Roasted Chestnuts with butter and honey
I used to love winter time in Beirut for one main reason: Cart vendors would start selling chestnuts! It was so fun to get a handful wrapped in a piece of torn newspaper and go eat it at home still hot and mash it with butter and honey! So...
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Olive roll
Olives figure at the top of my list of favorite foods. I can eat them every day, several times a day, and not tire of them. I grew up in Lebanon, where olives figure at every meal, including breakfast. It is inconceivable for a Lebanese to go out to...
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Zaatar rolls
I had made some dough for flatbreads and the urge came to do something with zaatar. I just love the stuff. So much that I eat it every morning with olive oil and some form of bread. I figured instead of making a typical man’ooshe (flatbread), why not make...
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Chicken and Vermicelli soup
Chicken soup in Lebanese cuisine could not be simpler. It is simply a chicken cooked in water, to which some cinnamon and a squeeze of lemon is added, along with a handful of vermicelli the last 3 minutes of cooking. I usually wait to have a bunch of chicken...
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Fig and Apple timbale
Almost the end of the season for figs (or is it over yet?). I saw some at the store and I felt like eating them one last time. Here is another idea I got from Chef Roland Mesnier, former White House pastry chef, plucked from his Dessert University. Building...
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Rice and lamb pilaf
This is the traditional rice that is used to stuff a plump chicken or a goose or a turkey. My grandmother would stuff the chicken with it and I liked it better than the chicken. It is delicious and very fragrant. Easy to make and prepare in advance to...
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Roasted Chicken with herbs, garlic and potatoes
I have been thinking about the universal appeal of such a dish. You can serve it in any country or community, you will always have a captured audience. And yet it is so simple. In Lebanon, you will find holes-in-the-wall in the most remote villages that serve roasted chicken...
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Wheat berry pudding
My kids who are American kids par excellence, think that cereals come in a box and are eaten with some milk. They also know that there are hundreds of varieties of cereal boxes. I have known people in America whose devotion to these boxed cereals is unparalleled and lifelong....
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Sesame candy (Semsemiyeh)
This is a candy that was the delight of my childhood. We would buy it from cart vendors and eat it rapturously. Those were the good old days when the market was not saturated with one zillion varieties of candies and chips. It is fairly simple to make. Toasting...
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