There’s No Plate Like Hummus

When I went to Lebanon in 1962, Americans knew nothing about Arab food. It’s a little hard to remember those far-off days, now that hummus and tabbouleh have conquered the world.

In the meantime, Lebanon suffered a disastrous 15-year civil war, ending in 1990. But a few years later, a friend e-mailed me from Beirut, “You ought to see this. As soon as the fighting stopped, restaurants started opening on every street corner.”

I did want to see that. Still, it wasn’t until the pope’s 1997 visit, when a tenth of the country’s population gathered in the streets of Beirut without incident, that the U.S. State Department decided to lift its travel restrictions. I finally went back for another taste of real Lebanese food this September.

Needless to say, there have been changes. The old downtown of Beirut is gone, demolished by the fighting, so today Beirut is the only Middle Eastern city without a traditional souk. Beirutis now shop in modern markets, like Americans.

Or in supermarkets. Spinney’s, the only supermarket in the country in 1962, has become a chain. The branch in the booming Kesrouan area just north of Beirut has 18 checkout counters, and right across the freeway stands its symbol, a shopping cart about 50 feet high.

During the civil war, the Lebanese also rediscovered some of their old traditions, mostly because they had to do without so many modern conveniences. Pickled vegetables are fashionable now, and even the preserved lamb product qawirma, which had been considered rather peasanty in the ‘60s. In the mountain town of Faytroun, I saw a shop specializing in artisanal cheeses and pickles. Even the rose water was homemade.

The old Middle Eastern specialties are still popular: shish kebabs of all sorts, stuffed vegetables, dishes of lamb stewed with eggplant, baklava-type pastries. But paper-thin marqu^q bread about the size of a pizza is almost as common as pita bread these days. For that matter, pita bread is being made far thinner than we’re used to in this country, almost as thin as a tortilla. By the way, when you order shish kebab, it always comes with the bread on top of the meat or folded around it, to keep it warm.

The report of a restaurant explosion was quite true. The Lebanese clearly are in the mood to have a good time these days--Kesrouan feels like one big roaring party. It has restaurants and nightclubs of all kinds, including a new variety known as taksh-wa-faksh, where people eat the usual hummus and tabbouleh snacks when they aren’t dancing to rock music on the dance floor--or, if there isn’t one, on the tables.

While Kesrouan is a jumping, modern place where everybody seems to have a beeper, its fancy restaurants surprisingly feature the traditional water pipe (nargileh), which was not at all fashionable in the ‘60s. In fact, wherever you drive in Lebanon, you see tobacco ad billboards showing a cool dude puffing on a water pipe.

These days, Lebanon even has theme restaurants. Near the mountain village of Mairouba, somebody has built a restaurant called The Jungle (Al-Adghal) where the dining rooms are either caves in granite rock or thatched rooms reached by rope bridges. The profile of a great ape has been carved onto a boulder in ancient Assyrian style, as if the Assyrians got this far and did a portrait of the King of the Apes. The place actually serves very good food, such as grilled chicken wings with a sauce of mint, garlic and lemon juice.

Lebanon is known for it diversity. When Myrna Bustany, proprietor of the Al Bustan Hotel, was invited to a Lebanese restaurant in London, after a few bites she confidently declared, “The chef is a Sunnite from Beirut.”

Her hosts were skeptical, so she asked the waiter--obliquely, in the polite Middle Eastern way--”Is the chef a dfouni?” (Dfoun is a village near Beirut famous for producing professional chefs.)

“No,” said the waiter. “A Beiruti.”

“And what is his name?”

“Ahmad”--a Muslim name.

Simple, says Bustany. Beirut, populated mainly by Sunnite Muslims, is famous for hummus and baba ghannouj. But the chef who made those two dishes so well fumbled the fattoush (a salad with pita bread croutons) and mujaddara (a hearty porridge of rice and lentils), which are farmers’ dishes from the mostly Catholic mountains north and east of Beirut.

Other regions have their own specialties. The city of Sidon, south of Beirut, is famous for buttery filled cookies called sinyura. (Sidon’s beachfront has had a restaurant explosion of its own. One of the restaurants is named Al Pacino, for some reason.)

Every Lebanese cook makes kibbeh--lamb, onions and bulgur wheat beaten to a savory paste that can be baked, fried, grilled or even poached as meatballs. The usual way is to pound it in a giant mortar, but the Shiite Muslims of the Bekaa Valley use a flat stone instead, which they claim makes a finer paste.

Meanwhile, the city of Tripoli, north of Beirut, is famous for fish dishes--it even makes kibbeh out of fish. Tripoli is also known for very refined, often miniaturized pastries of the baklava family. The Lebanese prefer these pastries with the minimum of syrup, incidentally.

Bustany’s own hotel turns out an impressive Sunday brunch spread. Just to take a few, there are huge platters of creamy hummus, herbed hummus (because some Lebanese have decided the regular kind is too garlicky), baba ghannouj, an eggplant salad called salatat ra^hib and fried kibbeh meatballs (your choice, lamb or chicken). One platter about the size of a wagon wheel is filled with the usual stuffed vegetables--and stuffed potatoes and carrots. The drinks might include fresh apricot juice with a dash of rose water.

Last year, a Lebanese Academy of Gastronomy was founded to promote and celebrate food, particularly Lebanese food. As you’d expect, it’s a wealthy, sophisticated group that converses in a dizzying mixture of English, Arabic and French. They invited me to a buffet with potluck elements at the mountain home of retired Foreign Minister Lucien Dahdah.

There, with Beirut below us, surrounded by the blue Mediterranean, its mist just lifting, they brought out a dramatic spread of unusual Lebanese dishes: baked lamb kibbeh with a yogurt cheese filling, fish kibbeh topped with pine nuts, peppery ground lamb kebabs with pistachios mixed into the meat, an intense stew of lamb and walnuts, a spicy fish stew from Trablus and a meat and barley porridge traditionally served on the Shiite day of mourning, plus the usual grilled meats, stuffed vegetables, pickles and pastries.

And to end it, a newly fashionable drink that symbolizes the subtlety of Lebanese food today: “white coffee.” It satisfies the traditional obligation to serve the guest coffee, but without caffeine. Served in a tiny Turkish coffee cup, it’s just lightly sweetened hot water scented with roses; a sip of delicate perfume.

Zahleh-Style Grilled Chicken (Farrouj Mashwi)

Active Work Time: 20 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 40 minutes plus 1 to 3 hours marinating

This recipe, which has made the riverside restaurants of the city of Zahleh famous, is similar to the one used by the popular Los Angeles restaurant chain Zankou Chicken. Serve it with Aioli. The meat is slashed to facilitate marinating and grilling.

6 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

1 (3 1/2- to 4-pound) broiling chicken * Grind garlic to paste in mortar or small food processor. Work in salt, olive oil and lemon to create mayonnaise-like consistency.

* Cut chicken into 6 to 8 pieces, slashing each piece (except wings) to the bone 2 to 3 times against grain of meat. Rub pieces with sauce, cover and refrigerate 1 to 3 hours.

* Grill chicken pieces over medium heat until juices run clear, 10 to 12 minutes per side.

4 servings. Each serving: 695 calories; 442 mg sodium; 156 mg cholesterol; 58 grams fat; 2 grams carbohydrates; 39 grams protein; 0.07 gram fiber.

Aioli

Active Work and Total Preparation Time: 10 minutes

2 egg yolks

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3/4 cup olive oil

Salt

* Combine egg yolks and garlic in blender. Blend in lemon juice. With motor running, pour in oil in thin stream until blended and aioli has consistency of thick mayonnaise. Add salt to taste.

1 cup. Each tablespoon: 99 calories; 20 mg sodium; 34 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 1 gram carbohydrates; 0 protein; 0.02 gram fiber.

Note: Although many recipes call for uncooked eggs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has found them to be a potential carrier of food-borne illness and recommends avoiding raw eggs.

Monk’s Salad (Salatat Ra^hib)

Active Work and Total Preparation Time: 25 minutes

It looks on paper like the usual eggplant caviar, but the eggplant is diced, not pureed, and it’s flavored with olive oil, making it light and rich at the same time. It’s essential to use Japanese eggplants and to grill them whole over the fire so they get good and smoky.

4 Japanese eggplants

1 tomato, seeded and diced in 1/4-inch pieces

Juice of 1 lemon

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 sprigs parsley, roughly chopped

1/4 teaspoon salt

* Cook eggplants either over medium heat on grill or on rack set over gas burner on high, turning, until eggplants are soft and skin charred, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove stem and charred parts and cut eggplants into 1/4-inch dice. Mix with tomato.

* Mix lemon juice, garlic, oil, parsley and salt and gently stir into eggplant mixture.

1 cup. Each 1/4 cup: 108 calories; 152 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 4 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.49 gram fiber.

Rice With Lentils (Mudardara)

Active Work Time: 20 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 1 hour

A simple but satisfying vegetarian dish. Adapted from “Atwa^q wa-Adhba^q Sharqiyya” by Afifa Sa’b.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter or 3/4 cup oil

5 large onions, sliced into rounds

2 cups lentils, washed and picked over

Hot water

2 1/2 cups rice, rinsed

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

Salt

* To make clarified butter, heat butter in small saucepan over low heat until it melts and separates. Spoon off any foam on top. Spoon off clear clarified butter and reserve (you’ll need 3/4 cup), leaving milky residue in pan. Discard residue.

* Heat 1/2 cup clarified butter or oil over medium to high heat. Saute onions until pale gold, 15 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and set aside.

* Pour remaining clarified butter or oil into saucepan. Add lentils and hot water to cover. Bring to boil on medium-low heat and simmer until lentils are tender outside but center is still hard, 15 to 20 minutes.

* Add rice and allspice and season with salt to taste. Stir and cook on high heat 3 to 4 minutes, then reduce heat to low and cook until rice is tender, 15 to 20 minutes, adding more water for rice to finish cooking, if necessary. Let lentil-rice mixture sit in pot 3 to 4 minutes, then stir and pour on big plate. Stir in onions before serving.

4 main-dish servings, 8 side dish servings. Each of 8 servings: 573 calories; 278 mg sodium; 62 mg cholesterol; 24 grams fat; 73 grams carbohydrates; 17 grams protein; 2.92 grams fiber.

Tripoli-Style Spicy Fish (Samakeh Harra)

Active Work and Total Preparation Time: 40 minutes

This is a specialty of the city of Tripoli. From “Lebanese Cuisine” by Anisa Helou (St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

2 pounds red snapper filets

Salt

3/4 cup vegetable or canola oil for frying

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 onions, finely chopped

10 cloves garlic, minced

2 bunches cilantro, minced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3/4 cup lemon juice

Black pepper

Water

* Rinse fish in cold water, pat dry and rub with 1/2 teaspoon salt. Set aside 30 minutes.

* Put vegetable oil in pan (it should be enough to cover fish) and heat over medium heat. When oil is hot enough that it bubbles up if a bit of fish in placed in it, put as many pieces as comfortably fit in pan and fry 1 minute on each side. Remove filets with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

* Put olive oil and chopped onions in wide saucepan and place over medium heat. Fry until golden, 15 to 20 minutes, then add garlic and saute 1 minute. Add cilantro, cumin, coriander and cayenne and stir until cilantro softens, about 1 minute. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste and bring to boil. Boil sauce 5 minutes, adding some water if sauce dries up.

* Reduce heat to low and arrange fish in sauce. Fish can be left in filets or flaked into small pieces. Cover pan and simmer until fish is done and sauce is thickened, 5 minutes. Serve warm or cold with or without rice pilaf.

4 to 6 servings. Each of 6 servings: 358 calories; 181 mg sodium; 45 mg cholesterol; 25 grams fat; 9 grams carbohydrates; 26 grams protein; 0.93 gram fiber.

Sesame-Thyme Dip (Za’tar bi-Zait)

Active Work and Total Preparation Time: 10 minutes

This recipe should appeal to people who like to dip their bread in olive oil. The ideal thyme for it is the Middle Eastern variety called za’tar, which has a wild, resinous aroma. It is rarely sold by itself in Middle Eastern markets but is usually mixed with the sour purple spice sumac (a mixture which itself is confusingly called za’tar)--or with toasted sesame seeds for this exact dip. However, many Lebanese prefer more sesame in the mix than the usual store brands have, and you can use any thyme.

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup dried thyme leaves

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, or more to taste

* Toast sesame seeds in small dry skillet set over low heat, stirring a few times, until fragrant and light brown, 6 to 7 minutes. Set aside.

* Using mortar and pestle or spice grinder, grind thyme fine. Mix with sesame seeds and salt. Blend with olive oil.

* To serve, put small amount on plate and scoop up with bread.

3/4 cup. Each tablespoon: 120 calories; 99 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 13 grams fat; 2 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.40 gram fiber.

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Platter in Sesame-Thyme Dip photo from Salutations Home stores, Pasadena and Brentwood.