Table Of ContentMiddle Eastern Cookery
Arto der Haroutunian
Grub Street * London Published in 2010 by
Grub Street
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London
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Email: [email protected]
Web: www.grubstreet.co.uk
Text copyright © Arto der Haroutunian 1982, 2008, 2010
Copyright this edition © Grub Street 2010
Design Lizziebdesign First Published in Great Britain in 1982 by Century
Publishing Co. Ltd A CIP record for this title is available from the British
Library ISBN 978-1-906502-94-2
Digital Edition ISBN 978-1-908117-89-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG, Bodmin, Cornwall This book is
printed on FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) paper
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to all the authors and publishers from whose works I have
quoted (see Bibliography), and apologies to those who unintentionally may have
been overlooked.
All works from Arabic and French have been edited and translated by myself.
I must also thank all the kind people of North Africa who helped in many a small
way in the shaping and writing of this book. Special thanks as well to Odile
Thivillier and Rina Srabonian.
contents
Preface
Introduction
Mezzeh
Churba—soups
Salads
Eggah and kookoo—egg dishes
Pastas, pies and boreks
Kibbehs and kuftas
Yoghurt dishes
Ganachi—cooked vegetables
Dolmas—stuffed vegetables
Pilavs
Kebabs
Fish dishes
Meat dishes
Poultry and game
Firin kebabs and khoreshts
Sauces
Khubz—bread
Torshi—pickles
Desserts and sweet things
Cakes and biscuits
Sweets
Jams and preserves
Ice cream
Khumichk—drinks
Glossary
Bibliography
Footnote
preface
One of the most heartening memories of my childhood is Sunday lunch, when all
the members of our family, as well as guests (mostly young students from the
Middle East), sat around our large table and consumed in delight and with gasps
of rapture the product of my mother’s work. For not only was my mother a
remarkable cook but also, being thousands of miles away from home, we were in
a vast culinary desert devoid of such familiar vegetables as aubergines and okra;
spices such as cumin, sumac and allspice; the honey-soaked, rosewater-scented
desserts of our childhood.
We ate. We argued loudly and vociferously. We drank our thick black coffee and
nibbled a piece of rahat-lokum, a box of which someone or other had just
received from home. Then, thanking the Lord for his bounteous generosity we
settled comfortably into our large, Victorian armchairs and, almost in whispers,
talked of home, of the sun-drenched streets of Aleppo or Baghdad, the rich souks
of Alexandria or the fragrance-inflamed bazaars of Tehran. Someone would then
sing ‘The song of the immigrant’ far away from his village and loved one.
Someone else would hungrily describe how to peel and eat a watermelon—‘You
know, with white goat’s cheese, some warm lavash bread with a sprig of fresh
tarragon tucked nicely in the centre and all washed down with a glass of cool
sous’—all of us lolled in nostalgic euphoria and dreamt of home.
‘Home’ to us all was the Middle East, not the political entity of today with its
strong regional, national and social differences. In those days (the late forties)
we were, regardless of our ethnic origins, still Orientals or Levantines, a people
who were just waking from centuries of slumber and ignorance, a people who
had been mistreated by foreigners, be they Turks, French or English, for their
own selfish interests.
In our new environments, temporary for most, permanent for few, we tried hard
to emulate the past. Customs were kept, rudiments of our mother tongue were
inculcated into our minds and traditions punctiliously adhered to. Lent was
strictly kept and for forty days no meats, poultry or fish passed our lips—at least
at home. For us children school meals (however tasteless they were) were our
salvation. I remember how I relished the school pork chops and steak and kidney
pies—especially during Lent.
Over the years changes did take place not only in our domestic lives but up and
down the land. More immigrants arrived from India, Pakistan, South East Asia,
Cyprus and the West Indies. They too soon settled down, opened their ethnic
restaurants, shops and emporiums thus enriching the country with their diverse
cultures and adding spice to the eating habits of the natives—particularly
important for one such as I who likes his food!
My early childhood was spent in Aleppo, Syria. My father’s family originated
from Cilicia (Southern Turkey) and my mother’s from Armenia. The Aleppo of
my childhood was a medium-sized cosmopolitan city soaked in history, rich in
commerce and perhaps the most enlightened region of the Levant. In our street
lived Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Christian Arabs, a well off Turkish family
with vast cotton fields and indisputably ugly slanted eyes and not forgetting
Jacob the Jew, a carpet dealer and close friend of my father. We all spoke our
ethnic tongues, with a little spattering of Arabic. We ate, prayed and lived our
lives as had our ancestors for centuries.
This is how my preface should have started: ‘The search and collection of
authentic recipes from the Middle East by Your’s Truly, an exile approaching
middle age and in search of his roots.’ Well, my roots were my family to whom I
turned in earnest, but with some difficulty. For although my family originated in
Armenia and Turkey we had, over the years, like the ‘sands of desert’, scattered
all over the east and beyond. So I got in touch with my aunt in Baghdad, my
cousins in Kuwait, my sister in Tehran, with other cousins in Egypt, friends of
cousins in Cyprus and Ankara, material cousins in Yerevan and Tiblisi and
numerous other friends of friends ad infinitum. Finally all those kind people I
encountered who had inadvertently ‘dropped in’ to have a meal in one of our
restaurants and who, throughout their meal (and often well after), were subjected
to a culinary inquisition of the fiercest kind. My thanks to all those people, with
special thanks to the young Saudi Arabian doctor who literally fell into my
clutches and had to spend an extra day in a wet and windy Manchester one
December until I was satisfied that I had squeezed the last drop of ‘culinary
blood’ from him. But most of all thanks to my mother who was a source of
inspiration and infinite information.
The result then is this book, a collection of recipes from all over the Middle East
regardless of political and geographical boundaries. By which statement I mean
the food of the people of the Middle East:1 Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians,
Azerbaijanians, Copts, Georgians, Kurds, Jews, Lazes, Palestinians, Persians,
Turkomans, Turks and all the other minorities who, far too often, are forgotten or
ignored by the cataloguers and generalizers of human achievements. For it is my
opinion that the true sources of most cultures are best found amongst the
indigenous minorities; e.g. the true Egyptian is the Copt, he is not only directly
descended from the Ancient Egyptians, but also still retains much of his
forefather’s culture undiluted by later arrived, desert-oriented Muslim Arabs.
I have also included proverbs, anecdotes, songs and stories of the famous
Nasrudin Hodja and Boloz-Mugoush all of which, directly or indirectly, relate to
food and all emanating from the rich and varied cultures of the peoples of the
Middle East, to whose glorious past and brighter future this book is dedicated.
All the recipes give the right amount of ingredients to feed four people unless I
have stated otherwise.
Arto der Haroutunian
