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.

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.

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.

Al-Baghdadi wrote his hit medieval cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh (Book of Dishes) in 1226 CE at the height of Abbasid sophistication and power. It included this recipe for hais or date sweetmeats.

Ma’aleh is usually deep-fried cauliflower, served in a sandwich with raw vegetables and tarator.

During the hot summer months, ice-cream shops, called shir yakh feroshees, would sell an assortment of ice creams and other cold desserts. My sister Fatema remembers going into beautiful little shops after school to buy shir yakh. They were colorful and decoratively tiled and had Bollywood music playing in the background. The shir yakh, with rose and pistachios, is a favorite at Parwana, one of her restaurants.

Like the iconic bun kabab of Karachi in Pakistan or Hyderabad in India, a spicy kabab inside a bun is a popular street food in certain regions of the Indian subcontinent.