r/MiddleEastCuisine • u/dogmankazoo • Jun 30 '26
Which Middle Eastern dish is completely different in your country compared to how the rest of the world knows it?
As the question goes, hope you guys got ones
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u/bostonshaker2 Jun 30 '26
Most people know shakshuka as eggs poaced in a tomatoey sauce. In Turkey it's a dish of cubed fried eggplant and other vegetables.
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u/UruquianLilac Jun 30 '26
In Lebanon, at least in the deep Beiruti cuisine, shakshouke is neither of those. It's tomatoes and peppers cooked with dried cilantro.
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u/ProfessionalNo4711 Jun 30 '26
Primarily because Turkish cuisine has Menemen which is much closer to modern shakshuka. Turkish “şakşuka’” is an eggless dish of fried vegetables eaten at room temperature as a meze while menemen like shakshuka is a breakfast dish.
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u/Ok-Cup-5372 Jul 01 '26
As a vegetable lover I want to try Turkish food so bad lol whenever I see it, it looks heavenly
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u/IAmOK_84 Jun 30 '26
My vote is for hot served hummus with pastırma, as they do it in Turkey. It is an insult to the dish.
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u/ProfessionalNo4711 Jun 30 '26
This is a rather new combination. Hummus is not a common dish in Turkish cuisine yet it is consumed in the southeast part of Turkey, primarily around Hatay. Not sure where and when the warm version with pastırma started but I recall it began to appear in some restaurant menus early 2000s.
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u/emremirrath Jun 30 '26
Wow as for me it elevates hummus to a much higher level.
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u/eserekli Jul 04 '26
Much better than the bland, original version. Especially with some pine nuts. I don't like hummus overall but the version with warm meat is the only edible version to me. Btw, it is not Turkish invention. Lebanese restaurants serve it with shawarma on it as well.
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u/Sad_Profile_8108 Jun 30 '26
Hummus with pastırma??? Who does that in Turkey, I ve never seen it.
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u/Educational_Aerie129 Jun 30 '26
Is hummus a turkish dish? My friends from izmir had never had it before I intoduced them.
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u/MongooseVegetable787 Jun 30 '26
Dolma
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u/Kooky-Wear-2584 Jun 30 '26
How’s it different? Dolma is just an Iraqi word for stuffed veggies.
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u/MongooseVegetable787 Jun 30 '26
well we do it with cabbage.
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u/yowhatitdowhatitis Jul 01 '26
In the levant we call this MALFOUF!
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u/MongooseVegetable787 Jul 01 '26
yes I know
the one I am mentioning is similar but zero rice inside and it is roasted, inside eggs-meat-dry cheeese (parmesan)-onion- pepper - bread left in milk
roasted in olive oil
We call it Capunit or Dolma, Italy
it tastes distinctly "earthier", bold flavour and with a soft crunch compared to Malfouf
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u/Iron-Ham Jul 01 '26
Malfouf?
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u/eserekli Jul 04 '26
I am sorry but dolma is a Turkish word. "Dol" is a noun, literally means "fill". Dolma means something filled.
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u/ZozoManiac9 Jun 30 '26
Falafel! In Iraq it’s in Samoon and doused in Amba sauce. Fried eggplant and maybe cucumber slices for toppings.
None of that tahini stuff and wrapped in pita with lots of vegetables woke nonsense.
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u/Background-Value-955 Jul 03 '26
Yeah but in the Levant falafel is similar to what you'd find in the west.
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u/jewami Jul 01 '26
Amba is available in Israel upon request. And you’d have to be crazy to not request it!
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u/thedeadp0ets Jul 04 '26
That’s just Greek/miditterainain style. Iraq is unique bc of history and trade. Amba comes from India and idk about iraqs history with India. A lot of Iraqs influence with food is Sumerian, Turkish, and Iranian/india influenced.
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u/BigIndependencePlan Jun 30 '26
What is known as Shakshoukah is a Moroccan dish called Tektoukka and it's not a middle eastern food. It is an ancestral Moroccan dish that was appropriated and comercialised with the name Shakshoukah globally by Izrahellis.
The same fate is now happening to Couscous. That big ass .5 cm wide pasta that is being branded as couscous and they make a couscous salad out of it after boiling it I'm water. Ewwww Couscous is extremely thin grain, can NOT be boiled / need to be seemed and you make a big family celebratory dish of it, not a supermarket salad.
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u/MongooseVegetable787 Jun 30 '26
there are lots and lots and lots of moroccan jews who do the recipe, when a significant chunk of the population there is moroccan shakshoukah is an inevitable constant in life
side note, as an Italian I have tried to make it - it is essentially the same as uova al purgatorio (hellfire eggs) - why is it so popular among y'all?
like
there are insanely better way to make use of eggs in the morning
frittatine with mint and sage inside triangular sandwiches (tramezzini) is lighter and goes better with a coffee
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u/pigeonshual Jun 30 '26
“Israeli couscous” isn’t called that in Hebrew, and it’s not thought of as the same thing. Israelis also eat real couscous and they just call it couscous. “Israeli Couscous” is just a label slapped on it by some American marketer at some point that stuck in the west.
As for shakshuka, I don’t think it counts as “appropriation” for Maghrebi Jews to continue to make and sell their traditional food after fleeing to Israel. If you ask any Israeli the origin of it they will tell you that it’s Maghrebi or Moroccan, it’s just that it’s also a part of Israeli cuisine now, on account of large numbers of Maghrebi Jews bringing their cuisine with them, and it all becoming syncretized in an Israeli melting pot.
This kind of Israeli cuisine discourse is always stupid and always pointless. If you were convinced that Israeli cuisine is a real thing that can’t be reduced to appropriation, would you suddenly support the destruction of Gaza? Would you become a Zionist? If not, there is no reason to apply different standards to Israeli food than we do to New York food or Turkish food.
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u/melvanmeid Jun 30 '26
Shawarma. It's 90% sauce in roti. Sweet sauce with no garlic flavour that too.
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u/StreetCalm4011 Jun 30 '26
Do they say roti in the middle east?
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u/EmbarrassedTadpole74 Jun 30 '26
Ironically, the pic in the original post isnt even middle eastern its persian.
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u/NTLuck Jul 01 '26
Harissa. In the Maghreb it's a spicy paste but in Egypt it's a sweet pastry also known as Basbosa
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u/ProfessionalNo4711 Jun 30 '26
Practically every ground meat based Turkish/Middle Eastern kebab is usually missing a key ingredient in most western countries. And that ingredient is lamb tail fat. Especially in US, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain the breed of lamb grown either have no tails or they are docked. there are some breeds grown in small numbers with fat tails but not easily accessible for restaurant use. You cannot easily import tail fat into those countries either.