No-Cook

Yogurt with honey is eaten for breakfast and as a dessert. Choose a scented honey. Adding ginger is unusual but delicious.

A mixed dried fruit salad with nuts is a favorite in Egypt during Ramadan, the month-long fast, when Muslims fast during the day and eat after sunset. All through the day, people, hungry and listless, are hardly able to work, and dream of what they would like to eat. At nightfall, when the sky is a cherry red, the cannons boom through the cities signaling the end of the fast, and the muezzins sing it out from all the minarets. The silent city suddenly comes alive with the clatter of spoons and plates, glasses and jugs, and with the sound of relieved hunger and laughter, of music and merry-making. The longed-for dishes wait on tables, trays, and the floor, piled high with ful medames, falafel, and bamia, meatballs and kebabs, khoshaf and apricot cream (following recipe). Every family has its favorite combinations of dried fruits.

Another Ramadan specialty in Egypt is a cream made of sheets of dried pressed apricots (amareldine) soaked, then boiled in water. I was in Cairo during the Ramadan month a few years ago and saw hundreds of bowls of this tart-tasting fruit cream offered free at street parties. The sheets of amareldine available these days do not have the pure taste they once had—perhaps due to preservatives. It is better to use natural dried apricots. Pistachios or almonds and thick cream are optional embellishments. Sometimes cornstarch is used to give the cream the texture of jelly. For this, see the variation.

This delicately fragrant sweet is an old Syrian specialty of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, when it is eaten to break the daily fast. It keeps very well for days, even weeks, covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

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

A ubiquitous sauce in Syria and Lebanon, served with fried and grilled fish as well as with cold fish.

Serve this in a bowl with plain boiled or steamed vegetables such as runner beans, zucchini, or cauliflower.

Tomatoes are banadoura in Arabic and tamatem in Egypt.

This is a homely version of the very green parsley-and-mint salad with buff-colored speckles of bulgur wheat you find in all Lebanese restaurants all over the world. Like many items on the standard Lebanese restaurant menu, it was born in the mountain region of Zahlé, in the Bekáa Valley of Lebanon, where the local anise flavored grape liquor arak is produced. Renowned for its fresh air and its natural springs and the river Bardaouni, which cascades down the mountain, the region acquired a mythical reputation for gastronomy. In 1920 two cafés opened by the river. They gave away assorted nuts, seeds, olives, bits of cheese, and raw vegetables with the local arak. Gradually the entire valley became filled with open-air cafés, each larger and more luxurious than the next, each vying to attract customers who flocked from all over the Middle East with ever more varied mezze. The reputation of the local mountain-village foods they offered, of which tabbouleh was one of the jewels, spread far and wide and became a national institution. What started as a relatively substantial salad, rich with bulgur, was transformed over the years into an all-green herby affair. When the first edition of my book came out, I received letters telling me I had too much bulgur in that recipe. One letter from Syria explained that mine was the way people made the salad many years ago, when they needed to fill their stomachs. You see, many of my relatives left Syria for Egypt a hundred years ago, and that was how they continued to make it. The following is a contemporary version.

A specialty of Jehan, in southern Turkey, this is served as a dip with fried mussels or baked fish, or as an accompaniment to salads and boiled vegetables, such as runner beans or cauliflower.

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.

Serve as an appetizer with pita bread, or as a sauce to accompany various dishes such as fried fish, boiled vegetables, and falafel.

A curious gelatinous relish with a slightly bitter flavor is made with fenugreek seeds. It is an acquired taste that can become addictive. Eat it with bread to dip in. The flat square yellow-brown seeds need to be crushed or ground, so it is best to buy the fenugreek in powder form. It needs to be soaked to remove some of the bitterness and to develop the gelatinous texture.

Gray-mullet roe was originally used in Turkey and Greece for this famous dip, but smoked cod’s roe now generally replaces it. I like to use a mixture of sunflower or flavorless vegetable oil and olive oil, which allows the taste of the roe to dominate.

I had never come across this pastry before. I tasted it in Beirut, where a few patisseries claim to have invented it. One called Bohsali gave it the name Bohsalino; another calls it Taj el Malek. It involves a little skill—akin to pottery making—that improves with practice. In Lebanon they are filled with the thick cream that rises to the top when rich buffaloes’ milk is boiled. They do not keep more than a few days because of the cream and must be kept in the refrigerator.

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 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.

This can be served as a first course or as a cold main course with pickles, sliced red onions, and a green salad. Cold-smoked mackerel is soft and moist and more of a delicacy than the hot-smoked variety. Hazelnuts, almonds, or pine nuts can be used as an alternative to walnuts for this classic sauce, which is called tarator. In that case, white bread should be used. The sauce can also be served with poached or grilled fish or with cold vegetables cooked in olive oil.

This salad is popular throughout the Middle East. Unless it is to be eaten as soon as it is made, it is best to salt the cucumber and let the juices drain before mixing with the yogurt; otherwise it gets very watery. If possible, use the small cucumbers sold in Middle Eastern and Asian stores—they have a finer flavor than the large ones. Cacik is served as part of a meze and also as a side dish—to be eaten with spoons from little individual side bowls—to accompany pies, meat dishes, and rice. It even makes a lovely cold summer soup. Use plain whole-milk yogurt.

Gray mullet roe was originally used in Turkey for this famous dip (also known under the Greek name taramasalata) but smoked cod’s roe has now generally replaced it. This is a world away from what you can buy ready-prepared and is really worth making. Serve it with Turkish or pita bread.