All recipes, both our own plus those reprinted with permission from cookbook publishers
Courgettes (zucchini) baked in a cheese sauce (kousa bi gebna) may sound like a very basic dish and yet this recipe was the surprise winner of all the food we cooked when reviewing Ghillie Bassan’s The Lebanese Cookbook. Described as a typical family dish, it consists of sliced courgettes baked in cheesy egg mixture reminiscent ... Read more »
Palestinian Upside-Down Rice, Lamb & Aubergine (Maklubeh Bajinjan) is an impressive dish to serve – a turned-out-from-the-dish dome of rice and lamb wrapped in slices of silky aubergine – and a delight of really simple flavours that adds up to far more than the sum of its ingredients. The recipe is from Ghillie Bassan’s The ... Read more »
This delicious recipe for meat and bulgur balls in yoghurt (kibbeh labaniyya) is a real change from the tomato-based European (Italian) and South Asian (Indian and Burmese) meatball recipes we have made before, and has a pleasingly tangy flavour profile from the natural yoghurt. The recipe is from Ghillie Bassan’s The Lebanese Cookbook and is ... Read more »
As gluten-free digestive biscuits are now readily available, this no-bake salted caramel cheesecake is quick and easy to make and impressive to serve. The recipe is from Becky Excell’s How to Make Anything Gluten Free , a cookbook full of proven recipes and methods for making gluten-free versions of recipes that usually feature gluten. Read ... Read more »
Once you are diagnosed with coeliac disease, gluten ataxia or any other condition that requires you to cut all gluten out of your diet, there are certain foods you start to hanker for now that you can no longer buy them easily – pastries, cakes, breads, pizza, pies, and so much more. When Nicky reviewed ... Read more »
This delicious Date Cake with Caramel Sauce is the invention of cookbook author Anas Atassi’s mother, and is one of the recipes in his book, Sumac. Soft, sticky dried dates provide both body and sweetness in the cake and reduce the volume of refined sugar needed. The result is a cake that is light and ... Read more »
Today’s recipe is Syrian Fish with Sumac Tahini Sauce (Tajen samak), another delicious treat from Sumac by Anas Atassi. It’s the first time I’ve tasted tahini with white fish but now I’ve tried it, I love it. That sumac pairs so well is less of a surprise, its citrusy notes amplify the lemon used in the ... Read more »
This Syrian Lamb Koftas in Tahini Sauce is the first recipe we made from Sumac by Anas Atassi and it was a real winner. Straightforward to make, it’s a deliciously different way to use minced lamb and the results are wonderful. The meat mixture – herby with parsley and fragrant with all spice, ground coriander, ... Read more »
This beautifully spiced white fish curry can be made with any firm-fleshed fish such as tuna, mackerel or trevally (also known as giant kingfish). The spices give fragrance and flavour, but this isn’t a hot curry. The recipe is from Peter Kuruvita’s Serendip: My Sri Lankan Kitchen cookbook. Read our full review of Serendip: My ... Read more »
This Sri Lankan Snake Bean Curry is a lovely and simple vegetable dish combining fresh beans, spices and coconut milk. The first time I found snake beans (also known as yard-long beans and cowpeas) in a local Chinese supermarket I used them in a classic Thai pad krapow. They taste a lot like green beans ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]