Cornucopia

Lebanon has an incredibly rich food culture, far beyond what I could hope to describe in these pages. It has been an agricultural center since antiquity; wine, olive oil, and grain were exported by Phoenician traders. Like much of the Mediterranean, it’s a bountiful climate for growing produce. And the local produce, of course, is in large part what has shaped the cuisine.

One of the best paths toward understanding a region’s food culture is by starting with the raw materials: the ingredients and their sources. And because there’s that thing about pictures being worth a thousand words – and also because if I write too much prose I will never actually finish this piece and get it online – I’m going to try to let the images do most of the talking.

This is the village where my mom grew up, and where my dad spent summers as a kid, and where my maternal grandparents and much of my extended family (on both sides) still lives:

 

The main part of the village (city hall, shops, etc) are on the crest of the hill, and most of the residential buildings are down in the valley.

Main street of the village

The valley, with houses and the village church

The hillside facing the village is covered by a pine forest. You might run into a local farmer taking his goats out there to graze. The local honey is as dark as molasses, since the bees like to frequent the pine trees. (Oak and cedar honeys, of similarly rich hue and deep flavor, are produced in other parts of the country.)

View of the forest from behind my grandparents' house

The descent into the valley is steep, and so nearly all the arable land is terraced. Some people keep livestock, too, although that is becoming less common. When I visited for the first time as a little kid – over twenty years ago – my grandparents still kept some chickens and turkeys. We would collect the eggs for breakfast, and for me those eggs are still the nostalgic ideal against which every other egg must be measured. The milk, meanwhile, came from a neighbor’s cow, and in my grandmother’s kitchen the cream was skimmed off for use in desserts; a little fresh milk kept for drinking; and the rest transformed into yogurt and labneh. These days no one’s got the time or inclination to keep animals and the old henhouse is long gone, but my grandfather still presides over an abundant garden and orchard.

Fruits and veggies are grown in every available space.

So many grapes! None of these are wine varietals, though; the ones that aren't eaten fresh
become the best raisins you have ever tasted.

In a few months this pine cone is going to split open so the seeds (pine nuts) can be harvested.It's slow, painstaking work, which is part of why pine nuts are so expensive.

Ever wondered how chickpeas (garbanzos) grow?

Well, now you know!

A few weeks ago I found fresh chickpeas at a local market and made them into hummus.
Check out that color!

Sweet melon

Bitter melon?

So many eggplants!

Sumac trees

Sumac, just harvested. The seed pods are left to dry thoroughly in the sun, then the dried seeds are ground.

The spice is a deep burgundy color, and has a sharp, lemony taste. Delicious.

The figs get made into jam flavored with aniseseed and served with fresh walnuts.

The fig tree is on the property that belonged to my great-grandparents.

Not pictured: walnuts, pomegranates, almonds, peaches, plums, apples, pears, olives, and probably some other kinds of trees I'm forgetting. Also tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, herbs, etc.

For those who live in bigger cities or don’t have the space to grow food, there are the markets. These range from roadside farm stands:

Local oak forest honey, plus syrups and fruit preserves.

To outdoor markets in tourist areas:

Vegetables in the old souk (marketplace) in Sidon.

Spices, grains and beans in Sidon. Those hanging strings are dried okra!

To upscale supermarkets:

I WANT ALL THE CHEESES

Freshly baked kaak

Fresh dates!

Amidst all this green goodness, there was one crate of perhaps the saddest vegetable I have ever seen. Where I live, this vegetable is king. It is on every restaurant menu, in every takeout salad, in every grocery store, staple of the juice bar and much-touted superfood. Yet here, the lone crate of wilted, yellowing leaves was sloppily labeled in English only and without a price, slouched in a back corner as if hiding in shame behind the proud pumpkins.

kale
:-(

The Most Important Meal of the Day

A typical Lebanese breakfast isn’t a big meal. Coffee, of course, often with little crisp sesame biscuits called kaak. (Or at least that’s my best guess at how it’s spelled. Please forgive my unschooled and somewhat haphazard Arabic transliterations!) This might be followed by a little bite of bread and labneh, a creamy cheese made from strained yogurt that is one of the staples of the Lebanese diet. That’s about it on your average weekday. But when breakfast is an occasion – weekend, holiday, family gathering – then it is serious business.

One of the most popular breakfast foods is manaeesh, a flatbread with toppings. Think of it as kind of like a breakfast pizza. And it’s not restricted to breakfast, but is eaten for lunch or snack, too, sold in bakeries or by street vendors. The most common toppings are zaatar (a fragrant mix of dried thyme, sumac, and sesame seeds); cheese; or spiced ground meat. Many bakeries, like the one in my grandparents’ village, supply the bread dough and allow customers to bring in their own toppings. It's made from exactly the same bread dough as the pita; the only difference is that you put the toppings on top of the rounds, and press them down so they don't puff up as much while baking. As a result these flatbreads are much thicker than pita.

On the morning we went to buy bread, we also brought along some zaatar so we could make manaeesh to take home for breakfast to the rest of the family.

 
The manaeesh are served with fresh tomato, cucumber, and mint, which you can add to your flatbread and then fold or roll up sandwich-style.

You can also put those veggies in a sandwich with labneh. In fact, this breakfast spread of ours included both bread and manaeesh; labneh and several kinds of cheese; fresh vegetables and olives; and butter, local honey, and homemade fruit preserves.

Center: goat's milk labneh that has been formed into balls, air-dried for several days, and preserved in olive oil.

Assorted cheeses, and fresh labneh (cow's milk) in the dish.

From left to right: quince preserves; pine forest honey; apricot preserves.
The jams were made by grandmother. The honey was also produced in the village.

One of my favorite breakfast foods, though I didn’t get to eat it on this trip, is ful: stewed fava beans generously seasoned with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and parsley. The phrase “breakfast of champions” was invented to describe this stuff.

Our most decadent breakfast by far, though, was awarma and eggs. Awarma is basically lamb confit. It is incredibly delicious and very easy to make, actually: small pieces of lamb (any cut) are slow-cooked and then preserved in fat, seasoned only with salt and pepper. But what makes it hard to replicate outside of the region is that it is made from fat-tailed sheep, a breed that produces lean meat and large stores of fat in the tail and hindquarters. Rendered tail fat has long been an ingredient in Middle Eastern cooking; it’s called for in recipes going back to the twelfth century! But in this century, if you want a kickass breakfast, here’s what you do. You heat the awarma in a pan on high heat:
 

Then you crack some eggs on top. Use the best, freshest eggs you can get your hands on; it makes a difference. These came from a neighbor’s chickens!

 Season generously with salt, pepper, and allspice.

The eggs are cooked sunny-side up, and the traditional way to serve it is just to put the pan down on the table and let everyone dig in. Bread is the only utensil you need.

If you like, though, you can cook the eggs hard, or even scramble them, and serve plates individually, though I personally find that a lot less fun.  

And by the way, awarma isn’t just for breakfast. Heat some in a frying pan until the meat is browned and crisp, and use it to garnish a dish of hummus. Split open a baguette, spread it with awarma, and then toast it open-faced or, better yet, close it back up and pop it into a panini press.
 

Lebanese breakfasts tend toward the savory – traditionally you won’t find many sweet breakfast foods comparable to pancakes, waffles, or French toast. The possible exception is knafeh, a glorious sweet breakfast sandwich. There are three components:

1. The knafeh itself. In breakfast context, this means a layer of slightly sweet fresh cheese topped with a layer of buttery semolina dough, then baking it until golden-brown and melty. This is the filling of the sandwich. (But knafeh also exists in a version as a free-standing dessert; in that case there might be two layers of semolina with the cheese in the middle, or shredded phyllo dough instead of semolina.)

2. A soft sesame bun, which is split open to hold the knafeh like a sandwich.

3. Syrup, which is poured over the cheese in the sandwich. This is a key ingredient in a number of Lebanese sweets; it’s just a simple syrup (sugar and water) but is often flavored with orange blossom water and/or lemon juice.

Et voilà.