Levant: Recipes and Memories from the Middle East

I was a quiet and introverted child with an aversion to any activity that could lead to physical injury. I never rode a bicycle or climbed a tree or did any physical activity that most children did. Instead, I spent most of my time in the kitchen with my mother, grandmother or aunt, watching them cook or preserve our seasonal bounty (the preserved foodstuffs are called muneh in Arabic) for the winter months.

Spending time in my mother’s or grandmother’s kitchen in Beirut was exciting but it was nothing compared to being in my aunt’s kitchen in Mashta el-Helou, my father’s ancestral home in the Syrian mountains. ‘Ammto Zahiyeh (‘ammto means aunt in Arabic) made everything at home. There were no shops in Mashta in those days – just one tiny counter that my cousin had set up in his home where he had pens, paper and other necessities that couldn’t be made at home. He also kept the gigantic scales on which everyone weighed the grain and other produce grown on the family’s farms before storing or selling them.

My aunt lived in a lovely nineteenth-century stone house at the bottom of a rocky lane below the big family house. The latter looked like a caravanserail, with a series of beautiful vaulted rooms built around a large courtyard with a marble fountain in the middle. It was known as al-Dar (house in Arabic) and was older than my aunt’s house. Each brother or sister occupied one or more rooms depending on their share of the inheritance. My father had two rooms but we preferred to stay with my aunt who had married a cousin who built the house for her. We only went up to al-Dar to play with our cousins or for family gatherings.

I loved walking up and down the rocky lane and always felt a frisson as I entered or left the courtyard through a dark stone archway. It wasn’t the darkness that scared me but rather the room that lay abandoned to one side behind a large padlocked iron grill that was once the family prison. No one ever explained who had been locked in there, whether they were villainous members of the family or just outside aggressors, but the menace of their memory haunted me every time I walked through.

My aunt’s home was arranged slightly differently from the family compound. The courtyard was at the front of the house, with outbuildings to one side where she kept two milking cows and chickens. And just behind the house was her husband’s mausoleum, he had died quite young. The roof of the house was flat and we often went up there through the outside stone staircase, carrying fruit or vegetables to let them dry in the sun.

‘Ammto Zahiyeh was totally self-sufficient. Her farmers grew everything for her and she prepared all her staples. Her cows provided all the milk she needed, both to drink and to make butter, yoghurt and cheese. I can still see her and my mother, each sitting on a low stool on either side of a canvas cushion where they had placed a lovely earthenware jar in which they made the butter. They took it in turns shaking the jar, back and forth, again and again, until my aunt made a sign to stop. She just knew when the time had come for her to plunge her hand into the jar to bring out the dripping mass of butter. As soon as she did this, I would jump from my chair to ask her for some to eat with her home-baked bread and some of her fabulous fig jam.

My aunt also dried vegetables but these took more preparation. Aubergines had to be cored, green beans topped and tailed, and okra peeled at the stalk end to produce a smooth pointed end. Every year, she would unfailingly explain how important it was not to puncture the okra so as not to let the mucilaginous substance seep out during cooking. She and my mother threaded the vegetable onto cotton string, which they hung between trees in the courtyard. When the vegetables were dry, they tied the strings into long necklaces, and hung them in the qabu (meaning cave in Arabic but really describing the dark room where my aunt kept her muneh).

In many parts of the Levant, life on the farm has remained pretty much the same. Of course, some rural people have abandoned the tradition of making their preserves and places like Mashta el-Helou have been developed beyond recognition. Still, even in the developed areas and in those many rural areas that are left untouched by modern life, the tradition of preserving, drying and making various confections out of seasonal bounty is very much alive. And every time I come across people growing and preserving their own produce, I immediately become nostalgic for those long past days when I helped my aunt, mother and grandmother do the same. The fact that most of the recipes in this chapter are for preserving, pickling, drying or making jam does not mean that people on the farm didn’t eat fresh food. They did, and I have included recipes for typical rural dishes, but apart from these, the dishes served on the farm would be more or less the same as those served en famille in the city – albeit prepared with produce that came directly from the fields.

Meat and Grain Porridge

H’RISSEH

Made with either chicken or lamb and traditionally cooked to distribute to the poor, h’risseh goes back to the times of the Abbassid caliphs who reigned over a large empire, from their capital, Baghdad, from the eighth to the thirteenth century with only a short half century interlude in the ninth century when they moved their capital to Samarra. You can make an interesting and smoky variation of this dish by replacing the wheat with an equivalent amount of frikeh (‘burned’ green cracked wheat – see here). If you use frikeh, you don’t need to break up the cooked chicken meat quite as finely as you do with the wheat. You can also substitute the chicken in this recipe with a shoulder of lamb (as in the recipe for the similar dish, halim), making sure you trim away as much fat and skin as you can before cooking the meat. Whether you use chicken or lamb, the preparation is the same.

Serves 4

1 medium-sized chicken (about 1.5kg/3lb 5oz)

300g (11oz) whole wheat or barley

3 cinnamon sticks

½ tsp allspice or Lebanese seven-spice mixture

¼ tsp finely ground white pepper

Sea salt

100g (3½oz) unsalted butter

Put the chicken in a large saucepan and add 2 litres (3½ pints) of water. Place over a high heat and bring to the boil, skimming away any scum that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to medium and add the wheat (or barley) together with the cinnamon sticks, then cover the pan with a lid and cook for 1¼ hours or until the chicken is done.

Lift the chicken and cinnamon sticks out of the pan, reduce the heat to low and let the wheat simmer while you bone the chicken. Discard the skin and tear or cut the meat in small pieces.

Return the meat to the pan, cover with the lid and continue simmering for about 20 minutes or until the wheat is cooked. Stir occasionally so that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pan. If you find it is getting too dry, add a little water, but not too much because the end result should be like a thick-textured porridge.

Season the chicken and wheat with the allspice (or seven-spice mixture), pepper and a little salt and reduce the heat to very low. Then start stirring the mixture vigorously with a wooden spoon, cutting into the chicken pieces to shred them. You want the meat to disintegrate into the wheat. Turn off the heat beneath the pan and keep covered.

Melt the butter in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Cook until browned but making sure you don’t let it burn. Stir the browned butter into the chicken and wheat mixture. Taste, adjusting the seasoning if needed, and serve hot.

Chicken with Frikeh

I had a wonderful moment in Syria a few years ago just outside Apamea, a stunning Roman site south of Aleppo, where I spotted a group of farmers by the roadside burning frikeh, ‘burned’ green cracked wheat (see here). The last time I had seen farmers doing this was back in 1982, near Qalb Lozeh, a fabulous Byzantine church now surrounded by ugly concrete modern houses. Nearly 30 years later, the scene near Apamea was the same, although the setting had changed from being totally magical and ancient to rather modern and charmless. The building where the farmers lived was modern and unfinished, like so many in the Syrian countryside, with bulky and rusty farm equipment scattered everywhere. The farmers were lovely, though, dressed in a funny mix of traditional garb with modern accessories like baseball caps. The green wheat had been gathered into large piles on the ground while, nearby, a metal trestle table with a grill top had been set up over a large plastic sheet. The farmers were scooping each pile of wheat onto the grill and setting fire to it. As the stalks burn, the ears of wheat fall through the metal bars onto the sheet. When the flames have subsided and all the wheat has fallen onto the sheet, the farmers then push the table to the side and start to fork the burned wheat, tossing it high up in the air. As it falls back, the burned chaff blows away. The farmers then gather the burned wheat into baskets and pour the grains onto another sheet, from high up once again, to get rid of more chaff. Once they have burned all the wheat, they spread it out on more plastic sheets and leave it to dry in the sun before cracking and storing it for the year.

In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey, frikeh is cooked the same way as rice or burghul, using the broth from the boiled lamb or chicken that it is served with. Some add a little rice to the frikeh to make it lighter. I prefer it without as I love the distinctive smoky flavour. The cooking time I’ve given below is for frikeh that is cracked and well roasted. If the grains are whole and not very green, you’ll need to increase the amount of stock reserved from cooking the chicken by 200ml (7fl oz) and cook for 45 minutes.

Serves 4

1 medium-sized chicken (about 1.5kg/3lb 5oz)

1 medium-sized onion, peeled

2 cinnamon sticks

Sea salt

25g (1oz) unsalted butter

200g (7oz) frikeh

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground allspice or Lebanese seven-spice mixture

⅛ tsp finely ground black pepper

Put the chicken in a large saucepan and add 1.5 litres (2½ pints) of water. Place over a high heat and bring to the boil, skimming away any scum that rises to the surface. Add the onion, cinnamon sticks and some salt, then reduce the heat to medium, cover the pan with a lid and simmer for 45 minutes.

Remove the chicken and cut into either four or eight joints. Strain the stock and measure out 600ml (1 pint) to cook the frikeh. Pour the remaining stock into a clean saucepan, add the chicken joints and place over a very low heat to keep the chicken hot.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. Add the frikeh and stir until it is well coated with the butter. Pour in the reserved stock, season with the spices and some salt and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or until the frikeh is cooked to your liking and the stock is absorbed. Take off the heat, wrap the lid in a clean tea towel, replace over the pan and leave to steam for a few minutes.

Spoon the frikeh into a shallow serving bowl. Arrange the chicken pieces (having first removed the skin, if you prefer) over the frikeh and serve hot. Traditionally frikeh is served with yoghurt but you can also serve it with steamed or sautéed vegetables.

Mansaf

Mansaf, lamb cooked in rehydrated dried yoghurt (see here) and served on a bed of rice laid over paper-thin bread, is the national dish of Jordan although it originates from Hebron in the West Bank. A typical Bedouin dish served at large family gatherings, celebrations or to honour special guests, it was traditionally made with a whole lamb with the head proudly placed in the middle of the dish to indicate that the animal had been slaughtered for the occasion. Nowadays it is often made with a shoulder, a leg or shanks. The dried yoghurt used for the dish is how Bedouins would preserve the milk from their goat herds; it is known as jamid in Jordan. Here the yoghurt is placed in cotton sacks and salted every day until it thickens. The sacks are left to drain – rinsed regularly on the outside to get rid of the whey – until the yoghurt is solid enough to shape into balls. These are then put out to dry (in the shade to keep their white colour) until they become rock hard, after which they are stored away. They are mixed with water to reconstitute them before being used in such dishes as mansaf.

You can make mansaf with fresh yoghurt instead, although the flavour will not be the same: as the yoghurt dries, it also ferments giving jamid a particular flavour that imparts a faintly sour taste to the lamb as it cooks. I use a mixture of both types – jamid for the sour flavour and fresh yoghurt for creaminess. The recipe below is adapted from one I found in a small Arabic cookbook, The Palestinian Kitchen, which my friend the singer Reem Kelani gave me. In the original recipe, the lamb is cooked in the yoghurt/jamid mixture from the outset, but the yoghurt can curdle with such long cooking and I prefer to boil the lamb separately, then finish it in the yoghurt sauce. While the flavour of the meat may not be quite as intense, the consistency of the sauce is much better. You can use chicken instead of lamb, although the dish will not be as celebratory.

Serves 6

4 lamb shanks (about 1kg/2lb 2oz total weight)

1 medium-sized onion, peeled

1 cinnamon stick

Sea salt

2 balls of jamid (about the size of tennis balls), soaked overnight in 750ml (11⁄3 pints) of water

1kg (2lb 2oz) Greek-style plain yoghurt

1 tsp finely ground black pepper

1 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

Good pinch of saffron threads

100g (3½oz) unsalted butter

500g (1lb 1oz) short-grain white rice (bomba, Calasparra or Egyptian), rinsed under cold water and drained

To serve

100g (3½oz) pine nuts

100g (3½oz) blanched almonds

2 loaves of marqûq bread (see ‘bread’)

Handful of flat-leaf parsley sprigs, finely chopped

Put the shanks in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add the onion and cinnamon stick and place over a medium-high heat. Bring to the boil, skimming away any scum that rises to the surface, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Season with salt, cover the pan with a lid and let it simmer for 1 hour or until the lamb is done.

While the lamb is cooking, knead the jamid in its soaking water water to help it dissolve completely. Strain the liquid and put in another large saucepan, add the Greek-style yoghurt and place over a medium heat. Bring to the boil while stirring constantly to prevent the yoghurt from curdling. Add the spices, mix well and turn the heat off as soon as the yoghurt comes to the boil. Cover the pan and keep warm.

Preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F), gas mark 7.

Spread the pine nuts and almonds on separate non-stick baking sheets and toast in the oven, 5–6 minutes for the pine nuts and 7–8 minutes for the almonds, until they turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and set aside to use later.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the rice, stirring it in the butter until well coated, then pour in 1 litre (1¾) pints of water. Add some salt and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and cover the pan with a lid. Simmer for 10–15 minutes or until the rice is done and the water fully absorbed. Wrap the lid in a clean tea towel and replace the lid over the rice to keep warm.

Remove the cooked lamb from the stock and take the meat off the bone. Drop the boiled lamb into the yoghurt sauce and place the pan over a low heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring all the time and adding a ladle or two of stock until you have a sauce the consistency of single cream. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

To serve, lay the bread over a large round serving platter. Spread the rice over the bread then arrange the meat over the rice. Ladle as much sauce as you would like over the meat and rice without making the dish soupy. Whatever sauce is left over, pour into a sauceboat. Garnish with the toasted nuts and chopped parsley and serve immediately.

Turkish Wheat, Pulses, Dried Fruit and Nut Pudding

AŞURE

Prepared for the feast day in the Muslim calendar that commemorates Noah’s escape from the flood, this is a typically rural dish made with whatever people have growing in their fields or their neighbours’ fields, which they will have picked and dried themselves. The pudding is also prepared to commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandsons, Hassan and Hussein, and is called after the occasion’s name, Ashura (in Arabic) or Aşure (in Turkish). Lebanese Christians have a simpler version of this dish, using only wheat and nuts, which they make for the feast day of St Barbara. People from the Lebanese mountains, like those in rural Turkey, would use their own home-grown wheat to prepare aşure.

Serves 8

For soaking overnight

100g (3½oz) wheat, rinsed

2 tbsp dried chickpeas

2 tbsp dried cannellini beans

2 tbsp dried broad beans

¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda

50g (2oz) pudding rice or short-grain white rice (bomba, Calasparra or Egyptian), rinsed under cold water and drained

4 dried figs

6 dried apricots

2 tbsp sultanas

For cooking the pudding

25g (1oz) unsalted butter

200g (7oz) golden caster sugar

3 tbsp shelled hazelnuts, coarsely chopped

1 tbsp cornflour

125ml (4½fl oz) full-cream organic milk

100ml (3½fl oz) rose water

To garnish

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp sesame seeds

1 tsp nigella seeds

50g (2oz) shelled walnuts

Pomegranate seeds

Put the wheat in a saucepan and add 2 litres (3½ pints) of water. Place over a medium heat and bring to the boil, then take off the heat and leave to soak overnight. Put the chickpeas, cannellini beans and broad beans in separate bowls and cover well with water. Add ¼ teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda to each bowl and leave to soak overnight. Place the rice in another bowl and the dried fruit in another, and leave these to soak overnight as well.

The next day, return the pan of soaked wheat to the heat, bring to the boil and simmer, covered with a lid, for about 1 hour or until tender. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, cannellini beans and broad beans and cook in separate pans until done, then peel them.

Drain the dried fruit and chop both figs and apricots into small pieces the size of the plumped-up sultanas.

Drain the rice and add to the cooked wheat, together with the drained sultanas and chopped figs and apricots. Add the butter and bring back to the boil. Add the chickpeas, beans and broad beans and simmer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220°C (425°F), gas mark 7.

Spread the walnuts for the garnish on a non-stick baking sheet and toast in the oven for 6–8 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven, then chop up coarsely and set aside.

Next add the sugar in 3–4 batches to the aşure, stirring well between each addition. (According to Nevin Halıcı, whose recipe I have adapted here, the wheat will harden if you add the sugar all at once.) Add the hazelnuts and simmer for another 15 minutes, stirring all the time so that the mixture does not stick to the bottom of the pan, until the aşure thickens and becomes like a textured porridge. Quickly whisk the cornflour and milk together and add to the pan. Stir until the aşure starts bubbling again, then remove from the heat and add the rose water.

Pour the aşure into a serving bowl and sprinkle with the ground cinnamon, sesame and nigella seeds, then scatter the toasted walnuts and pomegranate seeds all over and serve hot or at room temperature.

Pickling Solution

The two main traditional methods of preserving seasonal produce are drying and pickling. My mother and grandmother would start making their pickles as the summer drew to a close, filling large jars with cucumbers or meqteh, green tomatoes and aubergines, which they stuffed with garlic (see here). They also stuffed bell peppers with shredded cabbage before pickling them; and they added beetroot to pickled turnips to colour them bright pink. My aunt Zahiyeh didn’t pickle in quite the same way. She made makduss by stuffing aubergines with walnuts, garlic and cayenne or chilli pepper and preserving them in olive oil. We liked to wrap her makduss in bread to eat as a sandwich.

Pickles were ever present at our table, served with everything from the simplest fare to precious seasonal one such as roasted wild birds. Towards the end of summer I would abandon the kitchen to accompany my uncles on their bird-shooting expeditions. I loved watching them in action; and I loved eating the little birds they caught even more. My uncles were excellent shots and by the end of the day we had dozens of the furry little creatures, all strung together on a cord suspended from a wing mirror of the car to take back home. The birds that feed on figs, in particular, are considered a great delicacy, both in Lebanon and Syria. I would help to pluck and gut them, and once they were all prepared, my grandmother would season them with sea salt before threading them onto skewers. While we were getting the birds ready, my uncles lit a charcoal fire to grill them. As she grilled the birds, my grandmother pressed them every now and then between two layers of pita bread to soak up the fatty juices. My siblings and I always fought over who would get the juiciest pieces of bread to wrap around our little birds. And despite the fact that eating them is now seen as completely non-PC, they remain one of my favourite foods. My grandmother always served them with a plate of her homemade pickles.

There are several basic requirements for making pickles so that they last you through the year. The first is to select both vegetables and vinegar very carefully. The vegetables need to be very fresh, without blemishes or rot spots, and the smaller the better. You should also pay special attention to the variety of vinegar if it is not homemade. Buy the very best red wine vinegar you can afford as it will make a difference to both the taste and degree of sourness of your pickles. The cheaper the vinegar the nastier the taste, especially as the pickles age! Cleanliness is also very important. Hands and utensils must be thoroughly cleaned and the jars (screw-top jars or clip-top ones with a rubber seal) need to be sterilised, which you can do in the oven. Wash the jars well in soapy water, rinse and dry them (or wash them in the dishwasher), then stand them on a baking tray and heat them in the oven (preheated to 140°C/275°F/gas mark 1) for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the jars cool inside the oven before using them. Once sealed in a jar, the pickles need to be stored in a cool dark place. If you are in a hot country, refrigerate them as soon as they are ready to eat and try to keep them in the coolest place outside that you can find. A layer of mould may sometimes develop on the surface, in which case simply skim it off and rinse the pickles before serving.

The way produce is pickled in the Levant varies from one country to another. In Lebanon, for instance, the brine is a mixture of salted vinegar and water that changes in proportion from half vinegar/half water to one-third vinegar/two-thirds water, depending on how sour you like your pickles. Some people add peeled garlic and/or hot chillies, although many keep their pickles plain, which is how I like mine. If you decide to use chillies (quantity depending on personal preference), cut into the bottom of each chilli to open the flesh and release some of the heat into the brine, but make sure you remove the chillies as soon as the pickles have reached the right degree of piquancy, otherwise they may become too hot.

Below are the different pickling solutions typically used in the Levant:

Makes a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

Lebanese pickling solution

300ml (½ pint) water

150ml (5fl oz) red wine vinegar

2 tbsp sea salt

1 tsp golden granulated sugar

Turkish pickling solution

1 litre (1¾ pints) white vinegar

2 tbsp sea salt

1 litre (1¾ pints) water

500ml (18fl oz) white wine or champagne vinegar

1 tbsp sea salt

Iranian pickling solution

500ml (18fl oz) cider vinegar

2 tbsp sea salt

Pickled Aubergines Four Ways

Aubergines are a very versatile vegetable, particularly when it comes to pickling them. In each of the four recipes below, small aubergines are used, blanched and drained of any excess liquid before being preserved. Serving all four aubergine pickles would make quite an impressive spread, offering an interesting contrast in flavours. They are the perfect way to beef up a homemade mezze, for instance, without going to too much trouble on the day.

For each recipe, you will need one or two 1 litre (1¾ pint) sterilised glass jars (see here). To get rid of the excess liquid once you have boiled or steamed the aubergines, and hence stop them from spoiling in the jar, place in a colander with a weighted bowl on top. Leave to drain for 24 hours then spread on kitchen paper before stuffing and pickling them.

SYRIAN MAKDUSS

Syrians are the only people in the Levant to preserve aubergines in olive oil. Even though makduss is a pickle, it is often served as a dish on its own rather than as a condiment.

Makes two 1 litre (1¾ pint) jars

1.5kg (3lb 5oz) small aubergines (about 30 in total)

2 tbsp coarse sea salt

Extra-virgin olive oil

For the stuffing

Cloves from 4 garlic heads (about 200g/7oz total weight), peeled

2 tsp fine sea salt

200g (7oz) shelled walnuts

½ tsp cayenne pepper or 2 fresh green chilli peppers, trimmed and deseeded

Peel and discard the husk and stalk of each aubergine, leaving a rounded, uncut top. Put the aubergines in a saucepan and cover with water. Add the coarse sea salt and place over a high heat. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to medium, cover the pan with a lid and let it bubble gently for 5 minutes or until the aubergines are half cooked. Drain the aubergines, ideally for 24 hours (see here).

Next make the stuffing. Put the peeled garlic cloves in a blender with the fine sea salt and process until nearly smooth. Add the walnuts and cayenne pepper (or fresh chilli peppers) and blend until the walnuts are ground medium-fine. The stuffing should have a fine crunch to it.

Take one aubergine and make a slit down the middle, lengthways, cutting halfway into the flesh and making sure you don’t slice through the other side. Prise the flesh open to create a pocket for the filling and press a teaspoon of walnut and garlic mixture into the aubergine. Smooth the stuffing with the spoon or your finger so that it’s level with the aubergine skin. Put on a plate and fill the remaining aubergines in the same way.

Pack the aubergines in layers, with the filled side facing up, in two sterilised glass jars, fitting the aubergines quite snugly together but without crushing them. Cover with extra-virgin olive oil, seal the jars shut and store in a cool, dark place. The pickles will be ready after about one month.

IRANIAN TORSHI-YE BÂDENJÂN

The following recipe, which I have adapted from one in Margaret Shaida’s wonderful book The Legendary Cuisine of Persia, includes a rather unusual filling that is quite different from the Lebanese, Syrian and Turkish ones. As in the other recipes, be sure to buy the aubergines very fresh, with a smooth skin and firm flesh. It is only after boiling or steaming them that they should look old and shrivelled!

Makes a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

750g (1lb 10oz) small aubergines (about 15 in total)

2 tbsp coarse sea salt

1 tbsp nigella seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

4 small green bell peppers

500ml (18fl oz) cider vinegar

For the stuffing

250g (9oz) flat-leaf parsley, most of the stalk discarded, finely chopped

250g (9oz) fresh coriander, most of the stalk discarded, finely chopped

1½ tbsp dried mint

1½ tbsp dried basil

10 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2 tsp fine sea salt

Remove the peel and stalk from the aubergines but without cutting into the top, then steam for about 10 minutes or until soft. Drain the aubergines, ideally for 24 hours (see here).

To make the stuffing, put the chopped fresh and dried herbs in a bowl. Add the crushed garlic and 2 teaspoons of salt and mix well.

Take one cooked aubergine and make a slit down the middle, lengthways, cutting halfway into the flesh and making sure you don’t slice through the other side. Gently prise the slit open and stuff with a little of the herb mixture. Close the filled pocket and wipe the aubergine clean. Repeat with the remaining aubergines.

Stand or lay a third of the stuffed aubergines in the sterilised pickling jar. When you have made one layer, sprinkle with half the coarse sea salt, nigella and coriander seeds. Then lay two green peppers over this first layer of aubergines and repeat to make another layer, sprinkling with the remaining salt, nigella and coriander seeds and using the remaining peppers. Finish with a layer of aubergines on top.

Pack the jar tightly then pour the cider vinegar over the aubergines to cover completely. Add any remaining salt, then seal shut and gently shake back and forth to distribute the salt. Leave to sit in a cool dark place for two weeks at least before serving.

LEBANESE KABISS BATINJEN

Here the filling is a simple mixture of crushed garlic flavoured with either cayenne pepper or fresh chilli peppers, while the pickling solution is subtler than that the one used in either the Turkish or Iranian recipes. As soon as I arrived home from school I’d tuck into these, simply wrapped with pita bread, as my merenda. I found it frustrating watching my mother or grandmother prepare the pickles as I could not try them until much later when they were ready to eat. The garlic paste was too sharp to even taste and the blanched aubergines were simply inedible even when sprinkled with salt. Luckily, there was always the option of dipping into one of the previous year’s jars to fish out a few pickled aubergines for me to nibble on while my mother and grandmother were busy making the new lot.

Makes two 1 litre (1¾ pint) jars

1.5kg (3lb 5oz) small aubergines (about 30 in total)

1 tbsp coarse sea salt

450ml (16fl oz) Lebanese pickling solution

For the stuffing

Cloves from 4 garlic heads (about 200g/7oz total weight), peeled

2 tsp fine sea salt

½ tsp cayenne pepper or 2 fresh green chilli peppers, topped and deseeded

Put the garlic in a blender with the fine sea salt and cayenne pepper (or fresh chilli peppers) and process until nearly smooth. The garlic paste should have a fine crunch.

Take one aubergine and make a slit down the middle, lengthways, cutting halfway into the flesh and making sure you don’t slice through the other side. Prise the flesh open to create a pocket for the stuffing and press half a teaspoon of garlic paste into each aubergine. Smooth the stuffing with the spoon or your finger so that it’s level with the aubergine skin. Put on a plate and fill the remaining aubergines in the same way.

Arrange the aubergines in layers in two sterilised glass jars, with the filled side facing upwards and packing them quite snugly together but without crushing them. Pour in the pickling solution, dividing it evenly between each jar to cover the aubergines. Seal the jars shut and store in a cool, dark place. The pickled aubergines should be ready after two weeks or a little longer.

TURKISH PATLICAN TURŞUSU

The Turkish word for pickles, turşusu, is basically the same as the Iranian torshi. These pickles are interesting because the aubergines are filled with blanched cabbage and sealed with slices of red bell pepper. It is a good idea to choose fatter aubergines here because the cabbage is bulkier than the garlic or herb pastes used in the previous recipes.

For a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

750g (1lb 10oz) small aubergines (about 15 in total)

Juice of 2 lemons

1 quantity of Turkish water and vinegar pickling solution

3 tbsp sunflower oil

For the stuffing

200g (7oz) white cabbage, finely shredded

50g (2oz) dill, chopped

6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

2 tbsp Aleppo pepper or pul biber

1 red bell pepper, sliced lengthways and deseeded

Handful of chives

Peel and discard the husk and stalk of each aubergine, leaving a rounded, uncut top. Fill a medium-sized saucepan with water, add the lemon juice and place over a medium-high heat. Bring to the boil, add the aubergines and boil for 3 minutes. Remove the aubergines with a slotted spoon and put in a colander to drain. Blanch the shredded cabbage in the same water and drain. (Drain both ideally for 24 hours – see here.)

Put the drained cabbage in a mixing bowl, add the chopped dill, crushed garlic and Aleppo pepper (or pul biber) and mix well.

Take one aubergine and make a slit lengthways down the middle, cutting halfway into the flesh and making sure you don’t slice through the other side. Gently prise the flesh open to create a pocket, then fill this with as much cabbage stuffing as you can. Cover the filling with a slice of red pepper, tying this in place with one or two chives. Place the stuffed aubergine in the sterilised glass jar and fill the remaining aubergines in the same way, stacking them neatly into the jar.

Pour the water and vinegar solution into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Boil for 2 minutes then add the sunflower oil. Allow to cool and then pour over the aubergines. Seal the jar shut and store in a cool place. The aubergines will be ready in about one month.

Various Vegetable Pickles

There really is no need to give separate recipes for each type of pickle (unless you’re stuffing them, that is, like the aubergines in the recipes) when the method is the same for almost every kind of vegetable. The recipe below is for cabbage leaves, but quantities are also more or less the same for every vegetable, bearing in mind that some are smaller or larger than others and as a result you will need to increase or decrease the weight slightly. The most common pickling vegetables in Lebanon are cucumbers or meqteh. Aside from cabbage leaves, you can also pickle long, thin green chilli peppers (although you may need to increase the weight by 100g/3½oz as they are smaller than other vegetables and you can fit more in the same-sized jar); green tomatoes; and cauliflower, which is larger and denser and as a result you will need to use a little less (about 300g/11oz, trimming the bottom stalks to have only the top leaves). Some vegetables are ready before others and my suggestion is that you taste whichever vegetable you are pickling after two weeks to check if it is ready.

Makes a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

500g (1lb 1oz) cabbage leaves

4 garlic cloves (optional), peeled

1 fresh red chilli pepper (optional)

1 quantity of Lebanese or Turkish pickling solution

Roll up the cabbage leaves or cut them into medium-sized pieces – you will be able to fit more cabbage in the jar if you do this. Pack the leaves in a sterilised glass jar (see here). You can add peeled garlic cloves and one chilli pepper to pep up the taste, if you wish.

Pour the pickling solution over the cabbage leaves to cover them, then close the jar and store in a cool, dark place. Eat after 2–3 weeks.

Pickled Turnips

LIFT

The method here is the same as for pickling other vegetables except for the addition of beetroot to colour the pale turnips a shocking pink, which never fails to surprise diners who are unfamiliar with these pickles. Be sure to keep the jar away from the light and heat, though, or the colour will fade.

Makes a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

500g (1lb 1oz) small turnips

1 small beetroot, unpeeled and cut in quarters

1 fresh red chilli pepper (optional)

1 quantity of Lebanese pickling solution

Trim the stalk and root ends of the turnips, pulling out any thin roots on the skin. If the turnips are very small, cut them almost in half by making one deep vertical incision in the middle from the tip and stopping about 5mm (¼in) short of the stalk end; if they are small to medium in size, cut them in thin slices by making several deep vertical incisions every 1cm (½in), again making sure you do not slice through the other side.

Pack them in a sterilised jar (see here), interspersing with the beetroot quarters and adding the chilli pepper (if using). Pour over the pickling solution to cover the turnips, then close the jar and store in a cool, dark place. Eat after 2–3 weeks.

Strained Yoghurt

LABNEH

Labneh is often described as a cheese, but it isn’t: it is simply yoghurt that has been strained, with no rennet added to aid coagulation. The type of yoghurt you choose will obviously influence how good your labneh is. I often make mine using goat’s yoghurt, but sheep’s or cow’s yoghurt will do just as well. Just make sure you buy an organic or live-culture variety.

Makes 500g (1lb 1oz)

1kg (2lb 2oz) plain yoghurt

Lay a double layer of cheesecloth over a colander and pour the yoghurt into it. Gather up the edges of the cloth and tie the opposite ends together to make a pouch. Leave a space between the knots and the yoghurt so that you can hang up the pouch. Hang on the taps over the sink or suspend elsewhere over a large bowl to let the liquid drain off. Leave to drain overnight and serve with olive oil and za’tar or preserve as in the recipe on here.

Strained Yoghurt Balls

KABISS LABNEH

A great way of preserving labneh, or strained yoghurt, this is tastiest when made with goat’s or sheep’s yoghurt. If you add a chilli pepper and/or sprigs of dried thyme or another dried herb to the oil, you will make the labneh balls even more interesting. It is important to mix enough salt with the strained yoghurt before shaping it into balls so that it does not spoil.

Makes a 1 litre (1¾ pint) jar

1 tsp sea salt

1 quantity of labneh

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 fresh red chilli pepper (optional)

2 sprigs of dried thyme (optional)

Lay a clean piece of cotton or linen cloth over a tray, then sprinkle the salt over the strained yoghurt. Pinch off a little of the yoghurt and shape it into a ball the size of a small walnut. Place on the cloth and shape the rest of the yoghurt in the same way, spreading the balls on the cloth. Leave them to dry in a cool place for a day or two.

Carefully pack them in a sterilised glass jar (see here) and cover with extra-virgin olive oil. Add the chilli pepper and sprigs of thyme (if using) and close the jar. Store in a cool, dark place and eat after 1–2 months.

Drying Fruit, Nuts and Vegetables

In the Levant, drying is as important a method of preserving produce as pickling. Normally carried out at the end of the summer, it is applied not only to fruits and vegetables but to nuts as well – pistachios in particular.

Gaziantep in south-eastern Turkey is famous both for its dried vegetables and for its pistachios, and I love visiting it during the drying season. Pistachios are mostly planted on red clay soil in the surrounding countryside, which creates a wonderful backdrop to the distinctive trees with their slender trunks and wide branches that fan out gracefully, each branch carrying beautiful clusters of pink and red nuts. When fresh, the nuts are covered with a thick pink or red skin, and the combination of the pinks and greens, the red earth and the brilliant blue sky – the weather is always perfect at this time of the year – makes for a stunning scene, the traditional floral prints worn by the women who do the harvest adding yet more colour.

The pistachio harvest happens once every two years. The harvesters start the day early, with the women cooking a large pot of beyran, lamb soup, for breakfast, which they eat with flatbread and tea, sitting in the shade of the pistachio trees on blankets that they will later use for collecting the pistachios. After they have eaten their breakfast, the harvesters shake the blankets and get ready to pick the pistachios. The men lean wooden stepladders against the trees while the women lay the blankets around the base of the trunks to catch the nuts. Then some of the men climb into the trees to pick clusters of nuts from the top branches, letting them drop onto the blankets, while others stay on the ground to strip the lower branches. As the nut clusters fall, the women sort the ripe nuts from the unripe ones and the leaves that fall with them. They throw any unripe nuts and leaves off the blankets before gathering the blankets around the nuts and carrying them to a pickup truck where a couple of men unload the nuts straight into the back of the truck. I had never seen such huge piles of fresh pistachios – a symphony of red and pink. Some of the nuts are delivered to market traders to be sold fresh – they are considered a great delicacy when in season – while the rest are dried to be used in baklava and other preparations.

Another spectacular scene at this time of the year is the red peppers drying in the middle of parched fields – a truly eye-catching sight. The last time I had seen this was 30 years ago, on my way from Izmir to Istanbul. Along one stretch of the road women were spreading the peppers on long white cotton sheets to dry in the sun. I didn’t stop at the time, however, and have always regretted it. During a recent visit to the area, the scene was quite different. The sheets – much larger and made of plastic instead of cotton – were heaped with mounds of fresh peppers that were about to be spread to dry in the sun. Right next to the fresh peppers were sheets covered with already dried peppers that a group of men were packing into white sacks exactly like the original hessian ones except that they were woven out of plastic – no one seems to use natural materials any more. A big truck was parked in the middle of the field with some of the sacks already loaded onto it. The operation was enormous, more like a factory than a smallholding, although traditional drying methods were still being used.

Not far from all this activity was a small encampment where I found a lovely family – a middle-aged mother, her two young daughters and their father, a rugged countryman. They had migrated for the summer – a common practice among Turkish rural folk, who move either to find new pasture for their flocks or to help with the harvest as paid hands. They had set up a tent where they slept and a raised wooden terrace with a straw roof where they ate and relaxed. The father had even planted a miniature garden at the entrance of their little domain with a tiny fountain to provide freshness. I loved how he had made their temporary encampment as agreeable and cool as he could in the middle of the parched countryside. I reached them as they were finishing lunch, and with customary hospitality they immediately invited me and my companion, Filiz, to share their modest fare. The mother had just baked the most delicious flatbread, which she offered us together with some of her own homemade cheese.

After we had eaten, we drove up into the mountains where Filiz – a great friend and my guru on all culinary matters in Gaziantep – had been to visit families who had moved their sheep to graze and who made cheese with their milk. The mountains were bare, rocky and starkly beautiful, and the encampment when we came upon it was almost biblical: no vehicle in sight, just a couple of donkeys and a horse, with children running around. The scene appeared timeless, until we got closer, that is, and saw the plastic sheeting covering the walls of the tents. All the adults were toothless but this did not stop them from smiling broadly as they invited us to sit on the stone benches they had built outside their tents. After the customary greetings and exchange of niceties, we followed one of the women into the tent, where she was making cheese. She had already shaped one batch into small squares and was putting it to soak in brine. Everything was incredibly primitive. No electricity, no running water, and no gas fire – nothing that could indicate that the year was 2010. It reminded me of my early years in Mashta el-Helou when my aunt had no electricity or running water, but our life in her stone house was luxurious in comparison!

They must have had a television back in their permanent home because while we were sitting with the women, drinking tea and eating cheese, I watched one of the young and rather beautiful teenage girls get on the horse and start brandishing a toy gun, which she proceeded to shoot at her siblings and cousins as if she were a heroine in a Western. She even pretended to shoot the horse! It was a magical afternoon and all the more unexpected given how close we were to the city.

The families also had vegetables drying in the sun, more or less the way my aunt and mother had theirs. But their vegetables were nowhere near as pretty as those we saw the following day driving to another small town. On one side of the road, a young couple was stringing cored aubergines, courgettes and peppers on long cotton strings that they then suspended on a triangular structure. They had hung row upon row until they’d filled the entire frame, creating the most glorious pyramid of different shades of purple, green and yellow. As we drew closer, we saw that they had also filled the inside of the frame; laying sheets on the ground where they had spread diced aubergines to dry – to be used in a lovely risotto-like dish made with either rice or coarse burghul.

All this said, you can actually dry your own vegetables at home, in your own kitchen – you don’t need a sunny Levantine terrace, roof or field. You can dry vegetables either using a food dehydrator – they are fairly reasonable to buy – or simply in the oven, preheated to the lowest setting. Lay the vegetables on non-corrosive trays and place them in the oven, switching the trays every 30 minutes so that the vegetables dry evenly. You will need to keep an eye on them towards the end to make sure they don’t scorch. It is better to turn off the oven a little before they are completely dry and let the vegetables continue drying in the cooling oven than to risk spoiling the batch. To cook with the dried vegetables, first soak them in water until they are rehydrated, then use as you would fresh vegetables.

Here is how to prepare various kinds of vegetables for drying:

AUBERGINES AND COURGETTES

Cut the tops off and core the vegetables using a narrow apple corer or special corer that you can buy in Lebanese shops, leaving a shell that is just a few millimetres thick.

PEPPERS

I suggest you dry only red or yellow peppers as the green ones don’t have a nice colour when they are dried. Cut the tops off and remove the seeds and as much of the white ribs inside as you can without piercing the peppers or misshaping them.

OKRA

Use a very sharp knife to peel the top off, leaving a smooth pointed end.

GREEN BEANS

These need to be topped and tailed and stringed if the strings are tough. You can leave them whole or cut them into 5–6cm (2–2½in) pieces.

BUTTER, CANNELLINI OR OTHER BEANS

These are left to dry on the plant then spread on straw trays outdoors to dry further.

HERBS

Bunch these up and hang upside down somewhere dry. They will take quite a while to dry completely, about two weeks at least. I only dry mint, which is used extensively both as an ingredient and as a garnish, but you can dry basil or thyme (specifically Thymus vulgaris) to make your own za’tar. Or you can spread the herbs on sheets or straw trays. In either case, they need to be kept away from the sun in order to retain their colour.

Grape Leather and Sweet Walnut ‘Sausages’

BASTIK AND CEVIZ SUCUĞU

My father loved investing his hard-earned money in land and whenever he finished a contract (he was a civil engineer specialising in building roads and bridges), he would add to his property portfolio by buying a piece of land, either in the city or in the mountains. I make him sound like a tycoon, which he was not. Just a landowner at heart, like his ancestors. One year we all got very excited because he bought a mini vineyard in B’hamdun, a famous summer resort and my maternal grandfather’s place of birth. The vineyard was on a hill with the vines planted in terraces. The grapes were white, very small and very sweet and every summer we had baskets and baskets of fruit that we couldn’t eat. My mother had to find ways to use this abundance. She made sweet wine similar to that served in the Greek Orthodox church we belonged to and she also tried her hand at making malban (grape ‘leather’) like my aunt’s, with varying degrees of success. When I visited a place near Gaziantep, in south-eastern Turkey, where they were making bastik (Turkish for malban) and sweet walnut ‘sausages’, I was flooded with memories of picking grapes in our own little vineyard at B’hamdun and making malban at Mashta el-Helou, even though the location was very different.

The action was happening in a large hangar filled with the sweet walnut ‘sausages’ hanging from hundreds of cast-iron rings. On one side, set over wood fires, were huge, shallow copper cauldrons in which men were stirring the bubbling grape juice that they thickened with cornflour for it to set around the walnuts into ‘sausages’. The sunlight streamed through high narrow windows and bounced against the copper, bathing the whole room in a magical golden light that made me feel as if we had stepped back in time. And in a way I had, to my Mashta days, because what they were preparing in this big hangar was the same as my aunt’s grape ‘leather’; and when they started spreading some of it over the sheets with wooden trowels, I could just imagine my aunt, mother and cousins doing the same, if on a much smaller scale. They made theirs with the juice of grapes that the farmers brought up in huge baskets and tipped into a big tub set up in the courtyard of our big family house. My mother and aunt then washed my feet, as well as my siblings’ and my young cousins’, and lifted us, one by one, into the tub to trample the grapes. It was the most fun I ever had as a child. We jumped up and down on the fruit, splashing the juice all over our clothes, and with each big splash, we screeched with laughter and splashed even more.

That day, together with the times my aunt killed a chicken for our meal, were the best part of my Syrian summers. I never tired of running after the headless chicken, trying to avoid the trail of blood, tickled by how it stayed alive despite having lost its head. I may have been a quiet child but I was definitely not squeamish. After we finished crushing the grapes, we were lifted out of the vat and cleaned up before my aunt and mother strained the grape juice into large pots, which they placed over wood fires. They boiled the juice down until it became thick, then poured it over white sheets, laid all over the courtyard, spreading the hot concentrated juice very thinly over the sheets, which they left to dry in the sun. ’Ammto Zahiyeh always reserved a little of the sweet grape ‘soup’, as I liked to call it, to give each of us in a bowl. Many years later, on a visit to Regaleali Winery in Sicily, I tasted a by-product of their wine making, a kind of fermented grape juice, which reminded me of the Syrian grape ‘soup’ that I so loved as a child.

The next day, my mother and aunt gently peeled the grape ‘leather’ off the sheets. They cut it into squares, then folded the squares like handkerchiefs and stored them in large tin boxes. We always took a few of these tins back home and we ate the malban wrapped around walnut halves as a sweet snack after school. I occasionally see malban in the souks in Aleppo; it is also very common in the bazaars of Gaziantep although sometimes the Turkish version has one side dusted in cornflour, which makes it less silky than the Syrian variety. But I don’t remember anyone in Mashta making the sweet walnut ‘sausages’ and it was the first time I had seen them being made.

At the entrance of the hangar was a young man whose sole job was to string the walnut halves onto the cotton threads. We watched him do this, leaving a space between each, before tying the walnut threads onto the metal rings so that they looked a little like wind chimes. When the grape juice reached the right consistency, a couple of men took these rings from him and started dipping the walnut threads into the thickened boiling juice with a deft circular motion, several times, until the nuts were encased in the grape jelly, forming long sausage shapes that were slender except where they bulged around the nuts. The men then hung the rings over the cauldron to let the excess jelly drip back into it before removing them to hang on the beams to let them dry completely. The best of these sweet ‘sausages’ are made with real grape juice, as is bastik, although much of both types of confectionery are now made with pekmez

Makes 1 large sheet of grape leather

1.6kg (3lbs 7oz) seedless grapes, taken off the stems

Lemon juice to taste

100g (3½oz) golden caster sugar

Put the grapes in a large saucepan and crush them as much as you can with a potato masher. Add 120ml (4fl oz) water and place over a medium heat. Cook for about 15 minutes or until the grapes soften. Mash them more using the potato masher and add the juice of half a lemon (about 1 tablespoon) and the caster sugar. Stir until completely diluted and taste for sweetness. It should be sweet although not cloyingly so and the lemon should liven up the taste but not make it tart. After that, adjust both sugar and lemon to your taste and cook for another 30 minutes. Strain through a very fine sieve into a clean pan, pressing on the pulp to extract. Stir 1 tablespoon cornflour in 60ml (2fl oz) water and whisk it into the grape juice, then continue whisking for another 5 to 10 minutes until the juice has thickened.

Preheat the oven to 60ºC (140ºF), gas mark ¼. Line a large baking sheet with cling film that you can use in a microwave or a large silicone pastry mat. Pour the grape juice onto it and if necessary spread it evenly to have a thickness of about 1 or 2mm (just under 1⁄10in). Place in the oven making sure you don’t let the cling film touch the sides of the oven or the rack. Also be sure not to let it flap over the grape juice which will interfere with the drying. It will be quite a few hours before the mixture becomes grape leather, so it is best to leave it in the oven overnight and check after 8 hours to see if it has dried. Once done, peel off the cling film or the non-stick baking sheet and roll or cut into squares and fold like a handkerchief. Wrap in cellophane and store in a sealed container where it should last for quite some time.

Curing Olives

Throughout the Levant, olives are as much of a staple as bread. They are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and most Lebanese people finish their main meal with an olive or two, the way the French do with a piece of cheese. Olives are probably one of the earliest exports of Phoenician traders who established city-states along the Lebanese coast. My uncle owned olive groves in the Chouf Mountains, south-east of Beirut, and I still remember the hive of activity during olive harvest, when the olives were both taken to the press and brought in basketfuls to the house for my grandmother to preserve. She and my mother prepared the green olives in three different ways. They either left them whole, slit each olive lengthways with a sharp knife or crushed it with a clean stone or pestle to burst the flesh open but without breaking the olive pit. The preserving method was the same, although the taste differed depending on the initial preparation.

Once they had prepared the olives, they put them in a bowl and covered them with water, letting them soak for two days but changing the water twice a day. They then cut a few lemons into thin wedges and washed some fresh chilli peppers to have ready before they drained the olives and started layering them in large sterilised glass jars, arranging a few lemon wedges and a chilli or two in between the layers. The olives were then covered with water in which a large amount of salt had been dissolved. I still remember how my mother and grandmother would float an egg in the salted water to make sure they had added enough salt – a method known in Arabic as fowshet el-baydah (‘floating of the egg’). The uncut olives took longest to cure, about six months, while the slit ones became edible after two months and the crushed ones after three weeks.

Black olives were preserved in olive oil rather than brine, after first being washed in several changes of water then placed in a large crock and sprinkled liberally with sea salt. The olives were turned over twice a day for about four days to make sure they absorbed the salt uniformly. They were then covered with extra-virgin olive oil, plus a little wine vinegar, and turned over for two more days before being packed in sterilised glass jars. Depending on how ripe they were to start with – black olives are basically ripe green olives – they were ready to eat almost immediately or after 1–2 weeks.

The olives lasted us all year until the next harvest. During that time my mother would vary the flavour by dressing the olives with a little garlic and lemon juice or with orange peel and thyme. In Iran, they have a particularly famous dressing called parvardeh in which the cured olives are mixed with a thick sauce made by mixing pomegranate syrup with chopped walnuts, garlic and herbs, as in the recipe below.

Olives Marinated with Walnuts, Herbs and Pomegranate Syrup

ZEYTUN PARVARDEH

60g (2oz) shelled walnuts

4 garlic cloves, peeled

60ml (2fl oz) pomegranate syrup

½ tbsp dried mint

½ tbsp dried coriander

1 tsp ground angelica

150g (5oz) green olives

Sea salt

Finely ground black pepper

Put the walnuts and garlic in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Transfer to a mixing bowl that is large enough to also take the olives. Add the pomegranate syrup, dried herbs and ground angelica and mix well. Add the olives and taste before you season with a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Serve immediately or store in a sealed jar in the fridge to serve later.

Making Qawarma

We usually spent the first part of our summers in Syria with ’Ammto Zahiyeh and the latter part with my Lebanese grandmother, in Rechmaya, a lovely village perched above a dramatic valley in the Chouf Mountains. By the time we got to my grandmother, she and her sister, Tante Marie, who lived there all year round, were in full flow preparing their winter preserves, together with my mother’s sister, Tante Jeannot, who never married.

Everything about Rechmaya was different from Mashta el-Helou. The houses were on the road with balconies at the front and lush orchards at the back. Some houses were old while others had been built more recently but none had vaulted rooms like those at my aunt’s house. Amenities were more modern: there was no electricity or running water at first in Mashta whereas these were always available in Rechmaya, at least from what I can remember. But the rhythm of life was fairly similar in each place. My grandmother’s family grew most of their produce and they made everything at home, including their qawarma, a lamb ‘confit’ consumed during the winter months when sheep are too thin to slaughter; it is one of the staples of Lebanese mountain people. The preparation of qawarma started long before we arrived for the summer, from the moment Tante Marie bought the lamb and started fattening it. She, my grandmother and Tante Jeannot treated it like a precious child, hand-feeding it on mulberry leaves and visiting it between feeds to make sure it was happy. They even gave it a name. But the lamb’s life as a pet was brief and its pampered existence came to a brutal end at the end of the summer when it had grown plump enough to be killed.

The slaughter may have been bad news for the poor lamb, but it was an occasion for great feasting in the family. Once it had been butchered by one of my uncles, my grandmother, mother and aunts set about preparing the meat. And not one scrap of that animal was wasted. The principle of no waste is an established rule in Lebanese culinary tradition and throughout the Levant, and the making of qawarma is a perfect example of this wise approach to food.

The first thing they did was to prepare the offal, which otherwise spoiled quickly. My grandmother cut up the liver, still warm, into small pieces and placed it on a plate, together with a little mound of diced fat from the tail, for the family’s breakfast. I would sit next to her while she prepared some liver bites for me. She’d tear off a piece of pita bread and placed a cube or two of liver on it. She’d then add a cube of fat, season the meat with salt and different spices, wrap the bread around the meat and pop the whole thing into my mouth. For some reason, I don’t quite remember the slaughter (perhaps I was not allowed to watch it), but I can still taste the exquisite freshness of the raw liver. People may baulk at the thought of eating raw liver for breakfast, but in Lebanon it is considered one of the ultimate delicacies.

With breakfast over, the hard work would begin. My grandmother and mother took charge of singeing the head and feet of the lamb. They then washed them, in several changes of water and soap, before scrubbing the stomach and intestines, which they also washed many times, until they were so clean you could hardly smell them. Then one would cut the tripe in pieces, which she sewed into pouches, while the other turned the intestines inside out. They stuffed the pouches and intestines with a mixture of rice, meat and chickpeas and put them to simmer in a large pot together with the head and feet.

While my mother and grandmother were making the ghammeh, my aunts, using razor-sharp knives, chopped most of the meat and tail fat into very small pieces. They melted the fat and cooked the meat in it to make qawarma. The leg meat was reserved for kibbeh and I still remember how they pounded it in a large marble mortar with a wooden pestle. The fillet was reserved for grilled kebabs while the bones, with whatever meat that was left on them, were cooked with wheat to make h’risseh.

The proportions for making qawarma is twice as much meat as fat. You won’t find sheep-tail fat in the West, but the fat from around the kidneys is a good substitute and I recommend you use it with meat from the neck or the shoulder. First melt the fat, then cook the hand-chopped meat in it, adding enough sea salt for the qawarma to taste almost too salty – this will preserve it better – and cook, uncovered, stirring the meat very regularly until the meat is well browned. Pour into sterilised glass jars (see here) and allow to cool completely before covering the jars with the lids. Qawarma should last the whole year if kept in the fridge.

Tomato Paste

Another favourite moment of my Lebanese mountain summers was when my grandmother and mother joined forces to make tomato paste for both households. They would squeeze mountains of tomatoes with their hands into a large fine sieve that they had set over a very large pot. My grandmother then salted the strained tomato juice and boiled it down until it turned into a thick dark paste. They didn’t leave the pot for long, taking it in turns to stir the tomatoes regularly, and whenever my grandmother stirred the juice, I would be there with my spoon asking for a taste – my mother would have told me to go away. I loved trying the paste as it reduced, the flavour becoming more and more intense. And I still love nibbling on tomato paste when I use it, although none of the commercial ones have the same intense flavour, except for the Sicilian estrattu, which they dry in the sun, stirring the tomatoes regularly until the paste is so thick you can cut it with a knife. It is the only tomato paste that gives me a madeleine moment when I taste it because the intense flavour and thick texture is so close to the paste my mother and grandmother made. You really need to wait till high summer to make your own and you need to choose tomatoes that are very ripe but without any rot spots.

Makes three 500g (1lb 1oz) jars

4kg (8¾lb) ripe tomatoes, peeled, deseeded and finely chopped

1 tbsp sea salt

Juice of 1 lemon

Put the chopped tomatoes and salt in a very large saucepan and place over a low heat. Cook, stirring regularly – less so at the beginning than towards the end when the mixture becomes very thick – until the tomatoes have reduced by a little more than 50 per cent.

Add the salt and mix well, then pour into three sterilised jars (see here) and add a teaspoon or so of lemon juice to each jar. This will help preserve the paste and keep its colour. Wait until the paste is completely cool before sealing the jars shut. Kept in the fridge or a very cool larder, it will last for at least a year.

Pepper Paste

It was in a remarkably ugly setting in Gaziantep that I finally got to see how pepper paste is made. Gaziantep is a bustling, sprawling city in south-eastern Turkey with a small historic centre that is the only part worth visiting. However, during the month of September it is just as interesting to walk through the modern neighbourhoods because wherever you go, you will see families busy preserving food as if they were still living in the middle of the countryside, using the pavements or narrow lanes outside their homes as if they were gardens or courtyards.

Pepper paste is an essential ingredient in Turkish cuisine, and when I asked my friend Filiz (who is the person to go to for all things culinary in Gaziantep) where would be the best place to see it being made, she asked a shop owner who sold it and we were directed to a shabby modern building in a busy part of the town. One of the families residing in the building had hired a massive bright red metal pepper crusher, which had just been delivered in a truck. The driver unloaded it onto the pavement where sacks of trimmed peppers were waiting. The men of the family dumped sack after sack into the machine and put bucket after bucket under the spout to collect the minced peppers. They then formed a chain to take the buckets up onto the roof where the women were waiting, having laid plastic sheets all over the ground. The women poured the contents of the buckets over the sheets, spreading the paste so that it would dry evenly.

They were also drying aubergines, which they had strung all around the parapet, and dyed lamb’s wool, which they had hung on ropes in between the sheets on which they had spread the pepper paste. That week, it was this family’s turn to take over the roof space in order to make their year’s preserves. The following week was the turn of the family on the floor above them and the week before it had been the turn of the family living below. It may not have been such a pretty scene as my Lebanese grandmother and her sister at work during the summer in Rechmaya, but the results were essentially the same.

Even though you cannot get the same peppers as the large mild ones growing in that part of Turkey or northern Syria, you can make your own pepper paste by mixing a few hot chilli peppers with regular red bell or Romano peppers to get the subtle heat that is so typical of Turkish pepper paste. You can also make the paste using dried peppers (mostly guajillos, with a tiny percentage of arbol for the heat), which you need to trim, deseed and soak before processing with salt, as below.

Makes about 750g (1lb 10oz)

2kg (4lb 4oz) red peppers (either bell or Romano), trimmed and deseeded

50g (2oz) red chilli peppers, trimmed and deseeded

2 tbsp sea salt

Chop up the peppers in a food processor until completely pulverised. Transfer to a saucepan and add 125ml (4½fl oz) of water. Place over a medium heat and simmer, stirring regularly, for about 15 minutes. Take off the heat and add the salt, mixing it in well.

Pour the pepper purée into a large, shallow non-stick or Pyrex baking dish – you do not want to use a material that may corrode. Cover with cheesecloth and put to dry in a sunny place – inside if you do not have a terrace or garden, or outside if you do. Stir every day and leave to dry in the sun until you have a thick paste. Alternatively, you can spread the purée on a baking tray and place in the oven, on a low heat, stirring the paste every few hours until it has baked to a very thick paste.

Once dried, transfer to sterilised glass jars with tight-fitting lids (see here) and cover with olive oil before sealing shut. Store in a cool dark place.

Kishk

Kishk is made by fermenting burghul with yoghurt, drying it, then crumbling and sifting it to get a fine powder resembling white wholewheat flour. An important winter staple in the Lebanese mountains, it is prepared at the very end of summer. Watching the process was another highlight of my childhood summers and I often put my hands and arms into the big tub as my grandmother or aunt stirred more yoghurt into the wheat, which they did every day for about a week until the mixture thickened and soured. I pretended I wanted to help, but I was really after the cool feel of the yoghurt against my skin. When the mixture had thickened and fermented to the level they required, they picked it up in handfuls, laying it out on white sheets spread in the shade to let it dry. This took a few days and when the kishk was dry, my grandmother brought out a large fine metal sieve and she, my mother and my aunts sat around the sieve to crush the hardened chunks between the palms of their hands for my grandmother to sift the crumble into a fine powder that is used with qawarma to make a hearty breakfast soup. Kishk is also mixed with tomatoes, onion, walnuts and olive oil to make a topping for the Arabic equivalent of pizza, manaqish.

Tarhana is the Turkish equivalent of kishk. The base is the same – burghul and fermented yoghurt – but the dish otherwise varies from region to region or even family to family. In some regions, they add vegetables while in others they make it with wholewheat. It can also be made into a coarse powder speckled with green and red bits from the various vegetables that have been added, ground up finely or left in jagged chunks that look like pieces of modern sculpture. There are many more variations of tarhana than kishk but the end result is the same. All are reconstituted with water to make a thick soup, or in some cases a thick topping or filling for savoury pastries. The taste is rather sour due to the fermentation process and the soup is always served blistering hot. You can omit the meat or qawarma and simply make the soup with butter and garlic for a vegetarian option.

Serves 2

60g (2oz) qawarma or 30g (1oz) butter and 30g (1oz) freshly minced lamb, from the shoulder or shanks (either ask your butcher to mince the lamb or do it yourself using the fine attachment on a meat grinder)

4 large garlic cloves, peeled

125g (4½oz) kishk

Sea salt

Put the qawarma and garlic in a saucepan, place over a medium heat and cook until the garlic is softened. If you are using minced lamb, first melt the butter over a medium heat, add the garlic and sauté until soft, then add the meat and cook until browned.

Add the kishk and 500ml (18fl oz) of water, stirring these in gradually, a little at a time, so that the mixture does not become lumpy. Depending on the brand of kishk, you may need a little more or less water to achieve the right consistency.

Bring to the boil, stirring constantly, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes. Taste before adding any salt as the kishk is already salted. The soup should be thick but not too thick – more like a thin porridge. Serve very hot with pita or crusty bread.

Shanklish

Even today, nearly 50 years later, I can still picture my wonderful aunt Zahiyeh making shanklish, the Syrian equivalent to Roquefort, bending over a big enamel tub to knead the qarisheh (curd). She produced the curd by boiling yoghurt with a little lemon juice until it curdled and then draining it overnight. The next morning she tipped the curd into the tub and seasoned it with salt and chilli flakes before kneading it. She would then ask my mother to help her make cheese balls the size of oranges which they set to dry over straw before packing them into earthenware jars and placing them in the qabu (cool room where my aunt kept her preserves) to let the cheese ferment. The balls were left for a few weeks until they developed a coat of mould, at which stage my mother and grandmother took them out of the jars to rinse off the mould. They then rolled the cleaned cheese balls in dried thyme and stored them again but this time in glass jars. I always wanted to lend a hand, and my aunt was very sweet, letting me shape a few cheese balls, which she inevitably had to reshape after I’d finished.

To make the cheese you need to boil yoghurt with a little lemon juice (about half a lemon to 3kg (6lbs 6oz) yoghurt and make sure your yoghurt is live culture. The yoghurt will curdle as soon as it comes to the boil, at which point you will take it off the heat and put to strain in cheesecloth. The excess liquid should drain within a few hours. Then you knead the curds with enough salt to make the cheese salty but not so much to make it inedible and add as much Aleppo pepper as you need for your cheese to be as spicy as you’d like. After that, roll the cheese into balls the size of a small orange and spread on a clean kitchen towel to dry (outside if you have space or somewhere away from the heat and draughts in your kitchen. Leave to dry for a couple of days then put in clean jars and leave for another few days until mould develops on the cheese – traditionally this was done in earthenware jars that were only used to ferment the cheese and the right bacteria was inside the jars, but I doubt very many people do this now. Anyhow, you need to rinse off the mould then roll the cheeses in dried thyme and store again in clean jars where they will start ageing – although the cheese is so good, it is difficult to leave it to age too long. Store the jars in a cool place or the refrigerator.

Fig Jam

I don’t think I have ever had a better fig jam than my aunt Zahiyeh’s. She used pale green figs from the tree on the other side of the lane from her house, which she referred to as my father’s tree because he ate all the figs from it when he was a child. They were his favourite fruit. Like him, I love figs and I always helped to pick them for the jam, often annoying my mother by eating more than I put in the basket. My aunt was much more relaxed about my greed. In fact, she nearly killed me when I was six months old by weaning me on figs. Before she made the jam, she first dried the figs. We would take baskets and baskets of them up onto the flat roof of her house together with white sheets that we spread out and anchored with stones at each corner and along the edges. We then pressed the figs open and spread them, open side up, on the sheets to let them dry in the sun. When they were dry, my aunt set about making the jam, cooking the figs with a little sugar, mastic, bay leaves and aniseed. She would spread the thick jam in layers inside empty baklava tins, sprinkling toasted sesame seeds in between each layer, and always gave us a few tins to take back home with us. I guess there isn’t much chance of getting home-dried figs like hers in the West to make this jam. The best you can do is to buy the highest-quality dried figs you can find.

Makes two 500g (1lb 1oz) jars

1kg (2lb 2oz) dried figs

900g (2lb) golden granulated sugar

Juice of ½ lemon

1½ tsp ground aniseed

115g (4oz) toasted sesame seeds (to toast them yourself)

1 tsp orange blossom water

¼ tsp ground mastic

Put the figs and sugar in a large saucepan and add 750ml (1⅓ pints) of water. Place over a medium heat and cook, stirring all the time, until the sugar is dissolved. Add the lemon juice and the aniseed and continue stirring until the figs have softened and the syrup thickened. This will take about 30 minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and add the sesame seeds and orange blossom water and mix well. Let the figs cool a little, then add the mastic and quickly mix it in. Cover the pan with a clean tea towel and let the jam cool before transferring it to two sterilised jars (see here). Seal the jars shut and store in a cool dark place.

Apricot Jam

My mother always made our jams when we were children. Depending on the season and what the ambulant vendors had piled high in their carts, she would buy kilos and kilos of fruit to turn into jam. My two favourites were apricot and quince. You can vary the recipe below, substituting the apricots with the same quantity of hulled strawberries or pitted plums or cherries, or whatever fruit you feel like using, simply adjusting the quantity of sugar slightly, depending on how sweet or sour the fruit is.

Makes two 500g (1lb 1oz) jars

1kg (2lb 2oz) fresh apricots, pitted and halved

500g (1lb 1oz) golden caster sugar

Put the apricots and sugar in a large saucepan, ideally a copper jam-making one, and place over a medium-high heat. Bring to the boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Then reduce the heat to medium and leave to bubble gently for a further 25 minutes, still stirring regularly.

Make sure the jam has thickened properly or it will not last as long, nor be as good. Test by placing a drop on a chilled saucer and leaving for a few seconds. If the surface of the jam wrinkles when you push it with a finger, it is ready. If not, the jam will need to boil for a few more minutes.

Let the jam cool a little in the pan before transferring to two sterilised jars (see here). Allow it to cool down completely before sealing the jars.

Quince Jam

I love quince jam, both for its pretty pink colour and for the texture of the fruit, which doesn’t seem to soften too much. And I was always mesmerised by the sight of my mother patiently slicing quinces into a mountain of tiny triangular pieces, which turned from pale when raw into a gorgeous pink as they started cooking. You can substitute the quince in this recipe with apples, if you prefer, which may take a little less time to cook.

Makes two 500g (1lb 1oz) jars

1.25kg (2¾lb) quinces, peeled and cored (making 1kg/2lb 2oz of prepared quince)

750g (1lb 10oz) golden caster sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

2 cloves (optional)

Cut the peeled quinces into quarters, slice each in half lengthways and then cut these into small thin triangular pieces.

Put the quince pieces in a large saucepan, preferably a copper jam-making one, add 250ml (9fl oz) of water and place over a medium heat. Bring to the boil and allow to bubble for 3–4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the sugar and boil for a further 5 minutes, continuing to stir, then reduce the heat to medium-low and leave to bubble for 15–20 minutes or until the water has evaporated and the jam thickened. Make sure you stir the mixture all the time so that it doesn’t stick. By the time the jam is ready, the colour should have changed to pink or reddish depending on the type of quince.