Fruit

This wonderful ice cream is quite different from the usual orange granita. Make it a day before you want to serve it.

Buy very ripe melons with a sweet fragrance that you can smell from a distance.

An Egyptian breakfast of boiled whole wheat, with hot milk poured over and sprinkled with sugar called belila, is turned into a celebratory dish on the 10th of Moharram (the first month of the Muslim calendar), when it is embellished with a flower fragrance and with nuts. Unless it is very young, wheat remains chewy even after lengthy cooking, so I use barley, which is less common but softens relatively quickly.

This is Syrian and beautiful, like white blossoms and brown leaves floating in a pure scented stream, but it is not to everybody’s taste.

The name means “Ali’s mother,” and it is the most popular sweet in Egypt. I had never heard of it when I lived there, but now it is everywhere. People in Cairo say it arrived in the city from the villages of Upper Egypt, but there it is said to be from Cairo. One joker explained that it was a bread pudding introduced by a Miss O’Malley, an Irish mistress of the Khedive Ismail. Go and believe him! People find all sorts of ways of making it—with pancakes, with thinly rolled-out puff pastry, with pieces of bread, and with fillo pastry. Fillo gives the most appealing texture, and it is good to bake the pastry initially rather than fry it in butter as is usual in Egypt.

Vermicelli broken into 1-inch pieces, or pasta which looks like large grains of rice, called lissan al assfour or “bird’s tongues,” and orzo in the U.S., is used. Both of these types of pasta were made at home by rolling the dough between two fingers, but now they are available commercially. In Egypt it is a breakfast dish, served sprinkled with nuts and raisins. Chopped bananas are sometimes also added. The pasta is usually fried until it is golden brown and then boiled. In North Africa, where they steam the pasta without first frying it, it is served as a dessert. The mastic must be pounded or ground to a powder with a pinch of sugar.

This intriguing rice pudding made with water—not milk—called zerde in Turkey and sholezard in Iran, has a delicate flavor and pretty, jellylike appearance.

This is something we used to make in Egypt. Use a moist variety of dried dates.

We used to soak the prunes overnight in tea to make pitting easier. Now pitted ones are available, but stuffing them still takes time. I watch television or listen to music while I do this. I prefer the dessert without the cream topping. Either way, it keeps very well for days.

A mixed dried fruit salad with nuts is a favorite in Egypt during Ramadan, the month-long fast, when Muslims fast during the day and eat after sunset. All through the day, people, hungry and listless, are hardly able to work, and dream of what they would like to eat. At nightfall, when the sky is a cherry red, the cannons boom through the cities signaling the end of the fast, and the muezzins sing it out from all the minarets. The silent city suddenly comes alive with the clatter of spoons and plates, glasses and jugs, and with the sound of relieved hunger and laughter, of music and merry-making. The longed-for dishes wait on tables, trays, and the floor, piled high with ful medames, falafel, and bamia, meatballs and kebabs, khoshaf and apricot cream (following recipe). Every family has its favorite combinations of dried fruits.

You will find quinces in Middle Eastern grocers from October until February and longer. Large ones can weigh as much as 1 pound. Try the variation too. I love it.

I love this simple Turkish sweet, which is also made with apricots (see variation). I use a brioche-type bread for the base.

Another Ramadan specialty in Egypt is a cream made of sheets of dried pressed apricots (amareldine) soaked, then boiled in water. I was in Cairo during the Ramadan month a few years ago and saw hundreds of bowls of this tart-tasting fruit cream offered free at street parties. The sheets of amareldine available these days do not have the pure taste they once had—perhaps due to preservatives. It is better to use natural dried apricots. Pistachios or almonds and thick cream are optional embellishments. Sometimes cornstarch is used to give the cream the texture of jelly. For this, see the variation.

The special appeal here is the contrast between the tartness of the apricots and the sweetness of the almond paste.

The orange zest and the orange-blossom water give a delicate fragrance to the syrup.

This delicately fragrant sweet is an old Syrian specialty of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, when it is eaten to break the daily fast. It keeps very well for days, even weeks, covered with plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

You need to use large dried apricots for this famous Turkish sweet. The cream used in Turkey is the thick kaymak made from water buffaloes’ milk (see box below). The best alternatives are clotted cream and mascarpone.

Tunisia is famous for fish couscous. This uncommon one is elegant and aromatic, with the mingled scents of saffron and quince. Have the fish cleaned and left whole. It is usually steamed in a separate steamer, but it is better to bake it in foil in the oven, which is a way of steaming it.