit hot green chilies may be added at the same time as the cilantro, just before the final stir. I like to eat this with Indian flatbreads (pita or other store-bought flatbreads may be substituted) as well as Potato and Pea Curry. You could also serve it with rice.

A gentle, family-style curry. If you leave out the cayenne pepper, this may even be served to small children, along with rice and perhaps Corn with Aromatic Seasonings.

I had this dish in Bangladesh and thought it was exquisite. It seemed to have come straight from the palaces of seventeenth-century Moghul rulers. It was a true korma, a stew cooked in yogurt, mild but exquisitely seasoned, and without any brown, yellow, or red spices to mar its pallor. There were some New World sliced green chilies scattered over the top, but they seemed a later addition. I have put them in—but even without them, the flavors are beyond compare. Of course, it helps to get a good-quality organic chicken. Have your butcher skin it and cut it into small serving pieces for you. In Bangladesh, this chicken was cooked in ghee (clarified butter, page 286). I generally cook in oil. I like to use a good sour yogurt here, such as the acidophilus yogurt I get from the health-food store. If you cannot get that, just add 1 tablespoon lemon juice to the ordinary supermarket yogurt. Serve this with rice or flatbreads or even in a Western way with potatoes and a vegetable.

A dish from the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, this quick stir-fry has all the wonderful spices used in the cooking of the Chettiyars, a trading community—lots of black pepper, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, cinnamon, and the split pea, urad dal. (Yellow split peas may be substituted for the urad dal. They will be used here in a very southern way, as a seasoning.) This dish has a 30-minute marinating period, but it cooks in about 7 minutes. It is a good idea to have all the spices measured out and ready, as the stir-frying is done quickly. I like this chicken with Basmati Rice with Lentils and a green vegetable.

A great variety of vegetable fillings exist. Vegetables with a meat filling are meant to be eaten hot, those with a meatless filling are usually cooked in oil and eaten cold. In Turkey these are called yalangi dolma or “false dolma,” because of the lack of meat. The following are the fillings most widely used. Quantities are enough to stuff about 2 pounds of vegetables, but this varies according to the size of the vegetables and the amount of pulp scooped out.

This wonderful, heartwarming winter drink is hot milk thickened with the starchy ground bulb of an orchid called Orchis mascula. This was sold by street vendors from the large copper urn in which it was made. The stone-colored powder called sahlab (salep in Turkish and Greek) is expensive and not easy to find. I have often bought it in Middle Eastern markets only to discover that it was a fake or adulterated mix. Cornstarch is an alternative which gives a creamy texture but not the same special flavor.

A Greek Eastertime specialty, especially renowned on the island of Siphnos. Mizithra, a soft, fresh, unsalted cheese made from sheep’s milk, is used there, but a bland, unsalted curd or cream cheese may be substituted.

Although not my favorite pastry, makroud is very popular in North Africa, especially in Tunisia, which is a land of dates. The pastries are usually deep-fried in oil, then dipped in warm honey. I prefer the lighter baked version.

This Moroccan pastry is a very long coil (hence the name m’hencha, meaning “snake”) of fillo pastry filled with a ground-almond paste. It is stunning to look at and exquisite. I give very large quantities, because it is the thing to make for a grand occasion, but of course you can make it smaller and reduce the quantities. The flavor is better if you grind the blanched almonds yourself rather than use commercially ground ones.

Fine-grained sweet couscous, called seffa in Morocco and mesfouf in Tunisia, is served hot, accompanied by cold milk or buttermilk. I like to eat it for breakfast. There are many versions. Dried fruit such as dates and raisins, and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pistachios, can be added, and the grain can be flavored with orange-blossom water or with cinnamon, honey, or sugar. A particularly wonderful version is with fresh grapes. The most common, seffa be zbib, is with large black or golden raisins. Seffa be tamr is with dates and walnut halves. There is also one with pomegranate seeds. Here is a basic seffa/mesfouf followed by possible garnishes. Serve it in bowls and pass round a jug of hot milk to pour over.

An Egyptian breakfast of boiled whole wheat, with hot milk poured over and sprinkled with sugar called belila, is turned into a celebratory dish on the 10th of Moharram (the first month of the Muslim calendar), when it is embellished with a flower fragrance and with nuts. Unless it is very young, wheat remains chewy even after lengthy cooking, so I use barley, which is less common but softens relatively quickly.

The name means “Ali’s mother,” and it is the most popular sweet in Egypt. I had never heard of it when I lived there, but now it is everywhere. People in Cairo say it arrived in the city from the villages of Upper Egypt, but there it is said to be from Cairo. One joker explained that it was a bread pudding introduced by a Miss O’Malley, an Irish mistress of the Khedive Ismail. Go and believe him! People find all sorts of ways of making it—with pancakes, with thinly rolled-out puff pastry, with pieces of bread, and with fillo pastry. Fillo gives the most appealing texture, and it is good to bake the pastry initially rather than fry it in butter as is usual in Egypt.

This is a meat stew with pasta. I am assured that it only tastes right if small Italian pasta called “orzo,” which look like tiny bird’s tongues or largish grains of rice, are used. In Egypt, families used to make the pasta themselves with flour and water, rolling tiny bits of dough into little ovals between their fingers. A friend recalls spending hours doing this with her brother every Sunday as a small child.

This Armenian specialty makes a hearty main dish. It has a pure and fresh quality and is an entirely different experience from eating an Italian or Asian pasta dish.