Nut

Tagine barkok, made with or without honey, is one of the most popular fruit tagines of North Africa. It is eaten with bread. Restaurants in Paris accompany it with couscous and bowls of boiled chickpeas and boiled raisins (see page 377).

This Tunisian dish, more commonly made with dried chestnuts, is more to my taste with fresh and even frozen ones. While Tunisia has been sympathetic to Western ideas, and although it was subjected to a massive immigration of French and Italian peasants when it became a French protectorate, it has sustained Arab cooking in its most ancient form. This beautiful and fragrant stew is an example.

Hardly any dishes were invented by restaurant chefs in Turkey, but this one was, by a man called Iskander; that is why it is also known as Iskander kebab. It made its appearance in the 1920s, after the Ottoman Empire had crumbled and Turkey became a republic. The cooks who had worked in the palace kitchens and in the homes of the aristocracy (much of the aristocracy moved to Egypt) became unemployed and looked for ways to survive. Many of them opened restaurants—lokandesi and kebab houses. This dish has remained a mainstay of Turkish kebab houses, where it is sometimes served dramatically in a dome-shaped copper dish—the type that was used at the palace. On one level it reflects the preponderance of yogurt in the Turkish kitchen. I serve it in deep individual clay bowls which can be kept hot in the oven. It is a multi-layered extravaganza. There is toasted pita bread at the bottom. It is covered by a light sauce made with fresh tomatoes, topped by a layer of yogurt. This is sprinkled with olive oil which has been colored with paprika and with pine nuts. Skewers of grilled ground meat kofta or small burgers (as in this recipe) are laid on top. The tomato sauce and the meat must be very hot when you assemble the dish. The yogurt should be at room temperature.

The grandest Arab meal is a whole stuffed baby lamb. A succulent leg accompanied by the traditional stuffing called hashwa is a representative of that ideal. The meat is cooked gently, for a long time, to such melting tenderness that you can pull morsels off with your fingers.

In the Middle East, turkeys range freely and are small and tough, more like game birds, so they are usually stewed, which makes the flesh tender and moist. In America, roasting is best for the birds.

Fesenjan is a famous Persian sauce for rice with stewed duck. I love the sauce, which has a special sweet-and-sour flavor from pomegranate molasses (rob-e nar), but I don’t like stewed duck, so I roast the duck instead.

This was a regular at my aunt Régine’s dinner parties. It is similar to dishes featured in medieval manuals. The French would call it a galantine.

Chicken with rice-and-ground-meat stuffing or hashwa is a classic festive dish of the Arab world. The old way was to boil the stuffed chicken first, then briefly roast it to give it a golden color. These days it is more common to cook the stuffing separately and to roast the chicken. For a large party you can make double the quantity, shape the stuffing in a mound in a large round oven dish, cover it with the cut-up pieces of chicken, then heat it through, covered with foil, before serving.

In Morocco they say that this dish, like many others, was brought back from Andalusia by the Moors after the Reconquista.

A magnificent dish, and a stunning example of the way Moroccans mix savory and sweet. Chicken pieces are first stewed with lemon juice and saffron, then baked with a topping of almonds and honey.

A Turkish dish in which yogurt, an important feature in Turkish cooking, is flavored with cardamom and ginger.

This Moroccan tagine is one of my favorites. The chicken cooks in the juice of the tomatoes, which reduces to a sumptuous, thick, honeyed, almost caramelized sauce. And it looks beautiful too.

In this delicately flavored and scrumptious Moroccan qdra, the long-cooked almonds should become very soft. As so often in Moroccan cooking, one onion is cooked first with the meat or chicken, and when these are nearly done, the remaining onions are added. The first onion is used to add flavor to the meat, and it practically melts and disappears into the sauce. The onions added later keep their shape and add body to the sauce.

Many years ago, hearing of her prestigious cooking, I went to see a woman in Casablanca. She received me in a pale-blue kaftan on a patio with turquoise-and-cobalt mosaics. She explained that her family was from Fez and that her cooking was Fassi, which is reputedly the most refined regional cuisine of Morocco. She had three cooks working for her, but when she had guests, even only one or two, she said she spent at least six hours cooking in the kitchen herself. I asked if there were ways of shortening the cooking times. She said no. Her daughter, who was studying law in the States, interrupted: “Yes, there are shortcuts, you don’t have to take that long.” Her mother was deeply offended. Were all those years that she had spent in the kitchen to please her family a waste, then? Were all her efforts to make things exquisite of little value? We cannot, of course, aspire to the extraordinary refinements of the grand family kitchens of Morocco, but we can achieve quite delicious results without much trouble. One of the recipes the lovely lady gave me was for pigeons stuffed with couscous. When she had a party, she prepared a huge mountain of couscous and covered it with little pigeons, shining and golden in their honey sauce. This is an extremely easy version of the grand dish. Using quick-cooking couscous makes it easy. You can double the number of pigeons for a dinner party, but then you will need more large saucepans.

A Turkish delicacy. A humble fish for a regal occasion. The skin of the fish is stuffed with its own flesh mixed with a rich filling. It is rolled in beaten egg, then in flour and breadcrumbs, and deep-fried in olive or nut oil. It is quite a bit of work but is delicious eaten hot or cold, as an entrée or as a main dish.

Tarator is the name used in different countries for sauces made with a variety of nuts. This sharp, garlicky one with pine nuts belongs to Syria and Lebanon. In Egypt it was served at grand buffet parties, where whole fish were entirely covered with it. For this simpler version you may use any white fish—fillets or steaks.

You have to love garlic to appreciate this most ancient of sauces.

The large individual pies make a wonderful first course.

In Turkey and Egypt during the period of the Ottoman Empire, the women in the harems, the wives and concubines of the Sultans and aristocracy, were the widows and daughters captured at war. The Circassians among them were known for their beauty and their culinary skills. This classic is part of their legacy. The recipe was given by Luli Fevsi and comes from the kitchens of the old Ottoman aristocracy in Egypt. It is a cold dish which may be served as an hors d’oeuvre or as part of a buffet table.

In Turkey all kinds of vegetables, including cauliflower and green beans, are dressed with a nut sauce called tarator. Here celeriac and carrots make a good combination of flavor and color, and yogurt is a refreshing addition to the sauce.