Middle Eastern Recipes
315 recipes found
Lebanese Apricot Cream
Pink Grapefruit, Avocado and Pomegranate Salad With Nasturtium Flowers
Khoresh Karafs (Persian Celery Stew With Lamb)
Most types of Iranian stew, known as khoresh or sometimes spelled khoresht, take hours to prepare and yet more hours to cook. Not this one. Karafs means celery, so here a whole head of crunchy, pale green stalks and two bunches of herbs simmer alongside lamb (or beef) for just under an hour. The sweet flavor of caramelized onions provides the base note to a funky green broth tarted up with lime and lemon. Seasoned with turmeric and saffron, the stew takes on a golden hue. A shallot, sliced and fried until crisp, makes a fine garnish, but is optional. Not optional: a side of buttery steamed rice.
Herb and Radish Salad With Feta and Walnuts
This light, crunchy salad is inspired by sabzi khordan, the heaping platter of fresh herbs, radishes, walnuts and feta cheese that accompanies nearly every Persian meal.
Moroccan Stuffed Tomatoes
Houseman's Roasted-Squash Salad
At Houseman, the restaurant Ned Baldwin and Adam Baumgart opened in the Hudson Square neighborhood of Manhattan in 2014, you’ll find this astonishing salad made with red kabocha squash. But the more easily found green kabocha works beautifully in the recipe, as does buttercup squash and sugar pumpkin. For the dressing, some confidence is required. What seems an enormous amount of dried spices — ground fennel, sumac and coriander — is combined with chopped parsley and cilantro. The result looks dry and grainy, as if something is wrong. But olive oil, lime juice and white-wine vinegar (best available, please!) begin to smooth things out, and the cheese, pistachios and vinegar-plumped currants finish the job. The combination makes a fine vegetarian main-course lunch or dinner, particularly paired with braised greens and good bread.
Persian Cod With Herbs and Tamarind
In this traditional Persian preparation for fish, called ghalieh mahi, a profusion of fresh herbs is slowly simmered with caramelized onions and tangy tamarind until the whole thing cooks down into a silky, sweet-tart sauce with a haunting flavor. This version, adapted from Nasim Alikhani from Sofreh restaurant in Brooklyn, uses both fresh and dried fenugreek, which is worth seeking out for its musky, forest-like flavor. But mint makes a good substitute if that’s what you can get. You can use any firm white fish fillets here. Or try pouring the sauce over roasted cauliflower steaks for a vegetarian take.
Sweet Cherry-Stewed Meatballs
Sambosa Ghousti (Turnovers with ground beef and chickpeas)
Chakkah Yeh Seedor (Yogurt with garlic sauce)
Spinach and Yogurt Dip
A food processor transforms a great Middle Eastern spinach dish into a spread. In the traditional dish the spinach is topped with the garlicky yogurt. Here everything is blended together.
Mark Bittman’s Grilled Eggplant Salad With Yogurt
This dish is a creamy and mild eggplant salad made with a quick dressing of yogurt and seasonings. You can grill the eggplant half an hour before you serve the salad, or a half a day (or longer) ahead; it doesn't matter much at all.
Eprax (Kurdish Stuffed Vegetables and Lamb)
This recipe for eprax, a multilayered casserole of Kurdish-style stuffed vegetables and lamb chops, comes from Parwin Tayyar in Nashville. To make the dish, sometimes called dolmas, Ms. Tayyar prepares a gently spiced lamb and rice filling, and uses it to stuff a mixture of vegetables, such as squash, tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage. Carefully layered in a pot with a little liquid, the vegetables simmer and steam together on the stove until they're tender. Then the whole dish is tipped out into a messy, delicious pile to be eaten with flatbread, pickles, hummus or a cucumber sauce. It may seem like a complex process, but once all the vegetables are prepped and the filling is ready, things go quickly. The dish is flexible, and what Ms. Tayyar provides is a blueprint: You can stuff any vegetables you have on hand, as long as you remember to stuff them loosely.
Middle Eastern Baked Apples
Persian Haroseth (Hallaq)
Tahini Shortbread Cookies
Flavored with sesame seeds and tahini paste, these sophisticated shortbread cookies, adapted from "Soframiz" by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick, have a pleasing crumbly texture and an intense, almost nutty flavor. Serve them as part of a cookie plate for dessert, or with coffee or tea as a midafternoon snack.
Halvah Souffle
Lamb Chops With Dates, Feta and Tahini
These tender little lamb rib chops have a deep, complex flavor thanks to a marinade imbued with cumin and Aleppo pepper. After a brief soak, they get quickly seared, then served with a garlicky tahini-yogurt sauce and a tangy herb salad filled with feta cheese and sweet dates. It’s a festive, colorful, company-worthy main course that comes together fast.
Date cookies (Menena)
Hand-Rolled Couscous
This couscous recipe comes from Leetal and Ron Arazi, owners of New York Shuk, a food company specializing in Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewish cuisines. All it takes is some semolina, a little water, a strainer and a steamer. Once you have practiced it a few times to pick up the knack, it is easy, even magical. Not to mention a showstopping addition to the table. “Making couscous is not hard,” said Mr. Arazi, 32. “But it is labor intensive. For Leetal and me, couscous is craftsmanship. We are losing the battle of making it to industrial processed couscous.” He learned to make couscous from his mother, who was born in Mogador, now Essaouira, a town in Morocco once known for its expert couscous makers. “I, the only son in my family, love to preach about it,” he said. “My sisters never made couscous in their life.”
Persian Jeweled Rice
This dish is called jeweled rice because it is golden and glistening, laced with butter and spices and piled with gem-colored fruits. Some of the ingredients called for may require some effort to find, but you can make substitutions. If you cannot get dried barberries (imported from Iran), you will need dried cherries or goji berries or dried cranberries. You will also need some extra-fancy Basmati rice. One goal in making this dish is to achieve the crisp buttery layer on the bottom of the pot. The technique is not difficult, but it takes a little practice. After the rice is rinsed well, it is parboiled for about 5 minutes and drained. The half-cooked rice is layered into a well-buttered pot along with the chopped dried fruits. Over a moderate flame, it is allowed to brown gently before being splashed with a small amount of saffron-infused water. Then the lid goes on the pot and the heat is turned very low so the rice steams gently. With a little luck and experience, the crisp tah dig, or crust, is formed.
Lima Bean Spread With Feta and Za’atar
Frontiere's Grouper With Za'atar and Tomato