Category Food
There’s nothing quite like fresh bread, the way it hits all five senses. First, the smell — warm and earthy, straight from the oven. Then the feel — a dusting of flour on the crust, a little crunch between your… Continue Reading →
Two of my strongest memories of living in Saudi Arabia are the date vendor at the outdoor market and a day trip we took to the oasis of Al-Ahsa. In the market in downtown Al-Khobar, gleaming mounds of dates flowed… Continue Reading →
I spent two incredible years in Algeria and vividly recall the local dishes with their rich flavors and colors. Fresh flatbread baked on a griddle, just steps from the Premier Mai market. The daily specials at the tiny restaurant up… Continue Reading →
Dear Other Things, can you tell me your favorite resources? How do you decide what to write about? And where do you find your information? I get questions like this a lot, people asking where I get the ideas and… Continue Reading →
You’re here for some delicious Middle Eastern food? Welcome to Part Two of my project, listing every English-language cookbook about Middle Eastern food from 2010 to 2022. As we saw in Part One of this list, these works cover a… Continue Reading →
Reading cookbooks is addictive, isn’t it? I have a bunch of Middle Eastern ones in my collection and can’t resist flipping through new ones. And the number of cookbooks covering the Middle East has soared over the past decade. While… Continue Reading →
One of my favorite memories of Egypt is sipping fresh drinks at a local cafe. I loved grabbing a chair on the sidewalk to watch the world go by, or settling myself at a small table inside. Breathing in the… Continue Reading →
Middle Eastern street food — shawarma and falafel probably come to mind, but what do you know about street food in Egypt? I remember baked sweet potatoes, served hot off a hand-drawn cart as it wove through downtown Cairo. Or… Continue Reading →
In the growing genre of Middle Eastern cookbooks, you can’t escape names like Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, and Claudia Roden. Ottolenghi’s 2010 vegetarian cookbook Plenty launched him as an international name, for example. Tamimi’s 2020 work Falastin received numerous accolades… Continue Reading →