The food we cook at 12–14 Station Parade, written out so you can cook it at home — Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and Turkish, the four kitchens this family has cooked in.
Slow cooking, rice scented with cardamom and cinnamon, nuts and dried fruit where you would not expect them. The least represented of the four in London, and the reason we put quzi on the menu.
The dish Iraqi families cook for weddings, Eid and anyone worth impressing: lamb cooked until it gives way under a spoon, piled onto rice scented with cardamom and cinnamon, finished with toasted nuts and raisins.
4 hr · 6 servingsOkra stewed down with tomato, garlic and coriander until it is soft and glossy and not remotely slimy. Everyone who says they dislike okra has eaten it cooked badly.
1 hr · 4 servingsAleppo's kitchen: pomegranate molasses, walnuts, sour and sweet pulling against each other in the same mouthful.
From Aleppo: roasted red peppers and walnuts pounded with pomegranate molasses into something sweet, smoky, sour and faintly hot all at the same time. The most underrated dip on any mezze table.
45 min · 6 servings as part of a mezzeA thin bulgur shell, a filling of minced lamb, onion and pine nuts, and the particular satisfaction of shaping something most people buy ready-made. It takes practice. The first few will be ugly and will taste fine.
1 hr 25 min · About 20 piecesThe charcoal grill and the mezze table — the food most people in Britain already know, done the way it is actually done.
Flatbread split, packed with spiced minced lamb and pressed onto the grill until the fat renders into the bread and the outside goes shatteringly crisp. Few things with four ingredients are this good.
35 min · 4 servingsGarlic, oil, lemon and salt whipped into a white emulsion stiff enough to stand a spoon in. No egg, no dairy, no shortcuts — and it splits if you rush it, which is why most people give up after one attempt.
20 min · About 500mlFlat skewers, furnace-hot ovens, and a short ingredient list carried by technique rather than seasoning.
Dough rolled until you can almost see through it, spread with a thin paste of minced lamb, pepper and tomato, and baked in a furnace-hot oven for four minutes. Rolled up around salad and lemon and eaten with hands.
1 hr 55 min · 6 lahmacunMinced lamb, tail fat, red pepper and salt — that is the entire ingredient list — pressed by hand onto a flat skewer and cooked over charcoal. The discipline is in what you leave out.
52 min · 4 servingsPAPA Restaurant & Cafe · 12–14 Station Parade, Willesden Green, London NW2 4NN · 07450 254441