Melba's Jammin' wrote:
> This oughtta be good.
> We had lunch at a Middle Eastern Restaurant today * Holy Land in NE
> Minneapolis. Rob remarked that much of the food seemed to have a strong
> flavor of *** something. He didn't know what it was. Said it wasn't
> necessarily unpleasant except that it was prominent. I said I'd "ask my
> people." What do you think it might have been? I wondered about cumin
> but don't even know if that's common in that kind of cookery. OTOH, I'm
> pretty sure Beef Teriyaki and Chicken Alfredo aren't common to middle
> eastern cookery, but they were on the buffet line. :-)
> He had kofta with vegetables, falafel, tandoori chicken, some gyro meat,
> and I'm not sure what else. Is there a common spice in all of those?
> If it makes any difference, the owners are Palestinian.
>
> Save any smartass replies for another time. :-)

Cumin is one of the more common spices used in Arab cookery. Most of the
recipes for kefta that I am familiar with use what is commonly know as
"Arabian spice mixture', a mixture of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg,
cloves, and ginger, all ground and then mixed together. I've a little
jar I mixed up sometime back up in the spice cupboard.

And yes, the spices vary not only by the area where the food is cooked
by by family. Not unlike the rest of us most Arabs have favorite spices.

If you need a recipe for Arabian mixed spices let me know, not only that
but Kuwaiti, Yemeni, and North African variants are in my cookbook. And
they do vary widely as to ingredients and amount of each ingredient in
the mix.

Was that wiseass enough? Nyah, nyah!