Fruit

These individual pies are tasty, elegant, and very easy to prepare. They make a perfect light meal, accompanied by a salad.

Many of the dishes popular in the court kitchens in Constantinople during the Ottoman period spread throughout the empire. This pilaf is one of the classics that you find in all the cities that were once the outposts of the empire. It goes particularly well as an accompaniment to roast chicken and it also often forms a stuffing for the bird.

An egg and lemon sauce is one of Turkey’s culinary signature tunes. A touch of sugar gives it a slight sweet-and-sour taste. I like making this dish, which can be served hot or cold, with baby leeks, but larger ones can be used instead.

This is a dish of Georgian origin. Georgia, which borders on northwest Turkey, is famous for its plum trees and plum sauces. Our slightly sour, dark red plums will do well.

Olive oil and lemon with parsley or dill is the standard dressing in Turkey for all grilled and fried fish. The best way to eat tuna is rare—simply seared, with the flesh inside still pink, and almost raw. Serve it with a salad or Mashed Potatoes with Olive Oil, Scallions, and Parsley (see page 168).

These orange slices can be served with coffee or tea, or as an improvised sweet at the end of a meal, accompanied by crème fraîche or thick heavy cream. They keep for weeks in the refrigerator so you can bring them out on different occasions. Choose oranges with thick skins, which must be unwaxed.

Gray mullet roe was originally used in Turkey for this famous dip (also known under the Greek name taramasalata) but smoked cod’s roe has now generally replaced it. This is a world away from what you can buy ready-prepared and is really worth making. Serve it with Turkish or pita bread.

In Morocco, this is the most popular sweetmeat. The almond stuffing is colored green to give the semblance of pistachios, which are considered more prestigious. Use slightly moist dates such as the Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties.

The most famous of Moroccan pastries are best known abroad by their French name, cornes de gazelle, or gazelle’s horns. They are stuffed with ground almond paste and curved into horn-shaped crescents. They are ubiquitous wedding party fare.

This is the most common Moroccan dessert; it is always appealing and perfect to serve after a rich meal.

For this delicately scented fruit salad, have a mix of fruit chosen from three or four of the following: peaches, nectarines, apricots, bananas, plums, grapes, apples, pears, strawberries, mangoes, melon, pineapple, dates, pomegranate seeds.

The special feature of this dish is the exquisite mix of caramelized onions, honey, and raisins called tfaya, which is served as a topping to the long-cooked, deliciously tender meat.

This is the best-known fruit tagine outside Morocco. Restaurants in Paris accompany it with couscous seffa made with fine-ground couscous (see page 28) with plenty of butter, one bowl of boiled chickpeas, and another of stewed raisins. The best prunes to use are the moist Californian ones, which are already pitted.

In an Arab culture born in the desert, dates have something of a sacred character. Considered the “bread of the desert,” they symbolize hospitality and are much loved and prestigious. You would find this dish at wedding parties. Some people find it too sweet, so you might prefer it, as I do, without the optional honey. The dates give it a slightly sticky texture. Use the semi-dried moist varieties from California or the Deglet Nour dates from Tunisia.

This is a recipe that is similar to the chicken tagine on page 93, but the result is quite different. The sweetness of the pears goes surprisingly well with the lamb. Choose firm pears; if the fruit is too soft, they tend to collapse during the cooking. Comice and Bosc are good varieties. Use a boned shoulder of lamb or neck fillets, and trim only some—not all—of the fat.

Ask your butcher to saw the knuckle of veal into rounds, retaining the marrow in the center of the bone (as for Italian osso buco). You can buy very good frozen artichokes, which come from Egypt, from Middle Eastern stores. They come in packages weighing 14 ounces and containing about 9 small artichoke bottoms. If you want to use fresh artichoke hearts or bottoms, see page 8. Use young fresh peas or frozen petits pois.

This is sumptuous and extremely easy. The meat is cooked very slowly for a long time until it is meltingly tender and you can pull the meat off the bones with your fingers. The stuffing—it is the traditional stuffing for a whole lamb—is sweet with dates and raisins and crunchy with almonds. (In Morocco, they add sugar or honey but that makes it too sweet for me.) The couscous needs plenty of butter as there is no sauce, but you can substitute oil if you prefer. Try to get the fine-ground variety of couscous called seffa (see page 28), otherwise use the ordinary medium-ground one. For the dates, use the Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties that you can find in supermarkets. A shoulder of spring lamb is always fatty but most of the fat melts away during the long cooking. If it appears too fatty, as might be the case with an older lamb, carefully remove some of the fat before cooking.

I have used the ingredients of a chicken tagine as a relish to accompany duck (which is not a Moroccan bird) because the combination of fatty duck with sharp apricots is great.