Love Middle Eastern food? Why you should be cooking with black limes

I never really grew up eating hummus. It was around of course, mostly appearing at gatherings or as part of a mezze spread, but it was never really the main event of my Bahraini upbringing.

I instead feasted on grand rice platters like machboos, a spiced rice dish usually meat or fish based, or saloona, a tomato based curry-like stew with slow cooked meat and vegetables.

I would eat whole fried Safi (rabbitfish) with my hands, meticulously picking at it until there was nothing left but bones and I’d combine this with aish shaylany, a fragrant white rice cooked with ghee and topped with plenty of fried onions.

I would eat street foods of chargrilled meats marinated in ground black limes or deep fried samboosas stuffed with mung beans or melty cheese. And I would douse everything in spicy hot sauces like daqoos, and have a bowlful of turmeric-stained pickles alongside. Sometimes I would also eat hummus.

When I moved to London in my late twenties, my first job was working as a chef de partie at one of the Ottolenghi delis. I still remember assembling all the iconic salads of meltingly soft aubergines topped with yoghurt and pomegranates, or grilled broccoli florets with fried chillies and garlic.

The spread would often feature a big hummus platter, topped with various toppings that are then lovingly doused in generous amounts of olive oil.

There was something very familiar about working there: food I knew, food I loved, food I understood better than I did myself at times. But never my food. Never the food of a part of the Middle East I soon realised many knew little about.

Fast forward a few years and I was soon running the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen (OTK), alongside a treasure trove of creative minds all putting their individual spins on dishes that would soon be published in Ottolenghi books or columns.

This of course involved many cardamom laced, tahini doused, cumin infused recipes among others. Middle Eastern food had also become a lot more accessible, with sumac, za’atar and tahini seamlessly appearing in mainstream supermarket isles as if they had been there all along.

Why black limes deserve to be the new preserved lemons

While working at the test kitchen, I did my very best to pioneer black limes, sun dried limes that are the backbone of cooking in the Gulf, Iran and Iraq.

After creating many Ottolenghi recipes that featured this bitter, earthy, somewhat strange looking ingredient, I soon noticed black limes appear in the London chef scene and, most surprisingly, even spotted them being sold in Waitrose. But even with this tiny black lime win, I felt there was still so much more to say and do.

As I went on to work on my own cookbook Lugma, I realised then as I do now that it is more important than ever to offer new and real perspectives of Middle Eastern food and culture, and to join the many Arab voices doing their best to amplify this.

My first port of call was naturally Bahrain, the island that raised me, its food a unique mix of Arabic, Persian and Indian flavours intertwined into one. Could I possibly make grand rice dishes like fega’ata, a  fragrant bottom of the pot chicken and rice dish, appear on UK tables?

Or make black limes the new preserved lemons? Well, a girl can dream.

The truth is that the Middle East is such a wonderfully diverse part of the world; its food offerings, much like its culture, its landscapes or its language, is so vast and abundant that I myself cannot possibly wrap my head around it all.

A brief trip to Saudi Arabia, a mere 30 minute drive across a bridge from Bahrain, proved this point even further when, quite suddenly, the dialect differed, the rice dishes magically transformed and the culture morphed into its own identity.

One bite, or one ‘Lugma’ as we say in Arabic, is all it takes sometimes, to pick up on the small nuances that make a notable change.

The best I can do as a cook and author is to offer up the flavours and recipes that I know and love, and hope that you too, dear reader, will try your hand at adding turmeric to your macaroni, serving elaborate rice dishes to your friends or dropping black limes into your stews.

And then perhaps, when someone asks for your opinion on the foods of the Middle East you will answer with, which part?

Loomi Lemon Chicken

I love this dish for two reasons: the first is that spatchcocking a chicken means super-juicy meat every time. The second is that it celebrates loomi (aka black limes) in its very dramatic-looking appearance, and I really appreciate that.

Serve with some lightly dressed greens or the Pan-fried Tomatoes with Za’atar, Pine Nuts and Halloumi (page 91 of Lugma).

Ingredients

• 1 whole large chicken (1.8kg/4lb)
• 2 black limes (10g/¼oz)
• 2 tsp cumin seeds, finely crushed using a pestle and mortar
• 1¼ tsp paprika
• 1½ tsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp soft light brown sugar
• 1 head of garlic, halved widthways, plus 1 extra clove, crushed
• 1 lemon, cut into 8 x 1cm (½in) rounds, seeds removed
• 2½ tbsp olive oil
• 25g (1oz) unsalted butter
• 75g (2¾oz) natural (plain) yoghurt
• 11/2 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped
• fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

• Pat the chicken well dry with paper towels, then flip it over, breast side down, so the backbone is facing you. Use a pair of poultry shears (or a very sharp knife) to cut along each side of the backbone to remove it (save it for making stock or gravy!).
• Flip the chicken back over and push down firmly on the breast to flatten the bird – you want to snap the wishbone. Pat the chicken dry again and season all over with 1½ teaspoons salt, using your fingers to push some salt in between the skin and flesh. Set aside.
• Use your hands to press down on the black limes to roughly crush them. Open them up and pick out and discard any pips (these are bitter). Add the black lime to a spice grinder and blitz to finely crush (you can also do this in a small food processor with a large quantity of black limes). Measure out 1½ tablespoons (store any extra in a sealed jar) and add to a small bowl with the cumin, paprika, oregano, sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt and a generous grind of black pepper and mix well. Rub this all over the chicken (try to get some underneath the skin as well), making sure it is well coated.
• Transfer to a plate and refrigerate, uncovered, for at least a couple of hours, or up to overnight. If the latter, remove the chicken from the refrigerator an hour before roasting.
• When ready to cook, remove the chicken from the refrigerator and then preheat the oven to 190°C fan/210°C/410°F/Gas mark 6½. Place the garlic halves, the lemon slices and 100ml (3½fl oz) of water in a large cast-iron skillet. Place the chicken on top, breast-side up, and drizzle all over with the oil. Transfer to the oven and roast for 25 minutes, then carefully remove and use a spoon to baste the chicken.
• Return to the oven, rotating the dish, and roast for another 15 minutes.
• Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small pan. When ready, remove the chicken and pour the butter all over the skin. Return to the oven for about another 10 minutes or until the juices run clear and the internal temperature reads 75°C (167°F) on a digital thermometer. Set aside to rest for about 10 minutes, then carefully transfer the chicken to a large platter.
• Pick out 3-4 lemon slices and the roasted garlic. Squeeze the garlic flesh into a medium bowl, discarding the papery skins, and use a fork to mash until smooth. Finely chop the lemons, peel and all, and add to the bowl along with the yoghurt, the crushed clove of garlic, the parsley and a tiny pinch of salt.
• Pour the pan juices and remaining lemon slices all over the chicken and serve with the yoghurt alongside.