From the ancient world to modern main courses, AramcoWorld’s vivid cover stories highlighting diverse dishes offer readers an opportunity to dig into a variety of recipes and how culinary traditions defined cultures.

Obtained from the trunks of various palms, sago is used across Asia as a thickener for soups and stews and to make pudding. You can substitute other soft, sweet fruit like plums or pineapple, but the sweet juice of the lychee blends very well with milk. This is an exotic take on the traditional sago pudding popular in Gulf cuisine, made with sago, sugar and spices.

Shorbat ‘adas or shorbat al-dal, as it is known, is the quintessential Middle Eastern soup.

Chutneys are versatile and can be altered according to your taste and meal you’re serving them with.

Desi Breakfast Sandwich - This recipe for breakfast contains long-lasting carbohydrates, protein and healthful fats to keep you fueled as long as possible.

In recent years in the United States, dates have been trending as a nutrient-dense, easily transportable source of energy. Nearly 90 percent of US-grown dates are from California’s Coachella Valley. Yet the date palm trees from which they are harvested each year aren’t native; they were imported from the Arab world in the 1800s. Over the years, they have become a part of Coachella’s agricultural industry—and sprouted Arab-linked pop culture.

On one of famed chef Shane Delia's many trips to Morocco, some Bedouin men showed him how warming dates in olive oil before placing them in a tangine brings out the flavor of the caramel in the date, leading Delia to this recipe.

Azerbaijan has sat at a crossroads of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia for centuries as a Silk Road hub and a gateway that empires routinely fought to control. That intersection also has manifested itself in the nation’s food—a complex and enticing stew of Turkic, Persian, Eastern European and other regional influences. This food diary explores the unique cuisines of each region.

A take on this date-and-fig bread-loaf recipe from the recent 10th-anniversary reissue of Sally Butcher’s New Middle Eastern Street Food does more than just satiate our sweet tooth. It offers a guide for savoring the simpler things in life.

This is one of those sneaky, apparently super simple dishes that actually has a ton of stuff in it.

Bhorta or bharta is a generic term used in Bengal to describe anything that has been ground, pounded or chopped into very small pieces. It is a side dish almost like a relish, which is commonly eaten with rice and lentils.

After decades of decline under communist rule, food enthusiasts—including brother chef and baker Bledar and Nikolin Kola—are pioneering the return of the country’s traditional dishes. Chefs and other culinary aficionados are drawing on Albania’s 500-plus years of culinary heritage to reinterpret the foods of their ancestors. Their efforts are re-establishing traditions that were feared lost.