Anything grows

In Lebanon, a sun that’s shining

Is looked on as nothing striking,

Here heaven knows, anything grows

.

Tomatoes red in great abundance

And yellow bananas there

beside the road, anything grows

.

We all need five a day

Of some fruit today,

Veggies too today

That’s just right today,

When nearly all today,

Of our food today,

Could be organic if we chose

.

A chef I’m not nor good cook either

I know that you’re none the wiser

As heaven knows, food here just grows

With apologies to Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”.

We spent the weekend in Zahlé, about an hour or so’s drive inland from Beirut. It’s an old picturesque town climbing rapidly up the side of a mountain rising from the floor of the Bekaa valley – hence the town’s nickname, the bride of the Bekaa. Climb the path running beside the little river and you come to an area where restaurants are situated, many of which span the river, providing a sound back drop of bubbling water to eat by. The restaurants all offer variations on the traditional Lebanese celebration meal.

Said meal consists of three parts, the first is known as the mesa. During this phase, which can last a good hour, dish after dish is brought, until the table is pretty well completely covered, after which, dishes are just piled over one another. The staples are hummus (based on a very fine purée of chick peas), mtabal (an aubergine dip), fatouche (a salad with croutons made of unleavened bread that look the cousins of potato crisps) and tabouleh (based on chopped parsley and eaten with lettuce or cabbage leaves). The dips were all eaten, not with knives and forks, but with wonderfully thin, hot, unleavened bread that looked like very fine pancakes. Alongside the staples came marinated beetroot, a dish of spiced green leaves (rocket, thyme and fizzy, crisp, little ones), sliced grapefruit-sized tomatoes with black pepper, small whole onions in lemon juice, various cheeses and a huge bowl of salad ingredients (lettuce, spring onions, tomatoes, lemons and white cabbage) in case you felt imaginative enough to create your own extra dishes.

No problem with five a day (the long running campaign to get us Brits to eat more fruit and veg) here then, five a meal is downright abstemious.

But we haven’t finished the mesé yet, there are hot dishes too – cheese rolls, chicken livers and other inside bits (not much gets wasted), chicken wings and thick cut double fried chips. And for the brave there’s kibbi nehyi; it’s “lamburger on the hoof”, finely ground uncooked lamb mixed with cracked wheat and eaten with lots of olive oil and the thin bread mentioned above, oh! and just in case, take arak, whisky or other strong liquor with it – the alcohol will ensure the demise of the risks associated with eating raw meat, or at least that’s the hope/excuse.

Excellent meal, lots of variety, no embarrassing moments when presented with something you don’t like, there’s so much to choose from, just move on to another dish. It’s balanced, with a good mixture of protein, carbohydrates and vegetable matter and contains all the vitamins and minerals known to science, as well, no doubt, as some that aren’t.

And then came phase II - the Barbecue. Arrive skewers of finely minced, spiced meat; skewers of marinated, diced lamb; skewers of spiced chicken; barbecued onions and tomatoes. Traditional inland fare, no sign of fish here: well, the river is very shallow.

How does one finish off such a meal? Phase III which is fruit, fruit and more fruit. We were expected to move to another table for this, where, laid out were bowls of apples, strawberries, sliced melons (honeydew and water), peaches, cherries, apricots and kiwi fruit.

Kiwi fruit! Err, not normally associated with the Levant aren’t kiwi fruit, but Lebanese agriculture has been trying to diversify and, surprise, surprise, kiwi fruit do very nicely thank you in the Bekaa, where anything, anything grows!