Thread: Arabic food

Do any of you dig on Arabic food,im a dead fan of their food.Its really interesting how delicious the food is even without the spices that we use.I would die for Turkish Biryani.

The way we have Dum Biriyani ,they stuff the rice inside the whole chicken,wrap it in aluminium foil ,then they dig a hole in the sand,light fire inside and keep the wrapped chicken for half hour or so ..take it out and YUMMY !!!!
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I relish Lebenese food. 'Felafel' though quite rudimentary is my favourite. But I love the large course of Lebenese kebabs, homos, Lebenese pitta bread, etc. Yum!!

I like any delicious food including Arabic food.

Riyesh,falfel,araies,shawarma plate filled with taheena and mushakil to name a few are my dead favs ,,Ta'am Falafel and Savoury are good places in Blore to have authentic arabic food.

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I like falafel and pita bread, but I had no idea these foods were part of the Arabic cuisine. I wonder what other arabic dishes or foods can be found in the US.

i guess the pita bread .. in Arabic its called Kubus

I've never tasted Arabic food, what is the food like, i mean flavour wise and all?

It is just OUT OF THIS WORLD ..Arabs dont like spices,so it wont be spicy....one of their regular dishes is Hummus...its made of chick peas along with that you have a platter of marinated Barbecued Lamb,Chicken fish,and also Khubus which is Arabic bread..

Heres the Recipe if you wanna try it ....

Hummus Recipe

A chick-pea cream with garlic, Hummus, Oumos, or Humus
A delicious and healthy Mediterranean recipe, easy, cheap and fast to make (10 min).
Hummus is a cream of chick peas with garlic, lemon and olive oil, from Lebanon.

- Take a can of chickpeas (standard, 850ml 530 g), also called garbanzo beans. Wash the peas (4 holes on one side, open the other, put in a sink and rinse under a water flush)
- Put the peas in a blender (food-processor, e.g., Magimix).
- Add 100 ml of lemon juice (one glass or half a cup, unsweetened, e.g., Pulco, or two lemons)
- Let it turn for a while. When it becomes “creamy”
- Add 100 ml of olive oil (one glass or half a cup. Better to replace ¼ of the glass with canola (rapeseed) oil, for fatty acids balance)
- Some people prefer less lemon (50ml). Let the mixer turning until the cream is “perfect”. While it turns:
- prepare four big garlic cloves (two cloves are enough for most people),
- Stop the blender, crunch the garlic with a garlic-cruncher on top of humus, wait 2-3 min for garlic to “mature”, and mix again the humus (why should you wait? Why should garlic "mature"? see the explanation in the Gaspacho recipe).
- Serve it cold, with mint leaves as ornament (optional). Spread it on bread (or take a spoon!)

For those who “hate” garlic (yes, they exist), make humus without garlic, but provide cumin powder with it.
For those who like “hot” stuffs, use an olive oil where red chilli pepper have been “swimming” for a while.
Tahini Some people E-mailed me: "Hummus should contain tahini!" = sesame cream. Well, not easy to find in a supermarket, but Meige brought me a "Tahina" box (Alkanater, Lebanon). I thus tried to make hummus with one, two or four large spoons of tahini. But I did not find it better than without tahini: it makes hummus heavy and sticky, hard to clean and not so tasty. My advice is thus not to use it, but if you like it, use it ...

Nutrition facts - Humus contains: :
- Very “slow” carbohydrates (the starch in it has a very low glycemic index). Thus, humus reduces hunger for a long time, it does not induce hypoglycaemic fainting or dizziness. On the long term, humus does not favour insulin resistance, nor diabetes mellitus (NIDDM type), nor obesity.
- A lot of plant proteins (thus humus may replace meat or fish or eggs, once). Garbanzo bean also contains cancer preventing protease inhibitors (BBI). More on cancer prevention
- a lot of fibers, thus it fight constipation. Chickpea fibers have cholesterol-lowering properties. The blending of peas much reduces the flatulence effect.
- Vitamins: load of folic acid (B9 vitamin in the chick peas), that prevents spina bifida (Eat it before baby conception, which increases the pleasure of this recipe, if you do it with Love). See full dietary advices for pregnant women. Folic acid may also prevent cardio-vascular diseases, since it reduces blood homocystein. B9 may also be a good anti-cancer vitamin (colorectal cancer, uterus cancer). The lemon in humus brings C vitamin: could be useful!
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- The fat in humus are interesting, and likely to improve heart health: canola oil contains alpha-linolenic acid (n-3 or omega-3 fatty acid), and many diets are short in it. Olive oil is considered beneficial, for its oleic acid content (mono-insaturated), and its antioxidant polyphenols.
- Garlic also is good for you, see the Gaspacho recipe)

Humus makes the ideal picnic, when associated with wheat (on bread or with taboule) because their amino acids are complementary : they match so well that the protein value is as good as meat or eggs. Add some tomatoes and fruits for pleasure.

Hygiene facts (germs):
Be careful, keep humus cold (in a fridge) or eat it fast (don't keep it more than few hours out of the fridge). Most humus components or ingredients are sterile to start with, and lemon juice lowers the pH, which is fine. But you will add germs when you make it, so please work properly with clean hands, clean blender, clean garlic-cruncher. Then cool humus fast (e.g., put it half an hour in the freezer before moving it in the fridge). If you bring your humus on a mountain summit by a sunny day, you'd better eat the whole of it at noon, on “the top” of the mountain. I would not help you to finish to eat your Humus when back in the hot valley, by tea-time!
Bon appétit !

Yeh ive tried humus, it was ok, it depends on how you eat it and what you eat it with. Humas also has avocado in it too!

have it with lamb shawarma pieces ..its tastes really gud

Arabic sweets are too sweet for me though!

Are you talking about the traditional sweets, are they anything like Indian sweets at all?

Hay everyone ..
I am an arab and i couldnt help it but had to reply to this :-) ...

Vineesh posted the right recipe for hummus .. there are so many out there that people invented that isnt correct ...

Preeti ... hummus doesnt have avocodo .. infact we dont use avocado at all in our cuisine ..

Our traditional sweets aren't at all similar to the indian sweets the closest i can compare it to is Greek and Turkish sweets ... but yet not so similar ..

now talking about the Arabic cuisine is very diverse i know the most common are shawerma (chicken and lamb) and falafel... but falafel is actually one of our breakfast food .. and shawermas is only a fast food for us ... and its rarely made at home as it needs that big roasters you always see ...

Arabic cuisine is mainly divided into three parts .. there is the khaliji cuisine (Sudia arabia, UAE, kuwait, qatar, oman, etc ) .. which is very similar to the pakistani and indian cuisine .. with alot of biryani's
Then there is the lavent cuisine .. by lavent i mean palestinian, siryan, iraqi, lebanese, and jordanian and may to some extent include egyptian ... im sorry to say but hummus isnt lebanese .. its lavent ... as they all have the same food with minor differences ... some of the lavent cuisines are the ones you mentioned like falafel, shawerma, and many more ...
Then there is the cuisine from tunisia, algeria, morocco, libya and the rest .. there cuisine is also different with alot fo tagines (a clay pot in which the food is slowly cooked over low heat) ...

So here you have it ... if you have any quesitons or want to see and try to make some arabic recipes ..

feel free to check my recipe blog ..... www [dot] lailablogs [dot] com

And have a nice day :-)