August 26, 2008	Tuesday	Sha’aban 23, 1429

SYRIA: After decades out in the cold, shunned by Western travellers and overshadowed by its faster-moving neighbours, Syria is –slowly –starting to gain the recognition it deserves as a vibrant, fascinating country. If you’ve never visited, whatever you’ve heard about the place is quite likely to be wrong. Political rhetoric notwithstanding, there’s a more tangible air of menace in suburban Britain.

And as the country opens up to outsiders, ways to explore it multiply. I had visited Damascus before, but this time I was going to experience it through the eyes of Anissa Helou, chef, broadcaster and writer on the cuisines of the Mediterranean. A Londoner for 20 years, Anissa grew up in Beirut but remembers idyllic childhood summers spent in the Syrian highlands. Now she has returned to launch small-group culinary tours, taking ingredients, cooking styles and methods of production as a starting point to explore and understand this much-misunderstood country.

Admiring Damascus’s historical monuments, or taking time to appreciate the architecture, was firmly off the agenda. Instead, we began by exploring the souks. I watched as Anissa strode through the crowded lanes, casting to left and right, stopping to watch an old man cooking omelettes, pausing to ask a passer-by how she prepares her vegetables, picking out oranges from a pile on a barrow. I followed her into the back lanes, where we discovered a half-hidden factory making sugared almonds: a single, bare room lined with great copper drums for turning the toasted nuts in syrup.

The manager, Qusay Sukkari (sukkar is the Arabic word for sugar so, delightfully, this was Mr Sugary the Sweetmaker), welcomed us and explained the process, but apologised for having none of the product to sample. No matter, we said, and nipped round the corner to buy qatayif – sweet pastries filled with cream, deep-fried to a crunch and drenched in treacle. Old-fashioned calories still matter in Syria.

We spent the day working our way through the different areas of the souk, buying zaatar –a fragrant blend of thyme, marjoram and sesame – in the Souk al-Bzouriya (the ‘seeds market’), sampling boiled sweets and sipping fresh mulberry juice. Then we headed over to the Souk al-Tanabel (‘lazybones market’), which sells only pre-prepared vegetables: the stalls are piled with bags of sliced carrots, cored squash and ready-chopped herbs – convenience food, Syrian-style.

Eating is, obviously, a major part of a culinary tour, and we ate in a succession of fabulous restaurants. Particularly memorable was Al-Khawali, housed in an eye-popping 14th-century palace in the heart of the Damascus souk, concealed from the street’s bustle by beautifully carved wooden doors. Inside, floors of patterned marble led to an airy internal courtyard, with tables laid around a central fountain dotted with jasmine and citrus trees. Anissa ordered a clutch of meze – small, sampler-style dishes that included alangi (stuffed vine leaves) and exquisite shanklish, a tangy sheep’s cheese dusted with pepper and thyme. We dipped and nibbled our way through about eight meze dishes, plus mains of tender grilled lamb: the food — formal, sophisticated, charming — suited the ambience perfectly.

—Dawn/Guardian News Service