Lebanese recipes

Lebanese cooking is the best-travelled of the eastern Mediterranean cuisines and the one that most shaped what the rest of the world means by Middle Eastern food. It is built on olive oil, lemon, garlic, parsley, mint, tahini, pulses and grain, and it is unusually good at vegetables — a mezze table is largely vegetarian without ever announcing itself as such. Acidity is the defining characteristic: lemon and sumac appear where a French kitchen would reach for fat and a British one for salt. The recipes here cover the mezze that most people meet first, the grilled meat, and the sweet baking, and they are specific about the things that decide whether a dish works, which is usually the ratio of lemon to oil.

2 recipes

3 photos

Roasted Cauliflower with Tahini

Cauliflower roasted hot in wedges so the cut faces brown, served under a tahini sauce loosened to a pouring cream with water.

50 minServes 4

LebaneseSide dishesVegan

ZEby zestykestrel

4 photos

Mujaddara

Lentils and rice cooked in one pot under a mound of onions fried well past golden, which is where the whole flavour comes from.

1 hr 25 minServes 4

LebaneseMain coursesVegetarian