This potato salad makes a delicious accompaniment to grilled steaks and sausages. It is also my favourite side to schnitzel or Frikadellen (German hamburger) My mother-in-law’s potato salad is incredibly tasty! It is tangy and sweet with a creamy and crunchy texture. The main ingredients are tender potatoes mixed with cooked onions, apple vinegar and…
MINT PESTO
Fresh Spearmint is available in Lebanon all year round. We use it extensively in salads and mix it with meat and vegetarian kibbeh. A handful of mint leaves adds a delicate sweet and minty flavour to any dish, or to any labneh or shawarma sandwich. Like all mint varieties spearmint grows abundantly and spreads aggressively…
TRADITIONAL GERMAN EASTER BREAD
This rich Easter bread has a wonderful buttery eggy flavour and is slightly sweet. It goes great by itself or simply spread with some butter and jam. Our Easter breakfast is never complete without it as a beautiful centrepiece. Easter bread is a tradition in many European countries. Very similar to Brioche, this sweetened-yeasted bread…
COLOURING EASTER EGGS
Celebrating all the festivities around Easter has always been important to me. Traditions and customs are the only constant in an ever-changing world. They are cemented in our minds to be passed on to next generations. Without them we feel lost. One tradition I cherish is dyeing eggs on Good Friday. Besides Easter baking that…
LEBANESE CREAMY FREEKEH PILAF
If you haven’t had freekeh yet, it is about time you did! The star grain among foodies in the western world for quite some time now, freekeh, also known as Farikah or Freek has been in our Middle Eastern pantries for ages, literally! Its firm grain, and its nutty, smoky flavour make it very versatile….
A WINE TOUR IN LEBANON
I have recently watched a beautiful film about Lebanon on YouTube that ends with this phrase “Lebanon is too diverse to visit only once”. How true that is! The magic of Lebanon So many historic sites to visit in a tiny country! So much mystic beauty in mountainous countryside that takes one’s breath away! Ancient…
EASY TO MAKE PIZZA
I still vaguely remember the first time my mother made her first homemade pizza. She didn’t look up a recipe in a book, “nor surfed the Internet”. As always, she relied on her intuition and creativity, and she was brilliant at improvising in her kitchen. The dough shouldn’t have caused any problems in the land…
TENDER BEEF ROLLS
I am sharing with you my mother-in-law’s recipe of German beef rolls. I promise it will become a favourite dish for special dinners with family and friends. In Germany those tender bundles of beef wrapped around vegetables and bacon are mostly reserved for Sunday lunches and often served on festive days. The right cut of…
JUICY FRIKADELLEN (BURGER PATTIES)
These are perfectly seasoned, juicy homemade German hamburger-like patties! Known as Frikadellen or Fleischpflanzerl in northern and in southern Germany respectively, they are the tastiest, most delicious beef patties I have ever had! They have won my heart ever since I tasted them for the first time many years ago. My Lebanese taste buds immediately…
ADAS BI HAMED (LEMONY LENTIL SOUP)
This is one of the first recipes I created in my “cooking career”. I was relying on my taste buds, as I was not able to reach my mother for help all the time. It must have been around 1990 when calling Lebanon meant dialling a number hundred times until you got through. A nearly…
