Recipes

Persian meatballs in a rich spinach and orange sauce

Potica is a traditional holiday cake in Slovenia. It is baked on important occasions, like Christmas and Easter.

Sally Butcher and her husband Jamshid kindly talked me through this recipe, which is a Middle Eastern classic. Poussin are skinned, cut up and left to sit in a bath of lime juice for 24 hours, before they are grilled or barbecued, basted all the while with saffron butter.

Syria’s national dish of minced meat and burghul is so deeply loved that over the years its fans have found many different ways to prepare it. The secret is using fresh, very finely minced meat. This is carefully spiced then served raw, baked or fried in endlessly varying shapes, often with delicious fillings (that often include more minced meat). This recipe is for a kind of kibbeh sandwich: a layer of cooked, spiced meat and pine nuts is pressed between two layers of fine kibbeh, then baked and served in wedges like pieces of cake. Serve with salad and drained yoghurt (natural yoghurt that has been drained in muslin until thick).

A Palestinian tradition, maqluba means “upside down” in Arabic and is a pot of stewed meat, rice and fried vegetables, cooked and flipped onto a serving dish to form an impressive tower. In Maha Sarsour’s version, the rice is richly spiced with cinnamon, allspice and more, and the chicken simmers to tenderness as it gives its flavour to the rice.

The thing I love about Hairtail is there aren’t many bones. Makes for easy eating!

The sound of the hot syrup as it’s poured onto the hot pastry is one of the best things, only surpassed by the sound of your first crunchy bite into this golden delicacy. Yum! This is a fantastic recipe for baklava.

This dried eggplant dolma recipe is a speciality of Somer’s mother. Traditionally in Turkey, small long eggplants are cut in half, hollowed out, then put on strings and dried out in the sun. In the rural areas, it is not possible to find eggplant in winter, so this is a great way of preserving them.

This pancake has been known for its soft and delicate texture, therefore is also given the name Pumpkin Soft Cake.