cook like a local Middle East

Middle Eastern food is about layering flavours – spices, acids, pickles – to create something powerful out of what are often very simple raw ingredients. That sense of luxury and craveability has to be coaxed out of food by blooming spices, mixing citrus and vinegars, grilling, smoking and adding toasted seeds and fresh herbs.

If I close my eyes, I can still smell the spice markets of my youth, the intense aroma of chillies, seeds and powders from throughout the region colliding in cramped alleyways. Growing up, my dad would take me with him on trips to the market, where I’d see dozens of stalls selling spices along with pickles, olives, dried fish and preserved lemons. The