Curated playlist
Ottoman cuisine
- KnafehKnafeh, a pastry dessert of the Arab world, once stretched 74 meters across a single table in the Palestinian city of Nablus. That happened in 2009, and the result earned the Guinness world record for the largest knafeh. It weighed 1,765…
- ShakshoukaShakshouka is a dish of eggs cooked gently in a pan of tomato sauce, built on olive oil, peppers, onion and garlic. Cooks usually season it with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper. It belongs to the Maghreb, the western stretch of North…
- 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…
- ShawarmaShawarma begins with a tall cone of stacked meat turning slowly beside a source of heat. As the outer layer cooks, a cook shaves it away in thin pieces, and the cone keeps turning. That simple routine plays out at street stalls across the…
- 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…