Curated playlist
Balkan cuisine
- Strained yogurtStrained yogurt was behind most of the growth in the US$4.1 billion American yogurt industry, according to a report from 2012. It is yogurt with most of its whey drained off, so it comes out thicker but still sour. North American shoppers…
- TahiniTahini is a paste of ground sesame seeds, and sesame shows up in one of the oldest records of food culture. A cuneiform document written 4,000 years ago describes a custom of serving the gods sesame wine. The paste itself is a later story,…
- PitaPita is a round, yeast-raised wheat flatbread, and its most familiar form keeps a hollow space hidden inside. The bread belongs to a wide family that is common around the Mediterranean, across the Middle East and in the lands next to them.…
- Baba ghanoushBaba ghanoush is a dish with at least three common English spellings and two quite different pronunciations. Writers also render it as baba ganoush or baba ghanouj. In the Arabic script it appears as بابا غنوج. Even English speakers cannot…
- KebabKebab is not one dish. In the Syrian city of Aleppo alone, cooks are said to make at least twenty-six versions of it. Some are cooked with cherries, some with aubergine, some with chili, parsley and pine nuts, and one style is made with…
- Turkish delightTurkish delight, called lokum in Turkey, is a family of sweets built on a gel of starch and sugar. English speakers once knew it as "lumps of delight", a name that says plenty about the pleasure it promised. Today the same chewy sweet…
- BörekBörek, burek, byrek, brik: one family of pastries answers to all of these names across the Middle East and the Balkans. The recipe starts with a thin, flaky dough such as filo. Cooks wrap or layer it around meat, cheese, spinach or…
- DolmaDolma first shows up in writing in a 16th-century Persian book called Mâddet ol-Hayât, and the author treats it as a curiosity from abroad. Cabbage dolmeh, the book says, is commonly prepared in the land of the Rûm, meaning Turkey, but is…
- BaklavaBaklava is a pastry of paper-thin filo dough, chopped nuts and sweet syrup or honey, and almost nobody agrees on who made it first. Today it sits on dessert tables across West Asia, Southeast Europe, Central Asia and North Africa. It has…
- PilafPilaf, also written pilav, pilau or plov, is judged by one old test: does each grain stand apart from the next? Thirteenth-century texts set the bar plainly. The grains should be plump and slightly firm, like peppercorns, with no mush and…
- HalvaHalva is spelled at least four ways in English: halva, halvah, halwa and halua. The spelling is the easy part. Behind it sits a confection spread across North Africa, East Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, West Asia, Central Asia and…
- MoussakaMoussaka is a dish built on aubergine or potato, often with ground meat, and it turns up across the Balkans and the Middle East. Ask for it in two neighbouring countries and you may get two plates that have almost nothing in common. Some…