Anatomy of a meal

Place: JORDAN

Jordan's cuisine is to live for...

An unexpected bounty while travelling is usually the food. Each new places offers its own delights, and insights into a place. Jordan to date remains the destination I most vividly remember for every meal being such a absolute delight. Obviously Mediterrranean in its contours, the cuisine is extremely close to what most would know as Lebanese cuisine.

Here is a glimpse into the first meal we had, which is after a delightful few hours spent marvelling at Jerash. It was a late lunch, it had rained lightly and a light drizzle still continued. The weather was perfect for an outdoors meal, but we did the next best thing, sat next to a huge glass window.  

The idea of taking a pic came rather late in the meal,
when we had satiated ourselves! 

By far the most common and best way of eating is the communal mezze, which is what we followed. It consists of various individual dishes. It starts with a drink, which our case was a most refreshing lime mint juice. 

The food to arrive were platters of hummus and the falafel, great favourites. The salads include the tabouleh and the fattoush. There is also the familiar bagdonsyyeh, parsley blended with tahini and lemon juice. There are more dips on way - moutabal, pureed eggplant, a cousin of the babaganoush,  and in their variety of flavours are a hit at the table. There are bowls of olives and pickled veggies - carrot, radish, cucumber and a local veggie we couldn't identify. There is olive of course to add the to anything. There were wonderful breads to accompany all these, along with the familiar pita came the less known  ka'ak, round, thick and soft - think sheermal without the sweetness. perfect accompaniment for the rest of the meal. 

The centre piece is a very large kabab platter, which also had a bed of biryani type rice. We had stuffed ourselves, already as we had to idea that was coming! But proudly we can say we followed the eco friendly adage of not wasting anything. Coffee followed, and we did not decline! Amazingly, the meal was light enough for us to do more walking around.