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Arabic Food and Arab Hospitality

© Aida Hasan

Main Ingredients of Arabic Food

Arabic food has a lot of variety and its ingredients are far too many to name here. However, there are certain ingredients that make up many Arabic recipes. Wheat is the staple grain of Arabic cooking and it is used in bread, pastries, salads, and main dishes. Rice is another staple ingredient. In fact, rice is to the Arab what potato is to the Irishman as it is used often in Arabic recipes. It is most often cooked with vegetables, chicken, lamb or beef. Vegetables and beans are also found often in Arabic recipes. Compared to Western cooking, Arabic cooking contains a large variety of vegetables including eggplant, cauliflower, zucchini, and spinach. Beans such as garbanzo and fava beans are used often in dips such as hummus. Olive oil is a favorite as well. The basic dressing used for salads is olive oil, garlic and lemon. Olive oil is also used in bean, yogurt and vegetable sauces and dips. Lamb and mutton are the most common meats used throughout the Arab world. It is common on festive or religious occasions to serve dishes with lamb. For centuries, Arabs have served stuffed lamb on their most special occasions and to their most honored guests. In fact, T.E. Lawrence, known to most as Lawrence of Arabia, described in detail a feast of stuffed lamb in his memoirs Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Finally, most Arabic desserts, which are an important part of Arabic meals, consists of very thin pastries stuffed with dates or nuts, spices and butter and covered in a syrup of honey or sugar.

Popular Arabic Dishes

Arabic food, it seems, is only just becoming familiar to the Western world, particularly in the United States. Most cities are only recently seeing an increase in restaurants serving Arabic food. However, there are a few Arabic foods that most people have already tried or at least heard of. Hummus, a dip made of garbanzo beans, sesame seed paste, lemon garlic and sometimes olive oil, is already sold at most major deli and grocery stores. Arabic bread, known to most people as pita bread is eaten with most Arabic meals. Falafel, a veggie burger-like food made from chick peas, onion, potato and flour, among other ingredients, is also relatively well known to non-Arabs, as is shawirma which is also called gyros by the Greeks. Shawirma is a sandwich of rotisserie lamb or beef, wrapped in pita bread. Another popular Arabic recipe that can also be found in a deli is taboula which is a finely chopped salad of tomatoes, parsley, fresh mint, and crushed wheat. Stuffed grapevine leaves, called warak dawali, is another relatively well known Arabic food. The Greek version of this recipe is called dolmas. The Arabic recipe contains rice with beef or lamb, and lemon wrapped in grapevine leaves and cooked. Grapevine leaves used in this recipe can be found in speciality food stores. Unusual as this recipe may sound, this dish is especially flavorful. One last Arabic food that is popular to Arabs and non-Arabs alike is the pastry baklawa. No self-respecting host would forget to offer a tray of a variety of pastries to their guests with piping hot Arabic coffee or mint tea. Baklawa, the quintessential Arab pastry, is almost always among the pastries Arabs prefer. Baklawa is made from walnuts or pistachios, cinnamon, and orange blossom wrapped in a thin pastry shell and soaked in syrup. According to one cook book (From the Lands of Figs and Olives), it used to be said that in the Arab East, no young lady would make a good wife unless she could make baklawa dough. Today, that dough or pastry shell used in the recipe can be found in many grocery and speciality stores.