Recent Posts

One thing I love about being in the first year of this blog is that we get to cover so many essentials of the Lebanese way of eating. Olives rank right up there with flatbread and labne when it comes to staples in the fridge and on the table. Or on the kitchen counter, since…

When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (Pumpkin explosion…it’s been some time since I’ve experienced fall up north. The colors,…

I’m thinking a lot about culinary school this week, because it was exactly one year ago that I entered the professional program at Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco. I had just left my job of many years in Chicago and felt the exhilaration of starting something new, and hard won. The house I…

You knew I had to come out with a vegetable this week after all of that meat. Does it surprise you that cauliflower turns up in Lebanese cuisine? It’s there, in virtually every Lebanese cookbook I own, as well as on our table in a few simple, but delicious, dishes. There is nothing more mouth-watering…

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (The Pointer boat at The Pier, Harbor Springs.)

Baked Kibbeh is a Lebanese tradition and a favorite way to make kibbeh. This savory dish fills the kitchen with an unforgettably delicious aroma while it’s baking. We like to eat kibbeh raw (kibbeh nayeh) the first day it’s made, then bake it in a sahnieh the next day. We aren’t the only ones making…

Kibbeh Nayeh, tartare of Lebanon, is specially prepared spiced raw meat with bulgur. Try this beloved Lebanese dish and see how simple and delicious it is! I never knew I was eating raw meat. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t think that “raw” was something worth noting. I simply knew it was good,…

I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I notice that many—ok, all—of the main course dishes I’ve served up here have involved red meat. It’s not that the Lebanese can’t make a meal without including beef or lamb…Lebanese and other Middle Eastern cuisines are considered so healthy, in fact, because of our extensive…

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ~ John Muir, naturalist, explorer,…

One of the benefits of going to culinary school is that you have an opportunity to work as an apprentice when you complete your program. Doing back-breaking work for free may not seem like much of an ‘opportunity’—as I was often reminded by my brothers—but having the chance to put all that I had just…