Paris -- Shopping for Our Lebanese Feast with Tania

I described yesterday a wonderful Lebanese feast that friends and I made with their (and now my) friend Tania. One of the revelations was our trip to the amazing Lebanese supermarket, Les Délices d'Orient, a Lebanese supermarket in a part of Paris's 15th arrondissement that is populated by many Lebanese, Iranians and other people from the Middle East.

I was only able to take a few pictures before I was stopped by the manager, who explained that, apart from panoramas of the whole market, photography was prohibited. So here's what I got.

You will have to take my word for the interesting things we found in the vegetable department: real baby lamb's lettuce (not mâche), jujubes (tiny grape-size fruits that taste like apples) and fresh pistachio nuts. A first for me: to eat the nuts you must remove a thin red membrane, and then take the fresh and moist nut out of its shell in the normal manner. Excellent.

Next we went across the street to the butcher owned by the same people as Les Délices. Tania did not make herself popular there by insisting that every scrap of fat be removed from the lamb before double grinding it into a wonderfully smooth texture. Here's what it looked like the next day, before we transformed it into kabab keraz and araïss.

Double ground lamb and other ingredients for araïss

 While at the butcher, we happened on this oddly named product:

Here's a link to learn more about this

If you are like me and enjoy seeing markets full of (for us) exotic products, Les Délices d'Orient is a must. 52 Avenue Émile Zola, 75015 Paris (Métro Charles Michels).

Bobby Jay