Cook like a local: Middle East
From spice and smoke, to citrus and herbs, dive into the distinct flavours of this wonderfully diverse region
Enjoy layers of avour, from spice and smoke to citrus and herbs
Middle Eastern food is about layering avours – spices, acids, pickles – to create something powerful out of
what are often very simple raw ingredients. That sense of luxury and craveability has to be coaxed out of food by blooming spices, mixing citrus and vinegars, grilling, smoking and adding toasted seeds and fresh herbs.
If I close my eyes, I can still smell the spice markets of my youth, the intense aroma of chillies, seeds and powders from throughout the region colliding in cramped alleyways. Growing up, my dad would take me with him on trips to the market, where I’d see dozens of stalls selling spices along with pickles, olives, dried sh and preserved lemons. The smell of it all together was irresistible, like wafts of pure hunger. After the smell came the colour: vibrant hues of red, orange, black and all the shades in between. It’s the colour, my dad taught me, that hints at the quality. The more vibrantlooking the spices, the fresher they taste. We’d walk out with a few bags of this and that, clothes smelling of saron and ginger, and stop for shawarma or falafel before going home.
A unied version of the Middle East is alive and well in its food, where you can taste traces of shared culinary traditions. Like the land itself, these cuisines have, over time, become divided, labelled and claimed. But at their core, these are the intertwined avours of a communal past.
“the smel o al the fo in the market toe therws ir esistib e, like w fts o pure hunger”