Arab cuisine, flavoured by fragrances enriching its recipes, represents a worthy world ambassador of culture and history of this region. Spices help in rendering the traditional Arab cuisine definitely refined, while even simpler dishes are served with such a friendly attitude that you feel warmth enfolding the whole atmosphere at any unforgettable time, for both guests and house-masters.
Tea ceremony is one of such memorable moments. Totally changing from a country to another, and from a city to another too, Arab cuisine is renowned for the use of herbs, spices and sauces. Muslim religion binds together the East and the West of Arab world in the use of halal meat (bloodless) either red or white, and in pork and alcohol prohibition. Besides such common marks, diversities remain regarding the whole range of dishes and their preparation. If Maghreb cuisine is generally abundant with anise, carvi and coriander, each country maintains its traits.
In Algeria the use of garlic and white sauces defines a researched cuisine; the essence of orange flowers water is usually added to desserts and cakes. In Tunisia, harissa, a garnishment made of crushed chilly peppers, falls between all the dishes, while in Morocco saffron, zaafran, gives rice a beautiful yellow.
Soups detain a dominant role in north-African and middle-eastern meals: Moroccan harira, a vegetables and meat soup, the Algerian shorba, based on broken wheat, vegetables and lamb, Egyptian molokheya, a vegetarian soup named after the plant used for its preparation.Maghreb is known thanks to its tajin (meats cooked with chick peas and vegetables) and for its shrank sauces, fish barbecues, chilly starters. Couscous is Maghreb's typical dish, represented through an endless variety of preparations. In fact, besides bran, wheat in the north or millet in the south, steamed and garnished with olive oil or butter, it is the never-ending range of sauces, changing according to seasons and occasions, that makes this multifaceted dish.
White or red sauces are normally lamb-based, fish or chicken otherwise, rarely veal. Such dish is unknown in the Middle East, where rice and broken wheat are mainly used (as in the mentioned Algerian shorba), accompanied by a parsley, lemon juice, chopped tomatoes and cucumber salad in one of the most famous Lebanese recipe, the tabulé.Eastern Mediterranean area conceals the secret of meat delicacy, of stuffed or roasted pigeons, in Egypt, and of the famous milk rice; patiently worked out starters based on sweet'n'sour vegetables in Syria and Jordan, meat rolled with a grape leaf with Palestinian yoghurt; dishes that would stimulate even the laziest appetites.
Croutons with sesame, broad beans, aubergines, chick peas purées, flavoured with mint leaves and garnished with olive oil; they decorate the starter plates of eastern tables.
The more you shift Eastward, to the Gulf countries, the more sauces become watery; bread is craftily prepared, with the crust decorated by sesame seeds, while home-made cheese, djeben, and fresh butter, zebda, never ever miss a meal.
The preparation of such dishes requires fresh and good quality products, hard to find in European urban markets, and definitely slow cooking times.
You can partially find them in maghrebine or middle-eastern restaurants, where you can taste typical dishes prepared by immigrant chefs: certain varieties of couscous, tabulé, falafel, fried broad beans purée-balls, some tajin, chick peas and sesame seeds purée.
Preparations of Arab cuisine take time, two hours for lamb tajins, in fact they can be prepared the day before and, heated up when served, they even taste better.
The ingredients required are anyway available in Rome; to spot particular spices and aromatic herbs we suggest a walk on Vittorio square market. In North Africa most of them have an almond and peanut basis, more frequently pistachios and puff-pastry based in the Middle East, with the presence of cakes with almonds and pine seeds. Good examples are the um ali, Egyptian speciality, or the baklawa, typical of the whole Arab world: a puff-pastry, almonds and honey cake, thinly sliced in the shape of little rhombus.
In the occasion of religious celebrations or weddings, a great variety of cakes is prepared: the well known Maghreb's zelabiya, a fried pastry soaked in honey, to be eaten during the Ramadam, and the kunafeh, made of almonds wrapped in puff pastry and honey, which occupies the seat of honour in every feast, from to Egypt to Palestine.

Beverages
Eventually, Arab cuisine comprehends beverages such as the refreshing palm tree sap, to be drunk cool, before it ferments and becomes as fizzy as certain wines. Mint green tea, crowning every meal, without whom Arab hospitality isn't fulfilled; it could be simple, merely sugared, served in small proper cups, or with the addition of pine seeds floating on the glass surface, as in Tunisia. Coffee, with a drop of orange flowers' essences, in maghrebine countries, or a cardamom nut in the Middle East, in a finely ground coffee boiled in water, sugared at times.
Sharbat in the end, a lemon squash flavoured with vanilla, served throughout the Arab countries on occasion of exams succeeded and engagements.

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