Gastronomic review: Lebanese cuisine

The inhabitants of Lebanon do not hide that they have a cult of food in their country. It is not by chance that this country is called the No. 1 gastronomic destination in the world, and the food of Lebanon is the most delicious and healthy.

Features of the national cuisine of Lebanon

Lebanese cuisine is considered the best sights of the country. They combine elements of European, Mediterranean and Oriental cuisine, and they are prepared exclusively from natural and healthy products. The culinary traditions of Lebanon are a variety of vegetarian dishes, a large number of recipes with chickpeas and other legumes, a love of fish, seafood and olive oil, an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs and spices, especially garlic. Lebanese do not eat meat so often, preferring lamb and poultry. Delicious salads, bread, fine wines and oriental sweets are always present in the diet of Lebanese gourmets, while there are almost no sauces and soups. In many hot and cold dishes, Lebanese chefs add crushed wheat, and one of the ingredients of salads is raw Portobello mushrooms. Most often, food is cooked on the grill or in the oven.

During the meal, the dishes are brought on large plates and placed in the middle of the table. Each eater serves himself, putting a little of different dishes on a plate. At the end of breakfast, lunch, dinner and throughout the day, they drink coffee, which is considered the national Lebanese drink. It is thick, strong, sweet and is prepared in special samovars. In addition to coffee, the Lebanese are very fond of compotes and ayran.

One of the features of Lebanese cuisine is diversity. At family dinners and holidays, the table is simply bursting with dishes, while the Lebanese do not suffer from excess weight, because they observe moderation in food.

Meze snacks: tabouli and falafel

Any meal in Lebanon begins with a meze — a set of small snacks that are served with an aperitif before the main meal. This can be hummus, falafel, mutabal baked eggplant paste, pickled vegetables, sheep’s cheese shanklish, various vegetable snacks and fattoush bread salad, which is prepared from toasted pieces of pita with herbs and vegetables. Among the snacks you can find salami, dried meat, olives and olives, as well as labneh-a thick yogurt with olive oil, similar in texture to cottage cheese. During the feast, mukhammaru is often served — mashed baked pepper and walnut, spicy sujuk sausages and harra sweet potatoes fried with herbs and garlic. Meze is a large number of small plates with food that is tasted without eating too much, using unleavened tortillas instead of cutlery. However, inexperienced tourists are usually unable to continue tasting by the beginning of serving the main dishes, so experience is needed in this case.

Lebanese tabouli salad

Lebanese tabouli salad is one of the most popular meze snacks. It is prepared from bulgur or couscous, tomatoes and herbs, and is seasoned with lemon juice. Pour 100 g of cereals with half a cup of boiling water and leave for half an hour to swell. At this time, scald a large tomato with boiling water, remove the skin from it and cut into small cubes. Finely chop a bunch of parsley and mint, you can add any greens to taste. And now mix the infused bulgur or couscous with tomatoes and herbs, add salt, season with a small amount of lemon juice and 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil.

Falafel

Falafel is a delicious chickpea cutlet that vegans love. Chop 100 g of boiled chickpeas with paprika, cumin, ground coriander, a sprig of coriander, parsley, a clove of garlic, 0.5 tbsp lemon juice and 0.5 tsp sesame oil in a blender. Make balls, fry them in a frying pan until golden brown and put them on a napkin to remove excess oil. Serve with vegetables and yogurt.

Main dishes

The main dishes of Lebanese cuisine are beef, lamb, fish, vegetables and rice. Usually 3-4 dishes are served, because the guests have already starved the worm with snacks. After that, the housewives take out a kebab, which is chopped young lamb meat with spices. Or serve kibbi-fresh meat, pounded to an emulsion, seasoned with spices and mixed with millet. Balls roll out of it, which are eaten fresh or cooked.

Lebanese people are very fond of baba ganush-eggplant caviar cooked with sesame paste and spices, string beans with tomatoes, chicken shish-tawk made of pickled meat with onions and pilav-a kind of pilaf made not only from rice, but also from fried vermicelli. Imagine crumbly fragrant basmati rice with eggplant slices, black currants, pine nuts, fresh mint and a mixture of Lebanese spices. It is extremely delicious!

The main dishes are often served with small meat pies sambusik and belyashi made of yeast dough — sviha. They are more like tiny pizzas with meat filling with tomatoes and herbs. Very tasty are cheese pies and Lebanese pizza manouche with sesame and thyme. And on big holidays, they bake a lamb’s head.

Lebanese chicken

The main secret of taste is in the right marinade. To make it, you will need 250 ml of Greek yogurt, 2 tsp brown sugar, 4 crushed garlic cloves, 3 tsp ground cumin, 1.5 tsp ground coriander, chopped parsley to taste and 3 tbsp lemon juice. Then cut the chicken into pieces, put it in the marinade, mix everything well and leave it in the refrigerator overnight. At the last stage of cooking, add salt to the pieces of marinated meat and fry for 20-30 minutes on the grill, constantly turning over.

A little about seafood: fish kefta in Lebanese

Lebanese chefs always fry fish in a large amount of oil, generously seasoning it with garlic and lemon juice. Also, it can not do without greens, fragrant herbs and pine nuts, which are found in many recipes of Lebanese dishes. Sometimes it seems that Lebanese chefs put nuts in all dishes, even in tea. By the way, be sure to try shrimp in garlic sauce and rice with seafood and saffron.

Lebanese housewives often prepare kefta. Wash and dry 1 kg of white sea fish, such as halibut or flounder. Pour 1 tablespoon of lemon juice over it, leave it for 20 minutes and chop it in a blender. Add 1 onion chopped in a blender and 3 tablespoons of finely chopped parsley to the minced fish. Knead the minced meat well and make about 10 cutlets. Fry them in olive oil until golden brown, and then put them in a deep saucepan.

In the remaining olive oil in the pan, fry a finely chopped onion, 3 cloves of crushed garlic, a small green bell pepper cut into strips, a large tomato diced and 5 chopped raw mushrooms. Add ground black and white pepper, ground chili, cumin and cinnamon – a small pinch at a time, by eye. Fry the vegetables with mushrooms for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. At this time, dilute 2 tablespoons of tomato paste in 2 cups of boiled water, pour it over the vegetables in a frying pan and let it simmer for 10 minutes. After 5 minutes, serve the dish on the table with herbs and crumbly rice.

Lebanese side dishes: harra sweet potato

Sweet potato harra is suitable for any meat and fish dish, it is prepared very easily. Boil the potatoes or sweet potatoes for 10 minutes in salted water, cool slightly and cut into cubes. Grind cumin seeds, coriander, black pepper peas and cayenne pepper in a mortar — by eye. Throw the spices into a frying pan with warmed olive oil and fry for a minute to reveal the aroma. Pour into a frying pan and fry until golden brown. Sprinkle it with lemon juice, sprinkle with grated fresh garlic and garnish with coriander leaves.

The traditional Lebanese side dish of rice and vermicelli is also very unusual. Fry 100 g of durum wheat vermicelli in 2 tablespoons of butter, add half a cup of washed long-grain rice to it. Pour 1.5 cups of cold water, bring to a boil, reduce the heat and cook until the rice and vermicelli are ready. Place the garnish on a plate with a slide, and garnish with meat, fish or vegetables on top. For piquancy of taste and colorfulness of the dish, add bright and juicy greens to it.

Hummus

Traditional Lebanese hummus can also be a side dish. To do this, soak the chickpeas overnight in water with soda (0.5 tsp. soda per glass of peas), rinse well in the morning, fill with water and cook for 1.5 hours. Chop the chickpeas in a blender to a smooth texture along with garlic, salt, a small amount of lemon juice and, if available, tahini — sesame sauce. In the process of whipping, add a little water until you bring the hummus to the desired consistency. Put the chickpea puree in a plate, sprinkle with olive oil and garnish with fragrant herbs, pine nuts or pomegranate seeds.

Desserts of Lebanon-a celebration of sophistication and refined taste

What is a Lebanese lunch without dessert? So after the meze and the main dishes, leave room in the stomach for cheese and rice halva, semolina pudding mkhalabie and baklava, which has dozens of varieties. Baklava is made from wheat flour, corn starch, melted butter, nuts and cocoa. Osmalia sweets are very popular, which are two layers of thin strands of dough, between which there is a filling of pistachios with sugar. And the Lebanese mannik namura, soaked in sugar syrup and sprinkled with nut shavings, just melts in your mouth. Do not forget about the maamul cookies based on semolina with nuts, which is prepared with orange and rose water, date cake, cedar honey and jam from figs or wild flowers. Lebanese jams are distinguished by a variety and richness of taste, and you can taste them endlessly. And also write down dates stuffed with nuts, honey pumpkin halva and fruit sorbet in your gastronomic plan. Sweets are usually prepared with a lot of sugar, so they can be stored for a very long time.

Lebanese mannik for a sweet life

The Lebanese dessert basbus is a little similar to our mannik, only it turns out more juicy, crumbly and bright in taste. This is one of the most favorite national dishes in Lebanon.

First, carefully mix all the dry ingredients-250 g of semolina, 60 g of flour, 100 g of sugar, 1 tsp of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Now pour in 100 ml of milk and 120 ml of vegetable oil and mix well again. The finished dough resembles wet sand. If so, you have done everything correctly. Grease a baking sheet with oil, put the dough on it and spread it in a thin layer. Cut the dough layer into squares and put any nuts in the middle of each. Bake the mannik for half an hour at a temperature of 180 ° C, until the surface is browned. While the dessert is being prepared, prepare a syrup of 220 ml of water and 200 g of sugar. Bring the syrup to a boil and cook it for 3 minutes. Add ¼ tsp of citric acid and cool. Pour the cooled basbus syrup, cover with a towel and let it stand for about an hour.

A fragrant and beautiful Lebanese mannik can even replace breakfast, it is so satisfying and delicious!

Lebanese drinks

Learn how to make coffee in Lebanese — there is no better drink for dessert! Pour a glass of water into the turk and put it on the fire. When the water becomes warm, add sugar and 1 tsp of ground coffee to it to taste. As soon as the foam rises to the edges of the turkey, remove it from the heat and mix the drink. Repeat the boiling process 2 more times, and then pour the coffee into cups.

In the heat, the Lebanese drink a lot of tea, for example mint. Bring 0.5 liters of water to a boil, add 4 tablespoons of black tea and the same amount of sugar. Cook the drink for 5 minutes, then generously pour in the mint leaves and cook for another 20 minutes. Pour the tea into bowls and add another mint leaf to each.

For a change, try to prepare a summer drink jelly based on jelly syrup from carob fruits. Pour 3 tablespoons of syrup into a glass, add 1 tablespoon of light raisins and pine nuts. Fill the ingredients with crushed ice and fill the glass to the brim with cold water. Very refreshing!

In general, when going to Lebanon, stock up on an excellent appetite, otherwise you will not enjoy the trip. Keep in mind that the average Lebanese lunch lasts 2-3 hours, and be sure to plan this item in your daily schedule. Learn to enjoy life in a Lebanese way!