Browse recipes

Thin, snapping Syrian cookies, sesame-crusted on one face and pistachio on the other. They crisp entirely as they cool.

Lemon juice and a whole bunch of mint blitzed with ice into a pale-green frozen slush. The drink of every Levantine summer street.

Chickpeas, tahini, garlic and lemon blended smooth, loosened with aquafaba (the liquid from the chickpea can) so it stays creamy without extra fat. Served with carrot, cucumber and pepper sticks.

Eggplants burnt black over a flame until the flesh collapses, then beaten with tahini, lemon and garlic. Smoky, loose and nothing like a puree of raw eggplant.

Layers of phyllo and chopped nuts baked until shattering, then flooded with lemon syrup while still hot. The sound when you cut it is the point.

Egypt's national dish: rice, lentils and pasta layered together under a sharp spiced tomato sauce and a heap of crisp fried onions. Carbohydrate on carbohydrate, and completely justified.

Herby, crisp-edged falafel baked instead of fried, piled into a bowl with salad and a swoosh of tahini. All the flavor, none of the pan of hot oil.

A crunchy chopped salad of tomato, cucumber and herbs with shards of toasted pita, dressed in lemon, sumac and pomegranate molasses. Sharp and refreshing.

A dense, damp semolina cake soaked in lemon syrup, cut into diamonds with an almond on each. Sweet and grainy in the best way.

A parsley salad first and a grain salad second: bright, lemony and green, with just enough bulgur to give it body. The kind of thing that makes everything else on the table taste better.

Buttery semolina shortbread stuffed with spiced date paste. Traditionally pressed in carved wooden molds; a fork and a steady hand do fine.

Couscous steamed in a spiced tomato and chickpea broth in the same pot. No draining, no timing, and it is done in twenty minutes.

A pale, fragrant cordial of lemon, sugar and rose water, diluted to order. Floral and cold and old-fashioned, and it keeps for weeks.

A tray of vegetables roasted hard, spooned over shop-bought hummus with lemon and parsley. Assembly more than cooking, and endlessly adaptable.

The Aleppan red pepper and walnut dip. No cooking at all. Everything goes in the food processor, and it tastes better after an hour in the fridge.

Cauliflower roasted hard with shawarma spices until the edges blacken, piled into warm pita with pickles, salad and a garlicky tahini sauce.

Lentils and rice cooked together under a heap of deeply caramelized onions, warmed with cumin, coriander and a whisper of cinnamon. The most filling plate in the set: the lentils make it stick with you far longer than rice alone.

Sesame paste and hot sugar syrup worked together until it sets into a dense, flaky slab that melts on the tongue. Three ingredients, one critical temperature.

The Egyptian breakfast: fava beans warmed through and crushed roughly in their own liquid, sharpened with lemon and garlic, then flooded with olive oil and scattered with tomato and parsley. Eaten with bread, out of the same bowl.