Let's talk arabic food, cuisine and dining ettiquite

Cafe Society
1

I’m talking about the areas of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Iraq Lebanon etc etc

I’m curious… what is arabic cuisine like? What dishes are they known for?

What is considered an exquisite dish? In the midwest, seafood such as lobster and melted butter is valued as a delicacy… What about over there?

Also, what is traditional eating customs? Manners? How different is their ettiquite and style of preparation for the meal and eating the meal itself?

What about preparation of food? How is it usually cooked?
To explain: I have a friend who is arabic and he raves about the food… Other European American friends of mine believe that arabic eating is odd and so is the food. I have had a lot of experience with food and never arabic…

Fill me in!

2

Here is a good website about Lebanese food, with several descriptions, recipes, and even photos.

http://www.student.virginia.edu/~arabweb/recipes.html

I haven’t had much Arabic/Middle Eastern food, but I have loved everything I’ve had. Lots of lamb, chick peas (hummus, falafel), dates, spices – delicious stuff. There is some crossover with Greek and Mediterranean food, and often restaurants that have one cuisine will have some examples of the other.

3

You’ve never had falafel, pita, baba ganoush, hummus, cucumber-yogurt salad, or tabouleh? Man, you’re missing out–and those are just the vegetarian dishes, and just a few of them!

I don’t know much of anything about the etiquette, unfortunately. But I know that tahini, lemon, parsley, garlic, and chickpeas are common ingredients. And that the dishes I’ve listed are delicious when done right.

Daniel

4

Here are two excellent links for books covering this cuisine that also offer historical as well as info on customs, etc.

Claudia Roden’s “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food”

and another encompassing all of the Mediterranean cuisines in one volume:

Clifford Wright’s “A Mediterranean Feast”

5

The foods and food traditions of the Gulf are different from those of the Levant. Further, in this modern age things are changing quite a bit. After all, we have McDonald’s now, and lots of cross-pollination with other cultures, (I bought peaches from Turkey at the store yesterday.)

The foods of the Gulf States make less use of dairy than those north of here. Lamb is our traditional meat here, sometimes served with baharat but now most often chopped up and used in capsa. Lots of cardamon is used in most anything. Dredful stuff.

Oddly, for a desert, we have lots of seafood here. Grouper (called Hamour locally) is our national fish. It is most often served with pickles.

We do of course have yogurt and laban but I have no idea how traditional these easy-to-spoil things are.

Dates have a long tradition as a snack food and the basis for sweet dishes. Dibis (Date syrup) and Honey are our two ancient sources of sugar.

For religious reasons, blood in food is taboo. Further our central food customs are either ancient traditions (eating with the right hand for example) or religious (Ramadan).

What else? Ask away!

6

Our neighborhood is heavily Middle Eastern, all flavors, so we have lots of restaurants to choose from. A half-block away is a 24-hour Syrian restaurant. Since we’re night people, we often stop by there when we get home from a late movie, or get take out. It’s very popular with cab drivers and cops.

Whatever meat we get always comes with Basmati rice, and since I have a weird liking for rice and hummus (that is, I dip my spoon into the hummous, then into the rice), we get the large order of hummous. For meat we’ll each order different things then split whatever it is between us. Lamb shank and Shish kabob (spiced, grilled lamb chunks) are are current favorites. The meal alwys comes with pita bread and whatever soup they have for the day (potato or white bean most often).

I can’t really say how it’s all cooked, but it sure is delicious. That particular restaurant doesn’t have especially good Falafel, so we never get it, though we love it. Falafel is very similar to hush puppies, only with more spices. Made correctly and served fresh, they’re little balls of heaven.

I love Baba ganoush too, but my favorite type of salad is Tabouli, with “bulgur, lemon juice, tomato, mint, parsley and other herbs” as well as cucumber and couscous, the way it’s served here.

Pictures and descriptions don’t really do justice to how good the food tastes, espcially if words like “chickpeas” and “eggplant” make you (general you) go green. It’s just all very good. As a farmgirl from Kansas who never even ate garlic until I was in my 20’s, I can attest that things you think you might not like, you might end up loving. I never even had Indian food until I was in my 30’s and we moved to Chicago, and now I love it.

The one thing I don’t really like about Middle Eastern food (and Indian food too) is (are?) the desserts. I’ve never had anything that didn’t make me want to spit it out immediately. Give me cake and/or ice cream.

3 of our favorite restaurants have fallen by the wayside in recent years. A Lebanese restaurant, which had the best Falafel, Basmati rice and hummous I’ve ever had, and another one that I think was Jordanian with the best lamb chops ever, both closed. The 3rd, which is a half block away in the other direction, got a “3 fork” review in the Chicago Tribune and became useless. Yuppies from all over the city were venturing into this “exotic” neighborhood to try it out. The restaurant raised their prices and it’s always busy. We’ve only eaten there once in the past few years, since the review came out.

7

I’m moving in with you. :: drool ::

8

are our. Geez, I should have Previewed. Too many typos.

Now I’m hungry.

9

Well, you have to like cats, Kate Bush and movies. How much are you willing to pay? We have an extra bedroom, though it’s filled now with magazines and junk. You’d just have to look the other way when we walk around in our undies.

Ours is the most wonderful neighborhood in the city, I think. Besides Middle Eastern, there’s also a heavy hispanic and asian population, so there’s plenty of different restaurants to choose from. Within a 2-block range we can eat Syrian, Iranian, Lebanese, Thai, Korean, Columbian, Mexican, and others I can’t think of at the moment. Neither of us really cook, so we eat out a lot. The grocery stores and markets around here are out of this world (which makes me wish I could cook, to take advantage). Outside our back door, across the alley, is a large market with food from all over the world. It’s a neighborhood-type market, not like World Foods or Treasure Island. I like being able to run over and pick up Tabouli mix, Tandoori Paste and hazelnut chocolate spread from Hungary (like Nutella, only better and cheaper). It’s fantastic.

10

Falafel, like hush puppies? Interesting…I guess I can see that. They’re chickpeas, cooked with parsley and (I believe) tahini, made into little balls and then deep-fried. I made them from scratch once a couple years ago, and they were really really tasty that way. Too often, Falafel stands just keep frozen falafel around and pop them in the fryer when you order them; that way, they come out dry and hard instead of wonderfully tender on the inside. They’re my favorite vegetarian ME food.

And you don’t like the desserts, huh? Not even baklava or Turkish Delight? Nasty Turkish Delight is awful indeed, but there’s something transcendant about the good stuff, especially when you have it after a meal with grittily strong Turkish coffee. (I know these are from the northern areas of the Middle East, not so much Syria and Lebanon, but they’re my favorite desserts from the region).

Daniel

11

It sounds scarily as if you’re a next-door neighbor of mine. . .

12

Andy’s Fruit Ranch on Kedzie at Lawrence? :slight_smile:

13

Misread as ‘Oddly, for a dessert’… Mmmm, fish for dessert! :frowning:

14

Hush puppies were the first thing I thought of when I first saw and tasted Falafel, and it’s just stuck with me. I bought some boxed mix months ago and I haven’t made it yet. It’s so rare to get them exactly right in restaurants where they are supposed to know how to make them, I can’t imagine I’ll be able to do better. It says on the package that you can use a deep fryer or make patties and cook them in the oven. It doesn’t say what kind of oil to use, and using an oven just seems wrong. The mix is from a ME store though.

There are shops around here that sell nothing but ME desserts/snacks. Two of them are within a block of me. I’ve just never found anything I liked.

I had Turkish coffee once at a restaurant that went under. I have no words for how nasty it was. I don’t drink coffee anyway so the problem was mine I’m sure. Give me Thai Ice Tea anyday. Yum.

15

One and the same. Spooky! I’m glad they cut that hole back into the hedge between the KFC parking lot and Andy’s, so I don’t have to go all the way around.

The Middle Eastern place on the corner of Lawrence and Kedzie (the one with the big screen that plays arab TV 24/7) has really nice kebab and their tahini is great.

Just to wrap up this hijack: I echo everything you’ve said about the neighborhood. It’s awesome.

I’ve not had an incredible amount of luck with home-made falafel - mine ended up really greasy and the patties didn’t have much flavor. But my sister used to make pretty good ones from a mix.

16

If your falafel were greasy, your oil was simply not hot enough when you were frying them. When deep-fried food ends up being greasy, this is pretty much always the culprit. They’re really not all that difficult to make from scratch.

17

Yah, that’s probably what I did. I am not a big “fryer”, as I’m overly concerned with the added fat/cholesterol[sup]*[/sup]. Since I don’t do it often, my technique sucks and I end up fulfilling my own fears by making everything I fry greasy.

[sub]*I know: correctly fried foods don’t necessarily add that much fat/cholesterol to the food; it’s just one of my irrational patterns.[/sub]

18

And they said to him, “Oh Master, speak to us of falafel.”
With fix and scratch, I sometimes have them disentegrate into fried chickpea powder. What gives?

19

stares

rubs eyes

Oh my god!

waves out window

We’re at 4740. Where you? Imagine finding a neighbor on an Internet message board!

Ha, same here.

I haven’t ever tried the tahini. It’s a funny old place, usually full of Middle Eastern men smoking like chimneys. I love that they’re 24 hours. Did you live here when the Lebanese restaurant right across from Andy’s was open? The place that used to have the best lamb chops was in that strip mall north of Lawrence, the one with the Korean market and restaurant. Nablus, I think the name was. It’s now a Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts. Noon-o-Kabab is the one that went all yuppie. Great food though.

Indeed, but shhhh. It’s as yet undiscovered and is hardly ever mentioned in those “neighborhood guides” that appear in New City or The Reader.
Sorry about the hijack folks!

20

4716 - the KFC lot is my personal driveway . . . I’m the guy who owns that maroon Honda Shadow that’s always parked in front of a green car in the back - long hair and a biker moustache in case y’ever see me walkin’ aboot. . .

I’ve been in the neighborhood for about 4 years - since before Andy’s was renovated (not like it’s a landmark or anything!). I don’t specifically remember the place across from Andy’s, but I remember the place that existed before the UnHoly Combination (Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robins) moved in. Misery’s Company and myself have eaten at Noon-o-Kebab once, but couldn’t get into it - I think that with the crowding and prices we’ve not bothered to experiment. . Perhaps we’ll try again, though, since it comes so highly recomended!

(Excuse us for the hijack, noble Dopers - how often have you discovered another Doper lives 3 doors down from you?)