bake - June 2019 - 9

technical corner

The Book on Modern Middle East
Winner of the 2019 James Beard Award for cookbooks in the

What did it mean to receive the James Beard Book Award?

baking and desserts category, SUQAR: Desserts & Sweets from

Greg Malouf: It was a huge and very special honor, and truly

the Modern Middle East, by Greg and Lucy Malouf, shares the

fantastic to be recognized in the U.S. - especially by such a

secrets of more than 100 sweet treats inspired by Middle East-

prestigious organization.

ern ﬂavors. Puddings and pastries, ice creams, cookies, cakes,
confectionery, fruity desserts and beverages are featured. The

How has your Australian background inﬂuenced your cooking?

recipes merge the spices, ﬂavors, and scents of Greg's unique

Greg Malouf: I'm known for my contemporary take on Middle

Lebanese-Australian childhood with Western inﬂuences to cre-

Eastern food, and I think I owe this to growing up in Australia!

ate dishes in a signature modern Middle Eastern style.

As a country with such a large immigrant population it's always
been very forward thinking about food. I had a unique oppor-

Bake reached out to Greg and Lucy Malouf about the book's

tunity to bring the food of my heritage into a more contempo-

origins and what distinguishes Middle Eastern sweets.

rary domain, which is a freedom that I might not have had if I'd
grown up in Lebanon, for instance, where there is a much stron-

What are some popular Middle Eastern desserts?

ger pull to tradition. But for me, while tradition is important,

Greg Malouf: Desserts, as such, are rarely eaten in most parts of

I'm the ﬁrst to admit that I don't always stick to the rules. This

the Middle East, although that's changing a bit nowadays, as the

playing with ideas and traditions runs through all my recipes,

world and culinary inﬂuences become more global. I use fruit

also in SUQAR. So, you'll ﬁnd Baklava stuffed with ice cream,

extensively in my restaurant dessert menus: chilled watermelon

muhallabeya topped with nectarine caramel, petit pots ﬂavored

with crushed strawberry sauce and crumbled halva is a favorite,

with Turkish coffee, Bazarak biscuits with sour cherries, labne

as is my stone fruit fattouche fruit salad (a riff on the popular

cheesecake, Arabic ﬁve-spice pineapple with saffron ice cream,

garden salad), which incorporates shards of crunchy tuiles in

chocolate fondant pudding cakes with Turkish delight. These

place of fried pitta bread pieces. One of the most universally

are deﬁnitely not recipes you'll ﬁnd in other Middle Eastern

popular desserts (in restaurants and at home) would have to be

cookbooks, nor in traditional Middle Eastern restaurants, but

muhallabeya, a traditional and very simple chilled milk pudding

I like to think they still express the spirit of the region and are

(a little like blancmange, or panna cotta). It's served very cold

entirely an expression of my own life and values.

and drenched with a ﬂoral syrup that provides a fragrant sweet
counterpoint to the creamy, smooth blandness of the muhalla-

Lucy Malouf: Over the years I've written as a freelancer for

beya itself.

food and travel magazines and books and really, what could be
more fun? I was lucky enough to be raised in Europe by Austra-

And, of course, sweet pastries, baklava and myriad variations,

lian parents, so I have had lots of diverse inﬂuences in my life,

are sold everywhere. These are made from layers of translucent

which I'm sure has contributed to a love for food, an open mind

ﬁlo pastry, with ﬁllings of ground nuts, or stretchy cheese, or

and a desire to explore and embrace 'the other'. The time I've

clotted cream, or fruit pastes, all drenched in an orange blos-

spent traveling has underpinned my ﬁrm belief that food brings

som or rose scented syrup.

people together in a unique and forceful way.

bakemag.com | JUN 2019 > 09
http://www.bakemag.com
bake - June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of bake - June 2019
