Middle Eastern cuisine

Middle Eastern cuisine or West Asian cuisine includes a number of cuisines from the Middle East. Common ingredients include olives and olive oil, pitas, honey, sesame seeds, dates, sumac, chickpeas, mint, rice and parsley, and popular dishes include kebabs, dolmas, falafel, baklava, yogurt, doner kebab, shawarma and mulukhiyah.

Quotes

 * Mahomet, chiefly prohibiteth in his Alcoran, the eating of Swines flesh, and drinking of Wine, which indeed the best sort do, but the baser kind are dayly drunkards: Their common drinke is Sherpet, composed of Water, Honey, and Sugar, which is exceeding delectable in the taste: And the usuall courtesie, they bestow on their friends, who visite them, is a Cup of Coffa, made of a kind of seed called Coava, and of a blackish colour; which they drinke so hote as possible they can, and is good to expell the crudity of raw meates, and hearbes, so much by them frequented. And those that cannot attaine to this liquor, must be contented with the cooling streames of water.
 * William Lithgow, Totall Discourse, IV, 152


 * The board was spread with fruits and wine, With grapes of gold, like those that shine On C ASBIN hills;—pomegranates full Of melting sweetness, and the pears, And sunniest apples that C AUBUL  In all its thousand gardens bears;— Plantains, the golden and the green, M ALAYA ’s nectared mangusteen; Prunes of B OCKHARA, and sweet nuts  From the far groves of S AMARCAND , And B ASRA dates, and apricots,  Seed of the Sun, from I RAN ’s land;— With rich conserve of Visna cherries, Of orange flowers, and of those berries That, wild and fresh, the young gazelles Feed on in E RAC ’s rocky dells. All these in richest vases smile,  In baskets of pure santal-wood, And urns of porcelain from that isle  Sunk underneath the Indian flood, Whence oft the lucky diver brings Vases to grace the halls of kings. Wines too of every clime and hue Around their liquid lustre threw; Amber Rosolli,—the bright dew From vineyards of the Green-Sea gushing; And S HIRAZ wine that richly ran  As if that jewel large and rare, The ruby for which K UBLAI -K HAN  Melted within the goblets there!
 * Thomas Moore, "The Light of the Haram", Lalla-Rookh, an Oriental Romance (1817)


 * And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanchèd linen, smooth, and lavender’d,  While he from forth the closet brought a heap  Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd:  With jellies soother than the creamy curd,  And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;  Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d  From Fez; and spicèd dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.
 * John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes", XXX


 * The slave pour’d sherbet to the brink, Stirr’d in wild honey and pomegranate, With snow and rose-leaves cool’d the drink,  And bore it where the Caliph sate.
 * Sir Edwin Arnold, "The Caliph’s Draught", Indian Poetry (1904)


 * There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
 * T. S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi", Ariel Poems (1927)