Middle Eastern - Tag - vo.rs

Smashed Avocado with Dukkah, Feta and Chilli Flakes on Sourdough

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Avocado on toast has been mocked so thoroughly that it is easy to forget it became a phenomenon for a genuinely good reason: when it is done well, it is delicious. The problem is that it is so often done badly, a sad beige smear on cold toast. This version fixes that with one transformative addition, a homemade dukkah, the Egyptian blend of toasted nuts, seeds and spices that turns a soft, mild slice of toast into something with crunch, warmth and proper savoury depth. Make a jar of it once and you will find yourself scattering it over everything for weeks.

Chicken Shawarma: Spiced, Stacked, Better Than the Takeaway

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Takeaway shawarma is one of life’s great late-night pleasures, but you do not need a vertical rotisserie spit to make something genuinely brilliant at home. The secret is a bold spice marinade, thigh meat that stays juicy, and a hot oven that chars the edges while keeping the middle tender. My small twist is a pinch of ground cardamom in the spice mix — it’s a quiet, floral note that runs through the more famous spice routes of the Levant and lifts the whole thing out of the ordinary.

Pita Bread: Puffy, Charred, and Better Than Anything in a Packet

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Shop-bought pita is one of life’s small disappointments: dry, papery, faintly cardboardy, with a pocket that tears the moment you try to fill it. For years I assumed that was just what pita was, until I made it at home and watched the first one balloon up in the oven like a small miracle. Homemade pita is a completely different animal — soft, chewy, fragrant, freckled with char, and warm enough to make the butter melt. It is also absurdly cheap and quick to make, and it is one of those breads that turns dinner into an occasion without any real effort.

Lamb Kofta with Mint Yoghurt and Pickled Red Onion

Sat, 18 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

1 Why kofta belong on a weeknight

There is a version of cooking that involves three saucepans, a sieve, and a tea towel over your shoulder, and then there is kofta. Kofta is the kind of dinner that asks for one bowl, a hot pan, and roughly the same amount of effort as a sad burger but delivers something far more interesting. You squish spiced mince around a skewer, char the outside hard, and serve it with a cool, herby yoghurt and a tangle of bright pink onion. That’s it. That’s the whole trick, and it works every single time.

Tahini and Halva Blondies with Sesame Brittle

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Blondies are the unsung sibling of the brownie, and for a long time I treated them as an afterthought, a beige consolation prize for people who do not like chocolate. Then I started building them around tahini, and they became something I make on purpose. This version is fudgy and dense in the middle, with the deep butterscotch hum of brown sugar and the savoury, faintly bitter edge of sesame paste running all the way through. Pockets of halva melt into soft, marbled veins, and a scatter of homemade sesame brittle on top gives every square a glassy, caramelised crunch. It is sweet, yes, but grown-up sweet, the kind of thing you can eat with strong coffee and not feel you have ruined your afternoon.

Pistachio and Rose Water Cake with Mascarpone Frosting

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

There is a particular kind of cake that smells like a perfume counter and tastes, somehow, of a garden in late spring. This is that cake. It is built on ground pistachios rather than a pile of plain flour, which gives it a dense, almost marzipan-soft crumb and a green that no food colouring could fake. The rose water is the obvious flourish, but the quiet hero is restraint: rose, used badly, turns a pudding into pot pourri. Used well, it just makes everything taste a little more like itself.

Baklava: Pistachio, Honey, and Rose Water

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Baklava is one of those sweets that looks impossibly intricate and tastes like a special occasion, but is in truth mostly an exercise in patience and butter. There is no tricky technique, no thermometer, no resting dough overnight. There is only filo pastry, ground nuts, a great deal of melted butter, and the single most important rule in the whole enterprise: cold syrup goes onto hot pastry, never the other way round. Get that one thing right and you are most of the way to baklava that shatters when you bite it.