Arayes

A thin flatbread is opened along the middle and a thin layer of minced meat — worked with onion, parsley, pepper and spices — is spread inside. It is then cut into wedges and set over the coals. The meat cooks before the bread burns, and because the melting fat runs into the bread, the outside crisps while the inside stays wet. The name means brides, and it is popularly explained as the bread being married to the meat.

Is it an Aleppo dish

Not exactly, and that is worth saying plainly: arayes belongs to the whole Levant and is made under the same name from Jordan to Lebanon. The reason it attaches to Aleppo is different — this is a charcoal city, and arayes is at its best off a grill. Damascus has it too, but there it leans more towards the bakery oven.

Coals or oven

Both are done, and they do not produce the same plate. Over coals the underside of the bread blisters and the smoke gets into the meat. From the oven it comes out drier and more even, which is the practical choice for a crowded table. If you pass a kebab shop and see it sitting at the edge of the grill, that is the charcoal version.

What goes with it

Mint, spring onion, pickled green chilli and tomato. Lemon is common; some places bring garlic paste, but it is not standard. To drink, ayran. Three or four wedges are enough for one person, because the plate is heavier than it looks.

Where a traveller finds it

At kebab shops and any restaurant that lights charcoal, from late afternoon into the night. Most places do not carry it at lunch — nothing is made before the fire is up. During Ramadan the grills stay open late after the fast breaks, and arayes is very much the food of that hour.