♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today on Milk Street, we travel to Beirut, where we visit a bakery that specializes in flavored flatbreads, we eat breakfast at a small cafe, Soussi, and bring back a recipe for pita chickpea yogurt salad.

Plus, we make Middle Eastern rice with toasted pasta and herbs.

So, stay right here with Milk Street as we learn how to cook the Lebanese way.

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(car engine humming, voice over loudspeakers) - Beirut was settled over 5,000 years ago, but still offers the same gorgeous seaside setting with rolling hills rising up from the Mediterranean.

But it's a city of contradictions-- apartment buildings pockmarked with bullet holes and surrounded by frantic reconstruction.

But at its core, it's the Lebanese that make Beirut what it is.

It's welcoming and warm with some of the very best food in the world.

It's an energetic mix of old and new on a foundation of the ancient tradition of hospitality.

- Welcome.

- The Lebanese invite you into their homes... (glasses clink, inaudible) - ...where you can stop by a small breakfast cafe where you can choose from chickpea and pita salads, puréed fava beans, or fresh bowl of za'atar herbs with onions and peppers.

Flatbreads are also on the menu for breakfast.

It's Lebanese pizza, and it's the best in the world.

- What we did with the flatbreads is we got the same kinds of different cheeses, a za'atar one, then I got a labneh one.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that's the za'atar flatbread, and really the dough mixture here is simply-- you're looking at flour, water... - That's soft.

- ...salt, yeast, and a ton of olive oil to spread.

- Very soft, yeah.

The thing I love about the za'atar flatbreads is when you get fresh za'atar like this, you really get how tangy the sumac is, the thyme, it's so fresh, it's nice and tangy.

- So this is the za'atar mix, it's not just wild thyme leaves, it has the sumac and the pine nuts.

- Exactly.

- The fresh za'atar with the sumac and the tomato was extraordinary.

I mean, that was just... the cheese was great, too, but that, that was amazing.

- That was my favorite one... - That is really good.

- I have to agree with you.

- It's the best one right there.

- Excellent.

I like pancakes, but I think I like this better.

- (laughs) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, I fell in love with Beirut.

The people were great, the food was great.

But my favorite place was this little bakery, and they did za'atar flatbreads.

And za'atar, which is both the name of a wild thyme-- it's about, at least about that big-- it's also a mix of the dried leaves, sumac, and also sesame seeds.

And they use that sort of as a base for most of these.

So, why not do flatbreads here in this country?

Like, no one does them.

- Why not, Chris?

- Except you, you're going to do it.

- We're going to do it.

And they are delicious, like you said.

They are really kind of soft and pillowy and really versatile.

So yes, you can make a za'atar topping like we're going to do today.

But this also makes a great pizza dough.

So, to get started, I have one-and-three-quarter cups of bread flour, and a teaspoon and a half of instant yeast, and a teaspoon and three quarters of kosher salt.

So I'm just going to buzz that together in the food processor.

(whirring) Okay, so once that's mixed-- now, you had mentioned the flavor and texture of this dough, and yogurt has a lot to do with that.

There's a little bit of fat, some nice tanginess here.

I have three quarters of a cup of full-fat Greek yogurt here.

And then, just a tablespoon of honey.

And a quarter cup of water.

And I'm going to combine this for about 30 seconds, and we'll give the dough a little feel and see if we need to add more water.

(churning) All right, Chris, so you can see this is sticking to the side of the bowl.

This is just how we want it.

So I'm going to let it go for another minute until it forms a ball.

(churning) All right, Chris.

Now, you can see this is in a beautiful ball, and it also is really quite sticky and tacky and almost a little bit shiny.

Now, I'm just going to knead it a few times, to kind of bring it into a ball.

- By the way, that technique of adding yogurt to a dough, especially for pizza dough, is a really nice way to get a, it's a very soft, malleable dough, it's easy to work with.

As you said, this can be used as a pizza dough recipe.

- All right, so I'm just going to divide this into two pieces.

We're going to have two flatbreads, and I'll let you work with one of them here, Chris.

Nothing fancy here, we're just shaping it into a ball that's a little flat at the bottom.

Perfect.

All right, now we are going to transfer it to this baking sheet, and we're going to cover it with plastic wrap, and just let it sit for an hour to an hour and a half.

You want them to double in size.

And in the meantime, while I clean up, would you mind just whisking that together, Chris?

- Mm-hmm.

- We have six tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of za'atar, and two tablespoons of sesame seeds, and that's going to make our topping.

- All right, Chris, so our dough has been sitting for an hour and a half, and you can see it's really nice and pillowy and soft.

We're going to work it into a six-by-12-inch flatbread.

So as you mentioned, Chris, these are pretty rustic.

You don't have to be too particular here, but, again, we're looking for about a six-by-12, kind of oblong.

- That's so you, you know, you can be rustic, then you'll do a perfect six-by-12.

I'm not putting any pressure on you at all.

- Yeah, no pressure at all.

All right, Chris, you can see this is about a foot long.

I'm going to put it onto our pizza peel dusted with semolina flour.

Now, again, if you don't have a pizza peel at home-- I actually don't have one-- you can use an inverted cookie sheet.

And then we have our beautiful little mixture that you made here for our topping.

I should say-- the oven.

We preheated it about an hour ago, you want to get it really, really hot, 500 degrees, with a baking stone if you have one.

It's just going to take between seven and nine minutes.

You want it to get nice and golden brown.

- And we'll be ready for flatbread.

- Mmm.

♪ ♪ - All right, Chris.

So the hardest part about this recipe is waiting the ten minutes for it to cool down enough to eat it.

So I have one all set up for you.

This we're going to leave for the time being.

But look at this awesome, bubbly, golden deliciousness... - A-plus.

- Right?

- Well, it's easy to do, and it gets that nice, bubbly texture, right?

- Right.

And if you weren't here, I would just fold this in half and eat it myself, but I'm going to be a little more civilized and just cut us some pieces.

- Was this the one you're going to give me?

- You get the sad little scrap.

- I'm not getting that one.

Geez, come on.

- I want the one with the oil pool.

- Mmm.

What are these for?

Were these for something?

- Forget it.

- You don't get... in Beirut, you don't get plates for your flatbread, you know.

- I loved how easily it came together, too, I mean, you just throw it in the food processor, there's almost no work.

And I love that also you could make it a day ahead.

This is a great weeknight meal.

You make the dough the night before, take it out of the fridge when you get home from work.

- Has chew to it.

Kind of pillowy, it's soft, but it's got a nice crust on the bottom, so it's got that crispness as well, and the toppings.

You know, I feel like I'm in Beirut.

Really, the secret to this recipe-- besides having to go to Beirut, what a tough job that was-- is using yogurt.

They use a lot of olive oil, so you get a nice soft dough.

It billows up when you bake it.

It's really, I would say it's like a foolproof pizza dough.

And if you like, we also have different toppings on our website to make it more of a meal.

Although I think, Catherine, I might say a glass of wine and this is just fine.

- Sounds good to me.

♪ ♪ - Here's a travel tip.

If you go to Beirut, there's a wonderful breakfast place called Soussi.

It's well-known.

It's run by a gentleman in his 70s who's a terrific short order cook, and they have lots of salads, like a wild za'atar salad.

But a lot of the salads and the dishes use chickpeas, of course, and this is a dish called fatteh, right, which has yogurt, chickpeas, and also flatbread in it.

It's really delightful.

It's, it's refreshing.

in the morning.

And we decided it was so good and so simple, we'd bring it back to Milk Street.

- Yeah, and it's a really fantastic way of turning stale, crusty pita bread into a hearty meal.

Now, if you don't have stale pita on hand, you could totally use fresh, just like what we did here.

These were two eight-inch pita rounds that we sliced in half.

We brushed both sides using about two tablespoons worth of butter and then sprinkled them evenly with two teaspoons of cumin.

We then threw that into an oven that was preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and we toasted them for five minutes on one side, gave them a flip, and toasted them again for another five minutes.

Now, we're going to take that very same baking sheet that we used to toast all of the pita breads, and were going to throw on a quarter-cup of pine nuts, and we'll toast these in the very same oven, for about three-to-five minutes.

You don't even have to change the temperature, but be ready to give them a little toss halfway through, just to make sure that nothing burns.

All these pine nuts are beautifully toasted.

Now, while they're still warm, I do want to work a little bit quickly to pour them into three tablespoons worth of butter.

While these pine nuts are still hot, I do want to add our spices, So we have a half-teaspoon of cumin.

We also have a quarter-teaspoon of cayenne pepper, but I'll be nice to you today, I'll only add half.

Eh, maybe not, I'll add the whole thing.

To that, we'll also throw in a quarter-teaspoon of our salt, and, finally, a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper.

Now, I wanted to throw these spices in while everything was still warm.

So that way, the residual heat from the pine nuts can bloom the spices.

Now, the dressing, like I mentioned to you before, is yogurt-based, so we're starting out with one cup of yogurt.

- Now, this is whole fat yogurt?

- Yes.

- Is it Greek yogurt or just regular?

- No, this is whole fat plain yogurt.

Now that we have the yogurt in the bowl, we'll throw in a quarter-cup of tahini.

We'll also throw in one teaspoon of lemon zest, as well as two medium garlic cloves that have been very finely grated, one tablespoon of lemon juice, and, finally, a half a teaspoon of salt.

And now from there, all we have to do is whisk this up and this dressing is good to go.

- Well, I like the fact that in a lot of Middle Eastern cooking, yogurt is a base for hundreds of things.

It's just sort of your go-to, starting point foundation, right?

- Yeah, it... you know, it lends creaminess, but then it has this fantastic tang that really awakens the taste buds.

So here we have two 15-and-a-half-ounce cans of chickpeas that we drained and then we rinsed.

And to this, we're going to throw in three tablespoons of water.

We're also throwing in one teaspoon of salt as well as quarter-teaspoon of black pepper, and finally, one-and-a-half teaspoons of za'atar.

So what I'll do from here is I'll just stir these to coat evenly, and then we'll pop this into the microwave and heat it on high for about three to three-and-a-half minutes.

So that way that za'atar flavor can really permeate the dish.

All right, so our chickpeas are nice and warm, which means we can bring this salad together.

Just break these into bite-sized pieces.

It doesn't have to be exact.

- Oh, you're fast.

- Not very good, but fast.

- (laughs) Now that we have that, we can go ahead and scoop over some of our warm chickpeas.

And I'm using a slotted spoon to do that, just in case there's any moisture left at the bottom of the bowl.

Nothing is more depressing than a soggy salad.

After that, we can go ahead and dollop on some of this dressing.

Now, it's nice and thick, so what I'll do is I'll actually kind of just spread that around.

- Sort of a Jasper Johns thing.

- (laughs) More like a Pollock.

After that, we'll top it off with a cup and a half of fresh mint leaves, and this is what really freshens this dish up.

Excellent.

And then, the butter and pine nut mixture.

So we'll just spoon that right on top.

- This does look good, I have to say.

- It has so many layers of texture and flavor.

Now, the last bit here is creating another layer of flavor when it comes to that za'atar.

Sprinkling that right on top.

We're ready to eat, and you want to get little bits and pieces of every layer that we put on this plate.

- Many salads in the Middle East have no greens, they're just all herbs.

- It's because it has so much more flavor, but you do want to treat them just like salad greens.

Don't dress them in advance.

Dress them right before you're ready to serve.

- Oh, this is really good.

- Great.

- So if you're tired of the same old salad, you might try this chickpea salad with yogurt and pita.

Many layers of flavor and also of texture, it's great.

- Thank you very much.

♪ ♪ Anissa Helou was born in Beirut and after running an antiques shop in Paris, became a well-known food writer.

Her latest work, Feast: Food of the Islamic World, details both the history and the recipes of Islam.

Let's just talk about this place to start.

Where are we?

- Yeah.

It's basically my favorite fish place in Lebanon.

- So '75 through '91, during the war, what did you do?

What were you doing at that time?

- I personally left, because I felt that Beirut was too small and too provincial for what I wanted to do, and I wanted to live in Europe.

♪ ♪ Have you toasted vermicelli before?

- Uh, no.

♪ ♪ - You have to toast it until it's really, really brown, stirring it all the time.

The trick is that it has to not lose its color when it's boiling with the rice.

- This is not a taste thing, this is a visual thing?

- It's actually tasting, because you're getting-- the nice thing about vermicelli rice is that you're getting rice with pasta.

- Uh-huh.

- Not very much pasta, but it gives you a kind of slight texture difference, and flavor difference, because this is very caramelized.

- So is vermicelli with rice something that came from somewhere else?

- It could be, it could be.

Like it could be medieval, actually, this.

And in Iran, I think they have it as well.

Also, in Afghanistan, they have it.

But in Afghanistan, what they do is that they toast the vermicelli, they put the rice, and then the different garnishes of the rice are put in corners on top, and then at the end, they mix it together.

- Oh.

- So basically, it's beurre noir because the butter toasts as well.

It's almost ready.

Beautiful color.

- And a beautiful smell.

- Yeah.

I'll add the rice.

This is Egyptian short grain rice.

It's a bit harder and requires a little bit more water, but it's very nice short grain rice.

(sizzling) And a bit of salt, that should do it.

Nobody has the time at home... - To make ten plates.

- ...to make 20 or, ten or 20 plates.

But what they would do at home, let's say a typical family meal, would have maybe two or three prepared meze or salads with crudité, and you'd have maybe a plate of hummus and a plate of labneh, and things that don't take too much time to prepare.

- So you said in Arabic there's the expression, what was expression?

- (speaking Arabic) - So the idea that the table is bare, it would be the antithesis of the fullness of, of having food to serve, right?

- Exactly.

- Your hospitality, right?

- Yeah.

Exactly.

♪ ♪ - So I guess, in effect, we're doing Rice-A-Roni, right, I mean, it's toasted pasta with rice.

We made that with Anissa Helou at her mother's apartment in Beirut, overlooking Beirut up in the hills, and I sort of fell in love with it because it's such a simple concept.

Toasted pasta and rice.

Easy to do, but it really changes the nature of the rice and makes it much more interesting.

- Right, so this is a common recipe in the Middle East, but it's also pretty common here in the U.S.

It's gone commercial, in the box, but what we're going to make here has so much more flavor, but it offers you the option to make some variations, add some different things in, which is what we're going to do here.

The first place that we're going to get probably most of the flavor here is by toasting the pasta.

So I've got two tablespoons of salted butter.

I'm going to put that in this pan and get that melted.

So, we have vermicelli pasta here.

This is an ounce, if you can't weigh your pasta.

This is about a third of a cup, So the butter's melted.

I'm going to toss in this pasta.

(sizzling) And we're really going to get this nice and golden brown.

And you're going to start to smell this in a minute.

It has that almost distinctive rice pilaf smell.

It kind of brings me back to my childhood.

- What, is that all your mother made for you?

- No, I... - As a kid?

Just rice pilaf?

- It was a common thing.

And so the other thing that's happening in the pot at the same time is we're going to end up browning the butter that's in there.

That's another layer that's going to add so much flavor to this finished dish.

So this is going to take about five minutes, and again, you want to get this really nice and golden brown.

Okay, Chris, so you can see that these are really nice and golden brown, the butter's nice and brown.

I'm now going to take it off the heat-- and transfer it to a little bowl here.

And we want to take out all the pasta and all that butter.

- Did you notice Anissa with the butter?

- She used a lot.

- She took a big hunk of butter.

- She used a lot.

- That's, you know, that's what I like about people in the rest of the world.

They just put a lot of fat in it, it was good.

- Hey, why not?

- Why not?

- So we're going to set this aside, because the pasta is going to take less time to cook than the rice.

This is a cup of basmati rice.

We have rinsed it, just to get any impure-- I can see your face, because I know this is a hot button topic for you.

- I have shocking news for you.

Since last year, I now rinse my rice.

- I'm so proud of you.

- I'm just doing that so you can't yell at me on television.

- That's good, that's good.

I'm glad.

So this is going to go in.

Really important is to make sure you drain it really well, you don't want any extra moisture in the pot, that'll throw off the texture.

And then we have a cup and two-thirds of chicken broth.

(sizzling) I'm just going to bring this to a boil.

And we're using chicken broth here.

This isn't going to take very long to cook, it's about 15 minutes.

And then cover it.

And we'll turn it down to low, and that'll go for about eight minutes.

So, Chris, it's been eight minutes.

The rice has started cooking in there.

It's not finished yet, but we are going to stir in our vermicelli now.

So I'm just going to re-cover that and let that go for another seven minutes.

And in the meantime, we're going to work on some of those extra flavors that I talked about.

So I'm just going to chop up these herbs.

We have some dill here.

(chopping) This should be four tablespoons.

We're not going to measure.

We're just going to throw it in.

- You know, Lynn and I have worked together for a long time.

And as, as we both get a little more experience-- was that the nice way of putting it?

(stammering): You, you're... - Old, I think, is what you're trying to say.

- You're a little bit more living on the wild side.

You're a little bit on the edge-- you're not, you're not going to measure the dill.

- Well, you know... when it comes to fresh herbs, you know, just throw a handful in.

You don't need to get super specific.

- I-I... you've really chilled out.

- I have.

So, we also have some parsley.

I'm just going to give it the same treatment.

Just chop it up a little bit.

Again, four tablespoons of parsley.

We're going to wing it, Chris.

We're going crazy.

- (chuckles) - Okay, so when this is finished, we'll stir some of these herbs in and then we'll finish the entire dish.

So now we get to peek inside the pot.

- Oh.

- Looks good.

All of the liquid has absorbed here, and that's what we're going for, it's nice and fluffy.

So I'm going to turn this off, and then we're going to add two more tablespoons of butter.

- Good.

- Because why not?

Going to make it really nice and, well, buttery.

- Buttery.

- (chuckling): Just get that... - Lynn has a way with words.

- And then I'm going to add half of the dill and half of the parsley.

Add a little bit of salt.

Some pepper.

- Mmm, smells good.

I can smell the vermicelli.

- Got that great nutty flavor.

- Yeah.

- And those herbs smell amazing.

All right, so if you would step on over to our serving station.

- Is that what you call your dining room table at home?

Your serving station?

- My serving station.

And the rest of this we'll sprinkle on the top here.

- Mmm.

- Freshness in every bite.

And then, finally, I've been talking about "nutty" this whole time.

And I actually wasn't referring to you, I was referring to this.

We're actually going to put some actual nuts on here.

This is a quarter-cup of toasted sliced almonds.

So this is going to not only kind of highlight that nut flavor, but it's also going to add a really nice textural contrast.

- That looks great, I have to say.

- All right.

Yeah, I want maximum textural contrast.

- Here you are.

I had to stop making it, because I found myself like, accidentally eating three bowls of it as I was standing... - And the problem with that was?

- Well, you know, I'm a lady.

- Mmm.

- The surprise is it's incredibly light.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, some pilafs are a little on the heavy side, you know, but this is really, really light with the herbs.

I mean, the texture's light and the flavor is light.

- Right.

- That's what I mean to say.

Three bowls?

I think, I think I can go three bowls on this, too.

- Can you see?

I keep going back.

- So we took a cue from Anissa Helou-- and that rhymes, how nice-- from Beirut, this toasted pasta vermicelli with rice.

You added a couple of other ingredients just to make it a little bit fresher with the herbs, and a little bit of toasted almonds for, as you said, textural contrast.

- Very important.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- Ferguson's proud to support Milk Street and culinary crusaders everywhere.

For more information on our extensive collection of kitchen products, we're on the web at fergusonshowrooms.com.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Since 1899 my family has shared our passion for everything that goes into our Mutti 100% Italian tomatoes.

Only tomatoes.

Only Mutti.

- Designed by cooks for cooks for over 100 years.

Cookware collection by Regal Ware.

Handcrafted in Wisconsin.

- The AccuSharp knife and tool sharpener, designed to safely sharpen knives in seconds.

AccuSharp.

Keep your edge.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪