My sister has a complicated relationship with potatoes. As far as she is concerned, they are only acceptable in a few choice forms: French frites (no chunky chips, thank you, too potato-y), crushed with copious amounts of olive oil and salt, or diced and roasted with piles of crispy golden onions - an Italian speciality from our Nonna. All other preparations (such as boiled, roasted or mashed) are strictly hors de menu in our house. These predilections have perhaps had less impact on my family as they might your average Brits, due to our widespread ethnic roots. With Italians, Maltese(rs), Syrians and Greeks on one side and Iraqis on the other, rice, pasta and pitta have always made up the majority of our carbohydrate intake. (Although I do hasten to point out my allegiance to the flag via my wholehearted devotion to oats.) As a result, we rarely buy potatoes, that mighty staple of the Great British Diet.

In all honesty, I have never felt that we were really missing out. Quite frankly, enduring a year of university catering, in which potatoes appeared in all manner of horrendous guises three times a day, was enough to put me off eating them for a lifetime. I couldn't really understand the feelings of comfort and warmth that potatoes seem to generate in my countrymen and women. I mean, they're fine, but are they really worth getting gooey and emotional over?

After reading the umpteenth potato paean in a newspaper this May (when the food world goes weak at the knees over the arrival of the first Jersey Royals) I concluded that I probably needed to give the humble tuber a chance. But how to sneak them into the trolley without my sister noticing? And, more importantly, how to prepare them in a way that wouldn't generate noises of disapproval? I was stumped. And so, naturally, I did nothing. But two months on, and several days into my recipe challenge, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to bring spuds to the kitchen.

At the time, my sister was in the throes of revision, spending hour after hour poring over complex-looking medical textbooks. She told me on numerous occasions that meals were the highlights of her day. No pressure, then. I realised that the only way to make potatoes acceptable to her was to include them in a meal full of her favourite things, and, if nothing else, to dress them in a mixture so thick with spice and flavour as to render them practically unrecognisable.

An English meal was out of the question (far too conspicuous) and so, perhaps counter-intuitively, I opted for Middle Eastern. I have no recollection of eating potatoes with my Arabic relatives other than Aunt Bessie's Easy Roasties, so external help was required. I turned to Marlene Matar, a Lebanese chef who has recently published a brilliant anthology of Syrian food in English. The book features a recipe for a basic potato salad, describing it as the kind of staple dish that can be altered and played with to suit the tastes and larder of the cook.

Matar does not specify a type of potato, and so, in a nod to drooling food writers everywhere, I bought my first ever bag of jersey royals. The first problem was working out how many to cook: how to ensure that we were not left with piles of potentially unappealing leftovers to make our way through? It took an embarrassingly long time to decide, as, not being seasoned potato-eaters, we were unsure of how many we would eat. Eventually we came to a decision and I tipped them resolutely into a pan of boiling salted water, jammed on the lid, and waited. Watching potatoes boil is about as enthralling as watching someone painting a fence, so I turned my back on the stove and focused on the important bit: the dressing.



Middle Eastern food suffers from the connotation that it is extremely complex and full of obscure, hard to pronounce ingredients. While there are numerous dishes that really do require hours of hard labour in the kitchen (forming kibbeh, or rolling vine leaves, for example) many staple dishes are, in fact, very simple, relying solely on quality ingredients, one or two choice spices and fresh herbs. Matar's potato salad is no exception; the seasoning requires only cumin, allspice and Aleppo pepper, with plenty of lemon juice, olive oil, and a handful of parsley. It's ready in a cinch, and you can make it in the serving dish - ideal for those of us sans dishwashers.

Unfortunately, my ever-expanding spice collection does not yet extend to Aleppo pepper (nor ras el hanout, zhoug paste or noomi basra, but I'm working on it) and so I opted for Matar's helpful suggested substitute - paprika. The result was a terracotta-coloured dressing, ever so slightly smoky, with a nice bite from the cumin and depth from the allspice. I politely ignored the inclusion of chopped white onions, as, until I can guarantee as sweet an allium as those that are sold in the Middle East, I would rather spare myself the discomfort of tasting nothing else for the next 12 hours. The spring onions worked fine on their own, though, their sharpness foiled by the addition of diced red pepper.

Back on the hob, the potatoes gurgled and spurted out jets of starchy steam. Concluding that this was a sign they'd had enough, I drained them and set about the tricksy task of chopping them while still hot, flinging them into the dressing with red, blistering fingers. Upon tasting I decided (as I often do) that it needed more of everything, and so, with faithful recipe allegiance now thrown decisively out the window, I began to re-season it maniacally. Soon the potatoes had taken on a burnished red colour, their flesh softened and glossy in the oil. They certainly did not look like any other potatoes I'd ever seen, nor did the flavour bear any resemblance to the non-descript starchiness with which I associated them. Instead, they offered a creaminess and unexpected sweetness, contrasting nicely with the vibrancy of the dressing. It was a moreish and (yes, I admit it) surprisingly comforting combination.

To avoid total disaster should my sister not agree, I went overboard with the rest of the meal, serving the salad alongside wonky rings of aubergine, griddled and marinated with herbs, smoky-salty flat beans and a spiced lentil stew that I made up as I went along. We sat down, my sister's forehead wrinkled in mild distrust. She picked up the dish and inhaled. "Smells interesting," she said in her I'm-trying-to-sound-positive-but-what-on-earth-have-you-done voice. Ever cautious, she served herself a scant tablespoon of potatoes while I looked on nervously, face flushed and clothes spattered.

I am pleased to report that after careful consideration, my discerning diner agreed that, although boiled, these were potatoes like no other. There was nothing to be done about the texture (still a major sticking point), but the flavour got a resolute thumbs up. This I considered a victory, and perhaps an entry point into an exciting new world of potato-cookery. Who knows what delights are now in-store? "Don't go getting any ideas," she warned me, swiftly cleaning up her second portion. "I still don't like potatoes." But then she moved on to thirds, so I'm feeling quietly optimistic.

Day Two: Sunday 25 June

The strangest ideas occur to you in the middle of the night. High on the success of my first new recipe attempt, I lay awake in bed, trying to recall the name of a dessert that my Iraqi grandmother used to make. Why I was thinking of dates mashed with spices at 2 in the morning is a mystery, but once the idea was embedded I couldn't shake it off.

A quick conversation with my dad confirmed the name that had escaped me: halawi, a play on the Arabic word halwa meaning sweet (both noun and adjective) and halawiat, a generic term for dessert. Both words cover all manner of spreadable, sugary delights, but the recipe in question comprised (to the best of my memory) of melted dates that are mixed with fennel seeds and left to cool to form a thick, fragrant paste. My grandmother (Bibi, in Arabic) always kept it in an ancient Carte D'Or ice cream tub, and would bring it out at the end of a meal for a final, sweet hit. You can eat it on its own or with khobez bread, but my family have always preferred to spread it thickly on plain crackers, such as Bibi's cherished water biscuits. This is a delicate business, as halawi is solid stuff; put too much pressure on the knife and the whole thing is liable to crack into a hundred fragments, leaving you with sticky fingers and a lap full of crumbs.

I'll be the first to admit that, as a child, I couldn't stand halawi: why would you ever want to ruin dates with something as yucky as fennel? And why did it smell so much? No, I only wanted choc-ice for dessert, thank you, and so would turn my nose up at halawi whenever it was offered. Meanwhile, my dad reached for cracker after cracker, lost in nostalgia for a time when he could eat it every day, when the dates came, not wrapped in clingfilm, but in baskets, fresh from the back garden.

Unsurprisingly, my dad's memory extended only to his experiences of eating halawi, not to its preparation, and so I called Bibi to get the recipe first hand. To my relief, she seemed to have no recollection of my disdain for the dish (or was at least polite enough not to mention it), but was instead delighted to hear that I was interested in making it. When I asked if she would give me the recipe she laughed and said "there isn't one". Halawi is one of those family dishes that is always present in the kitchen in some form or other, but is so well known, and has so many variations, that no one has ever felt it necessary to write the recipe down. It turns out that the fennel seeds, my defining memory of the sweet, are by no means obligatory (I had to prompt her to mention them at all) and that sesame seeds and rosewater are also optional. In a final traditional-family-recipe cliché, after hanging up the phone I realised that Bibi had neglected to pass on any instructions related to measurements. You use the dates you have and tailor everything accordingly. That's it.


So off I trotted into the kitchen, the recipe in my head, as it seemed in the spirit of the dish not to need to write anything. There was a squashy packet of Medjool dates lodged at the back of the cupboard, and I pitted them in turn, a slow but surprisingly therapeutic task, even though it makes your fingers a gooey mess. As I worked I imagined how different it would have been to make halawi in Bibi's tiled kitchen in Baghdad, homemade yoghurt dripping gently in a corner, molasses boiling on the stove, with the hot desert sun burning relentlessly through the open window. Back in drizzly Britain, I tipped the fruit into a frying pan on a gentle heat, prodding it impatiently with a wooden spoon to encourage it to soften. Little by little the unfortunately brown and sticky pile began to give, rendering a textured paste to which I added ground ginger and fennel seeds. I neglected to add the traditional cardamom as I didn't have any, and, unlike my Iraqi  relatives, don't see the need to add it to every dish in the kitchen. (Sorry, Dad). Merely opening the bottle of rosewater reminded me of dinners at Bibi's house, where it makes its way into all sorts of dishes, even plain boiled rice. Only a drop is enough to scent the entire kitchen, and my sister (whose superior olfactory capabilities make her the ultimate recipe tester) came along to investigate.

Teaspoons in hand, we carved away at the unattractive-yet-fragrant brown blob, and closed our eyes to taste it, trying to work out what was missing. After much deliberation, and adding a little bit more of everything, we concluded that it tasted good. Not the same as Bibi's, but good all the same. As I scooped it up into an appropriately battered plastic tub to harden, it occurred to me that the curse of the inherited family recipe is that, no matter how hard you try, no matter how strict a recipe you follow, it will quite simply never taste the same as you remember. Food is bound up in so much more than just method and ingredients: flavour is tied to feeling, to fellow diners and the environment in which a meal is shared. It's true that this realisation can leave you, like Proust, bitterly disappointed that the taste of youth cannot be experienced anew, but sometimes I think it's for the best. The past is a different country; ultimately, what matters is the here and now. After all, six-year-old me couldn't stand Bibi's halawi. But my own? Well, 20-something me likes it just fine.  

Something in the air has changed. After months of skin-pinching chill, the mercury has finally climbed and I can leave the flat without a coat. The light is different, the sun feels warmer, and, at long last, the bounty of summer is beginning to appear on our tables. And I have gone a little bit crazy. Perhaps it's the result of months of waiting through an interminable-seeming winter, but now that summer is truly here I am determined to make the most of it and not waste an ounce of sun-ripened goodness.