50 Fun Facts About Middle Eastern Food

Which Levantine dip is mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice and garlic?

Hummus set off a record war: chefs in Israel and near Beirut kept outdoing each other's giant platters, until 300 cooks served up more than 10 tonnes of it in 2010.

Which deep-fried balls of ground chickpeas are a Levantine street-food staple, tucked into flatbread with tahini sauce?

Falafel starts with dried chickpeas that are soaked overnight but never boiled, because cooked or canned ones make the balls fall apart in the hot oil.

Which Levantine street food takes its name from the Turkish çevirme, meaning 'turning'?

Shawarma sailed to Mexico with Ottoman-era emigrants from the Levant, where cooks loaded the turning spit with chili-rubbed pork and created tacos al pastor.

Baklava is a layered nut-filled dessert made from which pastry?

Filo dough is stretched paper-thin, and baklava stacks sheet after sheet of it, each one brushed with melted butter before baking.

Tabbouleh is a salad of soaked cracked wheat and which finely chopped herb?

Parsley is the bulk of a classic tabbouleh, with only a little grain added for texture; versions made abroad often flip the ratio.

What is tahini made from?

Ground sesame seeds make an oily paste, and cooks thin it with lemon juice, garlic and water into tarator, a sauce served with fish and vegetables.

Baba ghanoush is a dip made from which roasted vegetable?

Eggplant is charred over coals or an open flame until it collapses, which gives the dip its smoky flavour and leaves the flesh soft enough to mash.

Za'atar is a blend of dried herbs, sesame seeds, salt and which red spice?

Sumac berries are dried and ground into a crimson powder, and their sharp lemony tang is what turns the herb blend sour.

Which Jordanian national dish is meat cooked in fermented dried yogurt and served on rice?

Mansaf is traditionally eaten from one shared platter with the right hand only, while the left stays tucked behind the back.

Kibbeh is made by pounding spiced ground meat together with which grain?

Bulgur and meat were pounded to a paste in a big stone mortar; a 19th-century missionary wrote that every family owned one and the thudding filled the streets.

Knafeh Nabulseyeh, the usual variant in Jordan and Palestine, is named for which city?

Nablus set a Guinness record in 2009 with a 74-metre knafeh weighing 1,765 kg.

Mulukhiyah, the Egyptian soup-stew, is made from the leaves of which plant?

Jute is far better known for its stem fibre, which is spun into burlap sacks and twine; in the kitchen it is the leaves that matter, and boiling them turns the broth thick and slippery.

Dolma, the family of vegetable and vine-leaf dishes, takes its name from a Turkish word meaning what?

Stuffed is the literal sense, and what goes inside decides how dolma is served: meatless rice versions are eaten cold as a starter, while meat-filled ones come to the table hot.

Which Cypriot cheese has a high melting point and a famously 'squeaky' texture?

Halloumi is thought to have begun as a nomads' cheese, prized by Bedouin herders because it kept so well; today the name is legally reserved for cheese made in Cyprus.

Which cold, salted yogurt drink is a Turkish national drink?

Ayran got a political push in 2013, when prime minister Erdoğan told an alcohol-policy conference in Istanbul that it, and not beer, was Turkey's national drink.

What is Egypt's national street dish of pasta, rice, lentils and chickpeas in red sauce?

Koshary as traditionally made has no meat, eggs or dairy: every layer is a humble store-cupboard staple, so the country's favourite street food happens to be vegan.

Ful medames, an Egyptian staple, is a stew of which legume?

Fava beans for this stew are traditionally left to simmer through the night, because ful is above all a breakfast: by morning the pot is ready to be dressed with cumin, lemon and oil.

Fattoush is a Levantine salad distinguished by pieces of what?

Toasted pita gives stale bread a second life: fattoush belongs to a whole family of dishes invented to use up yesterday's flatbread instead of throwing it away.

Shakshouka is eggs poached in a sauce based mainly on what?

Tomatoes are a New World crop that reached the Mediterranean only in the 16th century, so this old-seeming North African dish cannot be any older than that.

The doner kebab sandwich was popularised in the 1970s in which city?

West Berlin is where Kadir Nurman opened his stall in 1972: he had seen how rushed the city's workers were, so he tucked the carved meat into flatbread to be eaten on the go.

Muhammara, a red dip of walnuts and peppers, comes from which Syrian city?

Aleppo is where the dip began, yet in 2022 it was Gaziantep, just over the Turkish border, that registered muhammara as its own protected regional speciality.

Manakish flatbreads were traditionally baked first thing in the morning in what?

A communal oven baked the rounds, but fingertips shape them first: the dough is pressed all over into little dimples so the oil-and-thyme topping pools in place.

Maqluba, a Levantine rice dish, is named in Arabic for the way it is served, meaning what?

Upside-down is exactly how it arrives: the pot of layered meat, vegetables and rice is flipped onto a platter and lifted away, leaving a cake-shaped tower with the bottom layer on top.

Lahmacun is nicknamed 'Turkish pizza' though it traditionally has no cheese and no what?

Tomato sauce has no place on lahmacun, which is eaten nothing like pizza: the thin round gets parsley and a squeeze of lemon, then is folded or rolled up in the hand.

Freekeh is made from durum wheat harvested at what stage?

While still green the grain is too moist to catch, so when the piled sheaves are set alight only the straw and chaff burn away, leaving smoky kernels to be rubbed clean.

Qamar al-Din, drunk during Ramadan, is a thick sweet drink made from which fruit?

Apricots are dried into sheets of fruit leather, a Syrian speciality, and the Ramadan drink is that leather turned back into a thick nectar.

Which sweet fruit is traditionally the first thing eaten at iftar, the sunset meal that breaks the daily Ramadan fast?

Dates open the meal because the Prophet Muhammad is said to have broken his own fast with them, so the first bite after sunset follows his example.

Arak, the Levantine spirit served with meze, is flavoured with what?

Aniseed oil dissolves in alcohol but not in water, so the moment water is added the clear spirit turns a cloudy, milky white.

What is the small long-handled pot used to brew unfiltered Turkish-style coffee called?

Cezve coffee is served with the grounds still in it, and once the cup is drained the patterns they leave behind are often read as the drinker's fortune.

Arabic coffee is typically spiced with what and served without sugar?

Cardamom-scented coffee comes with strict etiquette: the host pours for elders and honoured guests first, then works around the room by age and standing.

Mocha coffee takes its name from a port in which country?

Yemen's port of Mocha never grew a bean of its own: the coffee came down from the inland highlands, and the port simply shipped it abroad and lent it a name.

Turkish delight is based on a gel of sugar and what?

Starch-set lokum is often credited to Hacı Bekir, a confectioner who set up shop in Istanbul in the 1770s, but food historians doubt the claim and think palace confectioners probably got there first.

Sales of Turkish delight rose after the 2005 film of which C. S. Lewis novel?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe turns the sweet into a bribe: the White Witch's enchanted box of it leaves Edmund so hooked that he betrays his brother and sisters to get more.

Gaziantep baklava, the first Turkish product with EU protection, uses which nut?

Pistachios were a local swap: the Güllü family, whose shop dates to 1871, say their ancestor copied a walnut pastry he saw in Damascus and later switched to the nut that grows all around the city.

The Ottoman sultan presented trays of baklava to which troops every 15th of Ramadan?

The Janissaries, the sultan's elite infantry, collected the trays outside the palace kitchens and paraded them through Istanbul to their barracks, a march known as the Baklava Procession.

Persian cooks prize tahdig, the layer of rice taken from the very bottom of the pot, for being what?

Crisp and golden is the whole point, and the name says where to look: tahdig is Persian for 'bottom of the pot', which cooks often line with flatbread or sliced potato to crisp up as well.

What inflates a round of pita in a very hot oven, leaving the hollow pocket that holds the fillings?

Trapped steam does it: the fierce heat flashes the water in the dough to vapour, the round balloons, and once it cools and sinks the two layers stay apart as a pocket.

Labneh is yogurt that has been what?

Strained long enough, labneh turns firm enough to roll into balls, and those are kept submerged in jars of olive oil, which preserves them far longer than fresh yogurt would last.

Wheat was first cultivated in which region, which takes in Mesopotamia?

The Fertile Crescent sounds ancient but is a modern label: the American scholar James Henry Breasted popularised it for the arc of farmland curving from the Mediterranean shore round to the Persian Gulf.

Shish taouk, a skewer marinated in yogurt and lemon, is made with cubes of which meat?

Chicken is what the marinade is for: the yogurt tenderises the cubes before they reach the grill, and in the Levant the skewers usually come with a garlic sauce.

Like Indian ghee, the samneh traditionally used for cooking across the Middle East is what kind of fat?

Clarified butter is simmered until its water boils off and the milk solids are left behind, and since those are what spoil first, the fat keeps far longer than fresh butter.

Qatir, the syrup poured over many sweets, is boiled from sugar, lemon juice and what?

Rose or orange-flower water gives the syrup its perfume, and cooks pour it cool over pastry straight from the oven, because hot layers drink it in and stay crisp instead of turning soggy.

In Persian custom, what does the ritual politeness of taarof involve at the table?

Declining food until pressed repeatedly is only half of it: the same ritual has shopkeepers and taxi drivers wave away payment, a refusal that both sides know is not meant.

What does the Turkish mealtime wish 'Afiyet olsun' mean?

May what you eat bring well-being can be wished before the meal or after it, and the cook gets a phrase of her own: 'elinize sağlık', health to your hands.

At which Muslim festival do families traditionally divide the meat of a sacrificed animal among relatives, friends and the poor?

Eid al-Adha recalls Abraham's willingness to give up his son, and custom splits the animal three ways: one share for the household, one for relatives and friends, and one for the poor.

Turkish cacık and Greek tzatziki both stir garlic and which chopped or grated vegetable into yogurt?

Cucumber is the constant, and the two names are one word: Greek tzatziki is a borrowing of Turkish cacık, which back in the 1600s meant a kind of edible herb rather than a yogurt dish.

The Turkish dish imam bayildi, simmered in a great deal of olive oil, has a name saying the imam did what?

Fainted, and legend offers two reasons: either the dish was so delicious that he swooned, or he had just learned how much costly olive oil his wife had poured into it.

Château Ksara, Château Kefraya and Massaya are wineries in which country?

Lebanon owes Château Ksara to Jesuit priests, who planted vines in the Bekaa Valley in 1857, and Roman-era caves found under the estate in 1898 still serve as its cellars.

Sahlab, the hot milky winter drink of Turkey and the Levant, is thickened with the ground tubers of which flower?

Orchid tubers are dried and milled into the flour, and the taste for it stripped so many wild flowers from Turkey's hillsides that the country banned exports of true salep.

Meze, the spread of small dishes, is most often compared with which Spanish tradition?

Tapas are the usual comparison because the two share a purpose: both are small plates meant to go with a drink, and meze comes from a Persian word for a taste or snack.