I went out to lunch at a fairly nice Lebanese restaurant today. I’ve never really blogged about Lebanese food before, but I think I might start. The key aspect of today’s meal that caught my attention was how odd it was that we had all been eating for about thirty minutes before any of us picked up our utensils.
That’s just the way it goes with a lot of Lebanese dishes. They aren’t exactly finger foods, but many of them are eaten with flatbread instead of silverware. For example, you tear off a little 2x2 inch parcel of flat bread and use that as a scoop for a wide variety of potential salads and starters. The actual meal generally requires utensils, but not necessarily. It’s just a different way of eating, and quite tasty at that.
4 comments:
how do you they make the bread so thin anyway?
is that a serious question?
Karin
i especially liked the phrase "potential salads and starters." reminded me of college when i'd look into a bare refrigerator and ask "hmmm. what could i make with mustard, american cheese and poptarts?" well, i think it's pretty obvious.
there are several ways to make thin arabic bread. the most used way which the auther is probably talking of is oven baked flat bread. it looks like this:
http://www.aldoukan.com/images/index/f4.gif
It's usually about 1.5 feet diameter. It does not look thin on the picture, but it is actually empty from the inside, like a balloon. That's how it look out of the oven, but it is flat when you buy it
then there are other sorts of flat bread:
The saj bread is cooked on a spherical pan, the saj. It is usually bigger, about 2 feets, and thinner, almost transparent, you can almost see through it. It is folded and put in bags before being sold.
That's what the final product looks like (unfolded from a bag):
http://fromlebanon.com/markook.jpg
They prepare the pastry like traditional pizza, by swinging it in the air:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1655000/images/_1656324_ramadan150.jpg
(you can see part of the saj with bread kooking on it in the foreground)
And then there's my preferred (but you cant find it in bakeries). I think it is called makbouse, and it's kooked by sticking it on the walls of a circular coal oven, like this:
http://www.bahrainguide.org/BG6/Resources/kaboosmakera.jpeg
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