Middle Eastern Cuisine

There is no question that Middle Eastern cuisine has gotten people’s attention in this country, both in the form of restaurants and cookbooks. I have spent several weeks in the off-season experimenting with recipes from cookbooks such as Jerusalem, The Lebanese Cookbook, A Taste of Persia and Zahav (a wonderful book on Israeli cuisine) and gradually falling in love with the nuanced flavors and textures of these cuisines. While food from this part of the world is extremely diverse, I find that most of the recipes are easily replicated in the US, as so many of the ingredients are available to us. In this class, we will make homemade hummus, tabouli, sea salted flatbread, grilled eggplant and zucchini with labneh and sumac, turmeric Israeli cous-cous with currants, grilled lamb with a homemade za’atar and an apricot and cardamom roll, laden with pistachios and finished with rose water.