Name: Pan-fried okra with tomato, olives and haloumi (Bamia bil siniyhe)
Yield: Serves two as a main or four as a side
Cuisine: Israeli
Ingredients: ½ tsp paprika; ¾ tsp ground cumin; 1 lemon, cut into wedges; 180 g cherry tomatoes (about 15), sliced in half; 400 g okra, trimmed (but not so far so that you expose the seeds), or frozen baby okra, defrosted; 70 g pitted Kalamata olives; 3 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve; 1 tsp caster sugar; 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced; Salt; 120 g haloumi cheese (or feta, as an alternative), broken into roughly 1cm chunks; 1 green chilli, thinly sliced; 5 g parsley, roughly chopped; 1 tbsp cider vinegar; 1 tbsp shatta (or rose harissa, as an alternative)

Preparation info

Serves
two
as a main or four as a side

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Falastin

By Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley

Published 2020

About

Having noted the difference between home and restaurant cooking, this is a dish which blurs any such distinction. Although it feels ‘rustic’ and ‘homely’, it’s one we first ate and were inspired to re-create after a meal at Daher Zeidani’s Alreda restaurant in Nazareth. The fact that the dish blurs the restaurant–home distinction says a lot about Daher himself ( for more), as much a seasoned chef as he is host, focal point and bringer together of community. Pe