The Kitchen

Upside-Down Rice

Take 3 uqiyyas of lean meat and chop it like meat for grilling, or even smaller, and chop an onion fine. In a pot on the fire put an uqiyya of ghee and throw in the onion until it wilts; then put the meat on top, and add salt and allspice and half an uqiyya of soaked chickpeas. Fry all this together, then add a glass of water to the meat and let it boil until it dries. Then rinse an oka of rice and add it to the meat without water. Then take a second pot and put in it a little water and salt; when it has come to a good boil, pour it over the rice that you have laid over the meat, and let the pot boil until it dries. When the rice is done, take it down off the fire and do not stir it; then turn it out onto a tray, which you set over a low fire until the rice sets, the pot staying over the tray until serving time.

Rice with Spring Chickens

Take the spring chicken and cut it into four pieces after slaughtering and cleaning it. Heat a little ghee in a pot and fry the chicken until it browns; then put water, salt, and allspice over it, and cook until it is done. Then take 3 uqiyyas of rice, rinse it, and drop it over the chicken; put in a sufficient quantity of water and cook. When the rice is done, take it off the fire and stir it, then set it over a low fire; and at serving time serve it with a lettuce salad alongside.

Rice with Small Birds

Take the birds, pluck and dress them, and wipe each one with a clean cloth, without water. Put the ghee in a pot and heat it, fry the birds in it, and put a little water over them; when it boils, add the salt and allspice. Then rinse 3 uqiyyas of rice and drop it into the pot, putting in a sufficient quantity of water. When it is done, take it off the fire and stir it, then set it over a low fire so that it stays hot until serving time.

Fish Tagine

Clean the fish and fry it a little, then arrange it in the baking dish and add onion chopped in slivers and peeled tomato cut in slivers; add butter or ghee, salt, allspice, and cinnamon, and a few sour qarasiya plums; then bake it in the oven until it is done.

Useful hint: In place of the qarasiya you may use sour pomegranate syrup, or sumac, or bitter wine.

Baked Fish with Tahini

Peel the onion and cut it in slivers, then fry it in the oil in which you fried the fish. Then beat the tahini with lemon juice and salt and two pounded cloves of garlic. Put the fish in the middle of the dish, pour the onion and the tahini over it, and bake it in the oven. After baking, garnish it with sprigs of parsley and boiled potatoes.

Stuffed Fish

After cleaning the fish well, split it carefully and remove its bones; then stuff it with pieces of

Buy the special cutlet meat, then pound it with the cutlet mallet or with the ordinary mallet, then sprinkle it with salt, allspice, and pepper. Beat two or three eggs (according to the quantity of meat), and for each egg add either a spoonful of rusk crumbs or of flour; then add a little salt, allspice, and pepper, dip each piece of cutlet in the egg and the crumbs, and fry the cutlets in ghee. Then thicken what remains of the ghee with a spoonful of ham and allspice — or of the rusk crumbs, or of salted biscuits — together with two tablespoons of butter or fat, and roast it in the oven. Then serve it with pieces of boiled potato and pieces of lemon, cut first into rounds and then into four pieces, set in the shape of a flower around the fish and decorated with parsley leaves so as to imitate a flower.

the butter, the water, the broth (if there is any), and half a cup of milk or cream. Then arrange the cutlets on the dish in the shape of a wreath, with mashed potatoes in the middle of the dish; decorate it with peas or beets, and serve with the sauce.

Take some of the chilled cutlets and pound them. Then fry them in ghee just until they take color, add the juice of a lemon or a little tomato juice, and boil them for half an hour. Then mix two tablespoons of flour with two tablespoons of butter, turn them a little over the fire, and add them to the cutlets with half a cup of milk or cream; serve with fluffed rice.

Take what meat you need and chop it (as meat is chopped for kofta and kebab); add parsley, chopped very fine, and shape it into balls as you shape kebab or kofta; then arrange it in the dish thus:

Split the tomatoes into two halves. Then place in the middle of the dish or tray five tomato halves in a circle, then place a portion of the meat as a second circle. Then place a circle of the potatoes, peeled and cut into rounds — circle after circle, and so on until the dish is full. Then sprinkle it with salt, allspice, and ghee, and bake it in the oven.

Line the tray or dish with oiled paper (of the special kind for baking fish), and under each fish place two or three strips of white sheeting (a band of cloth) so that you can lift the fish from the dish easily without its crumbling to pieces; add to it a little oil or ghee, and roast it in a moderately hot oven. After taking it out of the oven, brush the roast fish with butter or ghee, and serve it with fried potatoes, ham, and whatever pickles you like.

Soak lean meat (about two uqiyyas, with half an uqiyya of tail fat) in vinegar for three hours. Then chop it very fine in the meat grinder, and add two tablespoons of crushed rusk crumbs. Then shape the meat into balls, mold it onto the skewers, and roast it over a fire of

embers. Then serve it with seasoned or fried eggplant, or with salad.

3 cups of Damascene flour
A cup and a half of Australian flour
3 cups of starch
3 teaspoons of European yeast, dissolved in a cup of lukewarm water.

Sift the flour and add the yeast to it gradually, then add to it enough water until

12 cups of good ghee

12 cups of sugar — and 9 cups for the stuffed ghraybeh

24 cups of Damascene or Australian flour in summer; in winter, reduce the quantity by one cup.

Half a tablespoon of ammonia — that is, powdered sal ammoniac — with a teaspoon of cognac. Beat the ghee in a vessel for half an hour until it becomes white as froth; after that, add to it half the quantity of sugar and rub well, then add the remaining sugar, the ammonia, and the cognac, and rub well again for a third of an hour. After that, add half the flour gradually and knead well, then add the rest of the flour and knead well again for three quarters of an hour, until the dough grows smooth and becomes firm like kmaj-bread dough; and leave it for an hour.

Finally, take the dough piece by piece, each the size of an egg; knead it, then draw it out a little into whatever shape you like, and bake it on the tray, each piece a qirat's distance from the next.

Useful hints:

1: You may pattern the ghraybeh with a carved mold.

2: Baking the ghraybeh needs no more than a quarter of an hour in a slow oven. The sign that it is done is that the ghraybeh rises and a trace of browning shows on it.

3: You may introduce into the ghraybeh dough whatever aromatic essences you like the taste of, by mixing them well into the ghee — such as essence of vanilla or rosewater.

4: You may stuff the ghraybeh with almonds and sugar, and decorate the top with a split almond before baking.

Biscuits are made from local flour, or Australian, or American, or French, or from flour mixed with starch, or cornflour, or arrowroot, or rice powder. In making biscuits, use a large board of wood for rolling out the dough and cutting it on; you will save time and ease the work. A small board forces you to repeat the work and to introduce more flour into the biscuits than is necessary, especially into the scraps of dough left after cutting.

It is preferable to put canned milk, sweetened or unsweetened, into biscuit dough. And it is preferable to use carbonate of ammonia rather than baking powder, for that makes the biscuits light.

Baking biscuits calls for attention and watchfulness, so that they do not burn, and so that they come out properly done — as they will not if they are not left in the oven long enough.

Use whatever stamp and pattern you wish on the face of the biscuits; you may also pattern the dough, after rolling it out, with the tines of a fork.

After making the biscuits, keep them in glass vessels with lids; they will stay in their good, fresh condition, delicious in taste and handsome to look at.

Two cups of bread flour.

Two cups of French flour.

Three teaspoons of baking powder, or

three teaspoons of carbonate of ammonia.

A cup and a half of sugar.

A cup of butter.

The grated rind of 1 lemon.

A teaspoon of essence of vanilla.

4 eggs, well beaten.

Mix and sift the flour with the baking powder, then add the sugar and stir it; then add the butter and rub well with the palms of the hands; then add the grated lemon rind, the essence, and the eggs, and knead the dough well for a quarter of an hour; then roll it out, cut it into assorted shapes, place them on the tray, and bake them.

Make the dough loose, so that when you test it, it is like a soft thread. Then put the starch in a tray and add enough water to it to make it loose; then add the starch to the dough and mix the two well together, and set the mixture aside until it ferments. Then pour it into a slender jug with a small spout like a pencil, and pour the dough, in whatever shape you like, into a wide frying pan with a suitable amount of heated oil, drawing latticed threads with the dough. During the frying, the zalabiya must be turned so that they cook on both sides; and as soon as they are done, lift them from the pan at once lest they burn, and dip them in warm syrup — and they are ready for serving.