In the northeast corner of the souk, there’s a small section devoted to a mind-boggling array of dried fish products. There are tiny dried shrimp smaller than a fingernail all the way up to massive sheets of ochre fish the size of my entire lower body, all hung in the sun and stacked or piled high in a barrel. Whole fish, fillets, just the heads, tails, and some ground to a powder; it’s all here.
At the east end of the market, there is a fish cleaning station where rows of men stand, carefully and incredibly quickly zipping off scales and rinsing out fish innards. (This side of the market also holds butchers—goat heads or lamb brains, anyone?)
Our menu takes advantage of abundant summer produce and will introduce your pantry to a few ingredients that may not be familiar to you now, but that you’ll definitely want to keep around. For this dinner party, you can still stay close to the grill but you’ll end up with a meal that’s bursting with freshness and intriguing new flavors.
Here are our choices for a summer cookout that boasts Middle-Eastern flavor in every dish, from appetizer to dessert.
