Middle Eastern Recipes
307 recipes found
Bean and Green Herb Stew
This is inspired by a famous Persian stew that is traditionally made with chicken and kidney beans. I came across a vegetarian rendition of the stew in Louisa Shafia’s wonderful new book, “The New Persian Kitchen.” Louisa uses tofu in her stew; I’m just focusing on the beans, herbs and spinach.It’s crucial to cook red kidney beans thoroughly, because they contain a naturally occurring toxin called phytohemagglutinin that causes extreme intestinal distress but is reduced to harmless levels when the beans are boiled for a sufficient amount of time (10 minutes is sufficient, according to the Food and Drug Administration, but of course beans require a lot more cooking than that to soften). You should not cook them in a crockpot because the temperature may not be high enough to destroy the toxin, and you should discard the soaking water.
Spicy Ketchup
Black-Eyed Pea Soup or Stew With Pomegranate and Chard
This is another dish inspired by a recipe in Louisa Shafia’s book “The New Persian Kitchen.” You can use more or less water, depending on whether you want the dish to have the consistency of a soup or a thick stew. It’s hearty, and the most beautiful pink hue.
Baked Lebanese Kibbe
The Middle Eastern way with ground lamb, or beef, for that matter, is in combination with cracked bulgur wheat and onion. There are hundreds of ways to turn this delicious mixture into kibbe, little football-shaped savory treats sold and eaten everywhere and made daily in homes throughout the region. (There are other kinds of kibbe, too, like fish, but that’s another story.) For a less labor-intensive version, kibbe can also be baked like a flat cake. It makes an extraordinarily fragrant meatloaf, adorned with long-cooked caramelized onions and pine nuts, to be eaten hot, warm, cold or reheated.
Fresh Herb and Egg Casserole
Roast Chicken With Lemon and Za’atar
This plump and juicy roast chicken benefits from tenderizing in a yogurt-lemon-garlic marinade for as long as 24 hours, but if you don’t have a lot of time, slathering it with the mixture before sliding it into the oven will still add flavor, and give the spices something to stick to. Za’atar, a Middle Eastern herb-and-spice blend, can still be hard to find in the supermarket, so make your own by combining sumac, sesame seeds, thyme, coriander, oregano and cumin. You can buy sumac, a garnet-colored lemony spice, in Middle Eastern markets or online, but the rest of the ingredients are most likely already on your spice rack, and leaving out one or two of them is perfectly O.K. If you have a premade za’atar blend on hand, you’ll need about 1/2 cup to coat the chicken.
Spiced Lamb and Rice with Walnuts, Mint and Pomegranate
A baked lamb and rice dish I tasted in Istanbul, etli pilav, inspired this one-pot meal, topped with walnuts and fresh mint and pomegranate seeds. Similar pilaf-style rice dishes are made all across the Middle East and into Asia. Kabuli pulao in Afghanistan is acclaimed; the Persian baghali polov ba gusht is justly famous, as is the Lebanese Hashwet al-ruz; and there are myriad fabled biryanis made with lamb (or goat) in India and Pakistan. Pomegranate molasses is available in Middle Eastern groceries or online. It provides a sweet-sour, fruity undertone, but you may omit it and still get good results. Try a squeeze of lime instead.
Basic Tahini Sauce
Use this sauce, which is adapted from the Philadelphia chef Michael Solomonov, as a garnish for roast chicken and lamb. Dress thinly sliced raw kale and toasted pumpkinseeds with tahini sauce for a simple salad. Drizzle it over sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. Or serve with grilled eggplant, zucchini and peppers or roasted carrots and cauliflower.
Fresh Herb Kuku
Kuku is a traditional Persian egg dish similar to a frittata. This version by the Iranian food writer Najmieh Batmanglij was served at the White House at Michelle Obama's Nowruz celebration on April 6. In it, a variety of fresh green herbs are mixed with fragrant spices, chopped walnuts and just enough eggs to bind everything together. Dried barberries, caramelized with grape molasses or sugar, make a pretty and sweet-tart garnish. If you can’t get barberries, substitute dried cranberries. Kuku can be served warm or at room temperature, and can be made a day in advance. Leftovers make excellent sandwiches when stuffed into lavash or pita with yogurt.
Fattoush With Dukkah
Fattoush, the Middle Eastern salad made with stale pita and vegetables, is usually seasoned with za’tar, which can itself be considered a version of a dukkah.
Celebration Cake
This cake, which was developed by the British-Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi, may not look perfect. You may end up with cracked layers, roughly cut edges and a white-chocolate ganache spread willy-nilly. “I think it’s best if it is superrustic,” Ottolenghi said. But it will be elegant anyway, the astonishingly good result of care and time spent in the kitchen for loved ones, and the flavors are terrific.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem Lamb Shawarma
The British-by-way-of-Jerusalem chef Yotam Ottolenghi cooked this recipe as part of what he called “a Middle Eastern take on a proper English garden party.” He raises high the street-meat ideal of shawarma, resulting in a deeply flavored cut of lamb. The lamb would ideally meet the spice mix the day before it is cooked, so it takes some time, but not much work. The first 11 ingredients, known as Lebanese spice mix, make a versatile mixture that can be used to marinate fish, meat or vegetables.
Baby Spinach Salad With Dates and Almonds
Sumac, a tart, deep-red spice, is a key ingredient for this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi, which was featured in a Times article about his cookbook with Sami Tamimi, “Jerusalem.” Procuring the spice may be the most challenging thing about this refreshing, well-balanced salad. The pita and almonds are cooked for a few minutes on the stovetop, but that is the only heat required. As for the sumac, it can be found at Middle Eastern groceries, in a well-stocked spice aisle or, as always, online.
Cucumber-and-Mâche Salad
This delicate salad, from the chef Yotam Ottolenghi, is redolent with spring flavors. Do not dress it until just before it reaches the table, and if mâche is not available, try purslane.
Frontiere's Harissa
Roasted Eggplant With Spiced Chickpeas
Eggplant is a staple in the Arab world, the source of the dish called moussaq’a, a classic (and vegan to boot, if you leave off the yogurt). The key to cooking eggplant is to do it with high heat that concentrates the flavor and the flesh.
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.
