Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Maha Salah
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Kisir
With summer barbecues in full swing, why not add a new and exciting salad to your repertoire of side dishes? We all know the typical salads served at barbecues, coleslaw, potato salad, tabbouleh, and the likes, but once you’ve tried Turkey’s kisir salad, I am sure it will be a…
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Fatayer Jibneh (Cheese fatayer)
I, like many others, love cheese and I love bread. When put together, there is nothing like it! It is so simple but so good. Just about every culture has some sort of cheese and bread concoction and I rarely hear anyone not loving this combination. This is just one…
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Madlouqa
We are ending our Ramadan series on a sweet note with our dessert madlouqa, or as many in the Levant pronounce it, madloua’a. In Ramadan, we generally have dessert almost every night, or at least some fresh fruit, and for lots of people, this is the highlight of their Ramadan…
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Shourba Libiya
While I enjoy soup any day of the year, it is especially comforting to have during Ramadan, as it goes down easily after fasting. It is also a time when most people like to enjoy a warm soup almost every day and are keen to try new recipes. Today I’ll…
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Tabbouleh and Salata bil tahini
We started off our Ramadan series with a Ramadan favourite, Sambousek, and today we are making two salads that would go great with the Sambousek as well as many other dishes on your Ramadan table. In the Middle East, we have salad almost every day in Ramadan and on normal…
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Sambousek bil jibneh
Welcome to the first video of this year’s Ramadan series, Ramadan basics. I will be sharing recipes for an appetiser, soup, salad, and a dessert, all of which are quite popular in Ramadan. Today’s recipe, sambousa, or sambousek as we call it in the Levant, is probably one of the…
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Libyan Imbakbaka
Winter is definitely the season for comfort food and I am always trying to think of really hearty and delicious meals that are quick and easy to make, but also very flavourful. One of my favourite dishes is a Libyan dish called Imbakbaka. This rich and tomatoey stew filled with…
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Karabeej Halab
Whenever I visit Jordan, I make a point of finding the carts that sell Karabeej Halab dotted around the Balad or downtown. There is nothing like these warm fried strips of dough that are soaked in syrup, so super crispy on the outside and soft and syrupy on the inside!…
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Taita’s shorbet ayaneen (Rice and meatball soup)
So many of us think of chicken noodle soup as the best medicine for a cold and while I grew up with chicken noodle soup, I also grew up with what my grandma called “shorbet ayaneen” which translates to “the soup of the sick”! It is perfect when you need…
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Fasooliya Bayda
I feel like every home has some dishes that signal the approach of winter. At my house, it isn’t winter until we’ve made traditional Middle Eastern stews, like Fasooliya, Bamiyeh, and Zahra bi Laban. This stew with Fasooliya Bayda, or cannellini beans, is definitely a winter staple in our home…
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Sfeeha (Meat pies)
I was always a little intimidated or hesitant to make dough and I know I am not alone in this. I absolutely love eating fatayer, or Middle Eastern pasties, but would have them at relatives’ and friends’ homes rather than make them myself. This past year, I decided to bite…
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Muhalabiya with figs
Figs are such an amazing fruit and I miss visiting my grandparents’ house and picking the juicy and sweet as honey figs from their trees. Their trees produced so many figs that we ended up making fig jam, which would last us all year and remind us of just how…
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Harra Osbao
Levantine cuisine is known for being delicious and for its literal names, which usually tell you what’s in the dish or how it is made. However, another thing it is known for, especially Syrian cuisine, is its funny names. This dish, Harra Osbao, is one of them and they usually…
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Pumpkin mutabbal
Many people associate autumn with pumpkins: pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin pie, cupcakes, cookies and so much more. I love all of those things, but when I think of autumn, I think of pumpkin mutabbal! Yes, I know, you are thinking mutabbal with pumpkin, not aubergine? Yes, and it is absolutely…
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Fattet jaj
Just as Middle Easterners love to stuff things, we also like to layer them with bread and yogurt and turn anything into fatteh! Fatteh comes from the Arabic verb “fatta” which means to shred. This refers to the torn bread that forms the base of any fatteh. This chicken version…
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Basbousa with condensed milk
I absolutely love feeding people. It is a passion of mine and the main reason I love to cook. There is nothing like seeing the smile on people’s faces when they are enjoying something I have made for them. But, from time to time, I like to enjoy something someone…
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Bayd o bazayla
So, if you haven’t already noticed, there is kind of a running theme when it comes to the names of many Middle Eastern dishes. The name often describes what is in the meal and this is the case for this dish. Bayd o bazayla translates to eggs and peas and…
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Mahshi kousa
Kousa mahshi, translating to stuffed courgettes, is one of those super comforting dishes that most people love and the one they love the most is usually their mum’s or their grandma’s. Growing up, I always thought that everyone had mahshi the same way we did, until one day I went…
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Pistachio Ma’amoul Cheesecake
Making ma’amoul is a family and friends affair. Mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins, or friends come together and form a sort of assembly line, with some forming the date balls, others making dough balls, some filling them, some shaping them and the all-important person who stands by the oven and makes…
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Qirs agaili
Do you ever crave a food you’ve never even tried and have only seen on TV? It may sound strange, but I do! I like to watch Kuwaiti dramas from time to time and I watched a pretty popular one on Netflix and all I could focus on was this…
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Othmaliye
Growing up in America in the nineties, we didn’t have too many choices for anything Middle Eastern. For example, we had one Arabic television channel, and in Ramadan, there was one Ramadan series at 9pm. I remember we would all gather around the television from 9-10 to watch whatever series…
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Yakhni batata
We mostly associate stews with a warm bowl of goodness eaten on a cold winter’s day, but what if I told you that I had the perfect stew for summer! As the Arabic saying goes “Warmth is good, even in the middle of summer”. This potato and chicken stew gives…
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Cardamom and vanilla cupcakes with date and tahini frosting
When I think of the flavours of Ramadan and Eid, cardamom coffee and date-filled ma’amoul automatically come to mind. I am instantly transported back to the Jordan, where we would go from one house to another to greet family on Eid and drink cup after cup of steaming hot dark-roast…
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Lentils two ways
Lentils are so versatile and are used in most cuisines around the world. They are one of those things we always have in our pantries but a lot of the time we end up using them to make the same recipes over and over again. Today we’re going to add…