Holding this memory, I’ve always had the impression that making Maamoul requires a number of people and a long time. The impression has changed just yesterday when I’ve decided to try to make stuffed date maamoul by myself with some help of my mom. The whole process didn’t take more than two hours. And a good time was already wasted in trying to convince my mom to make it in the first place. “Only for the sake of the blog” she kept saying!

The recipe I’m sharing with you in this post is provided by the cook of the Palestinian Cultural Center in Amman. They make the best yet the healthier Maamoul in town.

Enjoy baking! and Eid Mubarak for all who are celebrating Eid in some way or another…

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Zaatar bread also known as “fatayer fallahi” which means villagers’ pie, is a typical Palestinian pastry mostly made in spring, which is the official season of collecting fresh wild thyme. It is a flat bread, oily but crunchy, stuffed with fresh zaatar leaves, onions and sumac.

Personally, I’m in a never-ending romantic relationship with zaatar bread! Smelling the scent of baking bread mixed with the aroma of roasting thyme greased with olive oil, is where the romance starts over again every time…

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Shishbarak is a light and mild main-dish that takes hours of preparation. Mainly consists of small pieces of beef-stuffed dough cooked in yogurt sauce, flavored with fried garlic and seasoned with fresh coriander.

The recipe that I’m sharing in this post belongs to my mother’s friend Aysheh who was born and raised in Damascus, originally from Haifa and now living in Amman. She invited me to her kitchen and chose her favorite dish to share with everyone…

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Like most of seeds, black cumin seeds (black seeds, qizha, or nigella seeds) have many health benefits. They are rich of unsaturated important fatty acids, antioxidant, powerful immune booster, and also they improve overall digestion and maintain normal blood pressure. As a result of all this, black cumin seeds are used in different cuisines especially the eastern ones as seasoning spices for salads, soups, and bread…

Aside from using black cumin seeds (as is without grinding) for seasoning, they also can be used to make black cumin (qizha) paste exactly like extracting tahini from sesame seeds. In Palestine, the best locally made qizha paste comes from Nablus. This thick paste is made from grinding both black cumin and sesame seeds and it can be found in middle-east food stores.

In spite of the bitter taste of black cumin paste (qizha paste), old Palestinians managed to create a sweet treat out of it by adding sugar, oil and roasted flour to the paste and baking them all to get at the end a tasty and original dessert pie. And here I’m posting how exactly to make this extremely healthy and delicious black cumin pie.

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In the last week of 2012, I was out of town visiting Istanbul with my friend. Istanbul has always been one of my favorite cities in the world, if not the most. It’s vibrant and alive even during the coldest days of the year and latest hours of the night. It’s ancient and charming, walking in its streets is like being in an open-air museum that takes you in a journey from a historical era to another.

The food experience in Istanbul was excellent. Turkish food is variant, rich, and delicious. And of course it has a lot in common with Levantine cuisine. Street food in particular is available everywhere in Istanbul, Its inviting and safe. One cannot resist having a cup of fresh pomegranate juice squeezed from three large pomegranates. Or to buy a bag of instantly roasted kestane (chestnut) from one of many street stands.  Or even to have a sandwich of hanging kebab skewers soaked in its fat. But the thing we could not resist the most was the the daily morning aroma that came out from bakery stands. We had cheese pies in the first morning, beef pies in the second, cheese pies again in the third and so on until we left.

On the 30^th of December we were supposed to go back to Amman (where we live), but in the last minute plan has been changed and we headed to Beirut instead. The plan basically was to spend two days with our Lebanese friends who happened to be in Beirut over the holiday. They invited us to stay at their house that turned into a home because of the friendliness and the generosity we have received from their family.

On New Year eve, the family and neighbors gathered in our friends place. All kinds of Levantine homemade foods were served. Early in that day, Salima (the mother who happened to be a Palestinian from Nazareth) started to knead dough, and spent all day in the kitchen preparing food. For me, it was very tempting to get myself into that kitchen and watch. So that is what I did, and I got to learn how the meat pie (meat on dough) is done the right way. Here are some pictures I took while Salima was preparing it.

The meat pies were very delicious. So I took the recipe and tried it when I came back to Amman. I made some changes on  the pie final shape in order to become easier to prepare.

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