Fried cauliflower (zahra maqliya)

The cauliflower is broken into florets, deep-fried, drained and served with tarator — the white sauce of tahini loosened with lemon and garlic. It is eaten hot and it is eaten cold, and neither is wrong. There is no meat in it, which is why it sits on fasting tables, and the vegetable itself is a winter crop. In Damascus this is really two dishes: one line on a mezze list, and a sandwich at the falafel counter.

How it is cooked

The florets go into the oil raw. Do not boil them first. Boiled, they take on water, soak up oil and land heavy on the plate. Frying roughens the surface, and the tarator grips it — on a smooth surface the sauce slides off. The smell carries well beyond the kitchen, so on frying day the windows go open and the whole street knows who is cooking cauliflower.

Mezze or sandwich

On the mezze table it stands alone: lemon squeezed over it, tarator beside it, bread to pick it up. The street version counts as its own dish — sandwich zahra. It comes off the same counter as falafel: fried cauliflower inside the bread, with pickles, parsley and plenty of tarator. Lunch, in other words. It costs well under a restaurant plate.

Why it is a winter plate

Cauliflower is a winter vegetable, and the dish spreads through those months. No meat, no meat stock either, so it has a place in Christian fasting and on the Ramadan table. For anyone in Damascus looking for a main dish without meat, this is a safe one, because the recipe was never built around meat.

Where to find it

Restaurants serving mezze may not print it, but the kitchen usually has it; asking is enough. For the sandwich, look at falafel counters rather than restaurants — two different places, two different prices. If the plate arrives cold, nothing has gone wrong.