Full of Eastern promise

Tagines piled high with tabbouleh, spicy vegetable couscous, salads scattered with pomegranate seeds, the sweetest of honey baklava and hot coffee… now that’s a feast, says Jassy Davis.

It’s hard to believe but when Waitrose started selling little pots of chickpea paste, otherwise known as houmous, back in the 1980s we Brits greeted it with a big dollop of suspicion, tentatively sniffing at the garlicky, wallpaper paste-like mush. Now, just like pasta and yogurt before it, houmous has become a staple of most British kitchens. But back then it was a truly exotic addition to any cocktail party.

The Middle East – which stretches from the Mediterranean coasts of Turkey and Cyprus to the eastern borders of Iran and down to the Arabian shore of Yemen and Oman
– has captivated the hearts and minds of British cooks for more than 900 years. It has introduced us to warming spices, the sweetness of sugar, and that modern early morning essential, coffee.

From crusades to coffee shops

We have the first Crusaders, who answered Pope Urban II’s call to arms in 1095, to thank for the influence of this region on our cooking. For 200 years thousands of people, from peasants to kings and queens, journeyed from Europe through the Byzantine Empire to fight in the Holy Land. The Crusaders who returned brought back the foods and flavours that had enchanted them as they travelled – in particular, spices.

Spices weren’t unknown in England, the Romans had left behind a lingering love for them. Pepper was especially prized and very expensive, and it was one of the treasures author and scholar the Venerable Bede distributed from his deathbed in the eighth century. Yet the opening of land and sea trade routes to the Middle East – the profitable side effect of the Crusades – introduced a rich array of aromatics to grand Norman kitchens.

Romantic stories surrounded the origins of these expensive and exotic spices. Franciscan monk Bartholomew the Englishman wrote in his thirteenth century encyclopedia that cinnamon was found in the nest of the phoenix, and that peppercorns grew in a forest filled with snakes that had to be driven out with fire before they could be safely harvested.

Medieval cooks used their spices ostentatiously – not to disguise foul or rotting meat, but as a display of wealth. They were edible equivalents of jewels, and luxurious dishes flavoured with ginger, galangal (a root from the ginger family), grains of paradise (peppery dried seeds), cloves, nutmeg, mace and saffron graced the tables of medieval banquets.

The birth of the kebab shop

Turks made up the majority of the small number of Middle Eastern immigrants settling in the UK, along with Yemeni lascars (sailors) who also arrived in the 18th century. They stayed mainly in port towns, such as Tyneside and Liverpool, and brought their foods and drinks to those cities.

By 1914 a steady stream of Turkish Cypriots was migrating to the UK, following the British annexation of Cyprus; this increased after Cyprus became an independent state in
1960. To feed demand Turkish cafés launched, with Britain’s first Turkish restaurant, Pasha, opening in north London in the late 1960s, selling grilled meats, traditional kebabs and meze

Kebab shops began to open across the UK – today there are some 20,000 – with Doner kebabs being one of the nation’s favourite post-pub snacks.

The 1970s and 1980s saw people move to the UK from other Middle Eastern countries including Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, bringing the flavours of their countries with them. Cafés and restaurants sprang up not only to cater for these new arrivals, but for Brits who readily embraced these aromatic dishes. Middle Eastern fare has continued to grow in popularity and today it’s firmly on UK menus.