Middle East
Today we’re heading to North Africa, where bakeries and home cooks alike all across the region are busy preparing for Eid Al Fitr, including preparing delicious makrout biscuits just like these! These sweet treats are stuffed with a fragrant date paste spiced with cinnamon, and traditionally they are deep fried before a decadent soaking in syrup or honey infused with geranium water.
We’re so lucky to be able to share a very special recipe for Tunisian Makrout with you today, thanks to Nesrine Toujani of Treats Homemade, who has preserved her grandmother’s recipe and is sharing it with us all to enjoy at home.
Today we’ve got a fabulous sweet treat for you courtesy of Muna Kenny at Munaty Cooking – Luqaimat! Wonderfully crunchy on the outside, delicately spiced with cardamom and saffron, and meltingly soft within, Luqaimat are drizzled with honey or date syrup to create a dessert to die for. Muna’s recipe even includes her secret hack to ensure that your Luqaimat have that perfect crunch. We do warn you, you won’t be able to stop after just one – Luqaimat are so good that they featured in A Thousand and One Nights!
Today we’re very excited to share a recipe designed by award-winning cookery writer and food artisan Dima Sharif! Her Musakhan Canapés are the perfect dish for iftar get-togethers (the evening meal after dusk falls and the day of fasting ends), dinner parties or Eid celebrations. This imaginative spin on mouthwatering traditional Palestinian musakhan is the perfect appetiser to serve at your next do – and even better, they are suitable for vegans and vegetarians for the ultimate in stress-free entertaining.
It’s Women’s History Month, and here at Pink Jinn there’s nothing we love more than celebrating the achievements of incredible women. To mark the occasion, we’re going on a trip through history to highlight the stories of 6 awe-inspiring women from the Middle East and North Africa who we should all know more about. From warriors, freedom fighters and activists to pioneers in the fields of healthcare and even aviation, this is a pretty amazing collection.
Our Founder, Laura Cretney, shares the story of Pink Jinn, from a tiny British island to the deserts of Oman.
This year has been anything but easy, but a host of stellar movie releases from the Middle East made 2022 a remarkable year for filmmaking across the region. We’re ending this year by looking back through these triumphs of cinema, so that you can start 2023 with a ready-made list of outstanding and poignant films to watch. Bear witness to the horrors of the Nakba with Farha, gain a sense of the struggles faced by artists and filmmakers working under Iranian censorship in Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, see life through the eyes of a Syrian family starting a new life in Belgium in My Paper Life, follow Yusra and Sara Mardini’s perilous journey to safety in The Swimmers, and feel true fear with Reem, a Palestinian woman whose life is plunged into disaster in Huda’s Salon.
Following in the footsteps of her mother, renowned tatreez artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, Wafa Ghnaim of Tatreez & Tea is on a mission to preserve and promote tatreez, proudly claiming this beautiful textile art form for Palestinians across the globe and encouraging new generations of embroiderers to practice this age-old art.
In the heart of Jebel Al-Weibdeh, Amman lies the Jordanian National Gallery of Fine Arts and its beautiful sculpture garden. A quiet haven in the middle of the bustling city, the park and the gallery play host to an ever-changing array of art from across the Middle East and beyond.
We’re taking a delicious trip across the Middle East and North Africa via a mouth-watering array of dishes and drinks. Middle Eastern and North African cuisine is hugely varied, drawing on the wealth of herbs and spices available in the region and age-old traditions from hundreds of different cultures. From mint tea and qahwa to delicious stews, succulent barbecued carp, and even snails with lavender, there are so many incredible flavours to discover and this list of food and drinks to try is just the beginning.