Imad's Syrian Kitchen: A Love Letter from Damascus

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Restaurant quality cooking in your kitchen During those long days of Covid lockdown when many restaurants kept afloat by pivoting to meal kit deliveries, I was gifted a wonderful meal. With a lot of help from my husband, I have made fourteen of the recipes – and have plans to try more.

Making his way from Lebanon through Europe, Imad shared his skills cooking for other refugees, up to 400 at a time, and found even in the most challenging times, his passion for food and bringing people together to celebrate life was strong. This made for a very good texture and the spicing with baharat and mild curry powder was excellent as were the crispy onions strewn over the top. Before the war in Syria, Imad had multiple restaurants in Damascus, but when these were destroyed, he had to leave his home and travel as a refugee to London. There are six books in that collection ranging from one on vegan and vegetarian dishes, another on barbeque and one on desserts. Their lives are further imperilled by the lack of safe routes for refugees who become reliant on people smugglers to get to a place of safety.I have often made this dish but usually with rice and lentils rather than bulgar and lentils as specified in Imad’s recipe. Here, Imad will introduce us to memorable flavours and teach us how to cook Syrian food at home, simply.

Only one recipe had an ingredient I was not able to get: sour cherry molasses for the ‘Saroja’ (fried baby aubergines with cheeses). Imad Alarnab says his new life began while he was stranded for 64 days in Calais as a Syrian refugee in 2015. Anyone who wants to know what it means to be a refugee will be staggered by Alarnab's harrowing account. India Express (Square Peg) is the latest cookbook from Rukmini Iyer who wrote The Roasting Tin series which has been a runaway success.A chapter on spice mixes including dukkah (cumin, coriander, pink peppercorns, and two types of chilli flakes) and another on basics like the crispy onions that top many dishes lay a solid foundation for cuisine that is both homey and elegant. He burst onto the London restaurant scene four years ago with a series of fundraising events that were hugely popular. I never make moussaka the traditional way because I don’t often cook meat at home and the required béchamel sauce is a faff, but this was a Syrian moussaka which is much less work and I put it together with ease in my lunch hour. Join Monocle’s deputy head of radio, Tom Webb, as he takes us on a whistle-stop tour of this year’s Monocle Christmas Market in Zürich. Soon after that he was running a pop-up restaurant in east London that was so popular tickets sold out in 24 hours, which led to him opening the doors of his Carnaby Street restaurant in 2021.