The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean by Paula Wolfert
My first encounter with Paula Wolfert’s work happened 20 years ago when I bought her cookbook Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco. That cookbook did not contain a single color photograph, yet it was engrossing because of the amount of research that went into it. Mrs Wolfert had lived...
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Pumpkin Couscous
I love to be able to get, in Dallas, Texas, from the comfort of home, a first-hand look at what is going on in Lebanon through satellite channels. This morning, I was watching LBC (Lebanon Broadcast Channel); they have a cooking segment entitled Sofra daymeh and the Chef was demonstrating...
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Pumpkin soup
What do you do when you find yourself with A LOT of leftover pumpkin? You make pumpkin soup, that’s all! Simple and definitely in the comfort food category, this one can even be frozen in small packages for a quick dinner during the week. What I like about this...
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Goat cheese balls
Lebanese people, who count resourcefulness as one of their virtues, have always made homemade cheese. I remember my grandmother using a muslin bag to drain the yoghurt that she made on a weekly basis. She would hang the bag over the sink and the next day, we’d have fresh...
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Chocolate and Raspberry Cake
My daughter Alice turned sixteen ten days ago. She announced that she was going to have a big sweet sixteen extravaganza to celebrate the event and invite 60 of her closest friends. Since I had no idea what a sweet sixteen party was, never having had one in Lebanon or...
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Spiced Pumpkin Seeds
I used to feel guilty when I would spend one hour munching on pumpkin seeds or b’zer. Fatty calories and all. But to me irresistible, a habit picked up since childhood in Lebanon. It was always available for us kids to snack on and we’d usually buy it from...
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Red Lentil and Rice soup
I tasted that soup for the first time ever in Beirut one year. It was made by Asma, a wonderful Kurdish lady who used to cook for my parents a couple times a week ; her soup was so soothing, so pure, so comforting. She only used three ingredients: red...
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Flatbread with olives and onions and cheese
I was watching a cooking segment on LBC, the Lebanese cable channel (Sofrah daymeh) The chef was demonstrating baking a loaf of bread with olives, onions and herbs; after baking the loaf, he would slice it and cover each slice with a piece of grilled halloom cheese and some...
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Kunafa
I have to admit why I don’t make this more often (my rate is once every 5 years) The answer is I CAN’T RESIST EATING IT ALL. So, again, when I pulled it out of the oven all crispy andbuttery-crunchy and doused some cold syrup on it, my fate...
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