List

Arab Levant

Qawrama is the name of a preserved lamb fat--known as a kind of duhniyāt--a fat or grease used for cooking in Lebanese and Syrian dishes, and the name of a dish of mutton or beef cut into small pieces and braised with lots of onions and tomatoes...

The Preserved Lamb Fat of the Arabs

Nearly every Middle Eastern or Mediterranean cookbook I’ve ever looked at understandably describes the Middle and Near Eastern and North African mazza or meze or mezze as “appetizers...

What is a Meze?

Who has never heard of shish kebab? In Turkish, shish kebab, literally means “gobbets of meat roasted on a spit or skewers...

On Shish Kebabs

Following the littoral to the east along the North African coast from Tunisia, we do not meet any significant fishing activity until we reach the coast of Egypt...

Fishing off Egypt and Syria in Medieval Times and Today

If today we can say that hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza are famous everyday dishes in America, the same can be discovered for the medieval Islamic Arab world during its golden age...

Famous Everyday Dishes from the Medieval Arab World

Food writers, and some scholars as well, have for years popularized the idea that returning Crusaders were responsible for the appearance of this or that food in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages...

The Crusaders and the Diffusion of Foods

Farīk (ﻔﺭﻴﻚ), the classical Arabic spelling, but known in colloquial Arabic from Syria to Algeria as fireek, freekeh, freeky, or freek is an immature hard wheat (durum wheat or semolina, Triticum turgidum var...