🫓 Vegetarian food in the Middle East

The Middle Eastern table is vegetarian by construction, and there is no intention behind it: it is a way of serving. Mezze does not put a piece of meat in the middle with side dishes around it; it lines up fifteen small plates in which meat is one option among many, and often absent. Take it away and nothing is missing. That is why a full Lebanese meal — hummus, baba ganoush, tabbouleh, falafel — turns out entirely plant-based without anyone setting out to make it so.

Three materials carry the region. First the chickpea and sesame, which together make a complete protein: tahini is not a condiment here but the binder of half the dishes. Then bulgur, parboiled cracked wheat, which gives tabbouleh — far more parsley than grain, unlike the version served elsewhere — Turkish kısır and red lentil köfte, raw patties rolled by hand. And finally the lentil, behind the everyday Turkish soup, behind mujaddara with rice and fried onions, and behind Persian ash-e reshteh with its noodles and herbs.

Two gestures recur everywhere. Aubergine is burned over a naked flame until the skin gives way, and it is the smoke rather than the flesh that makes the taste of baba ganoush and of Iranian mirza ghasemi. And herbs are handled as a vegetable, not a seasoning: Persian kookoo sabzi is an omelette so crowded with herbs that the batter barely holds. Then there is preserving in oil — makdous, ankinar bil zeit — a larder cuisine eaten cold.