How to describe sumac? It’s awfully tempting to refer to it as lemony, but I think that sells this spice - a Middle Eastern staple - woefully short. Sumac, ground from a berry, is more than tart. It’s also a little floral, a little fruity, and a little earthy, maybe something like Meyer lemon mixed with Aleppo pepper.
And it possesses a gorgeous deep purple colour. My favourite thing about it, beyond the flavour, is that it’s shelf-stable. So even though I use it in plenty of Middle Eastern dishes, sumac is also at home anywhere I would have put a lemon if I hadn’t used them all up in something else.
Roasted vegetables, tofu, salad dressings, grain salads: I haven’t met a dish that couldn’t welcome sumac. Özlem Warren knows the power. "I do have a love affair with sumac,” the Turkish cookbook author and teacher tells me in a Zoom interview from her home outside London.
In Turkiye, cooks have access to whole sumac berries, and Warren remembers their use in making cordials and a sumac water for flavouring dolma, stuffed vegetables and more. Warren wrote her beautiful new book 'Sebze: Vegetarian Recipes From My Turkish Kitchen' to counter the misconception that her homeland’s cuisine is little more than meat kebabs. And boy, does she succeed, with page after page of such vibrant recipes (cabbage rolls with pomegranate molasses and bulgur; garlicky mushrooms with peppers and olives; coiled phyllo pie with zucchini, dill and feta) that I practically had to read e.