Datian 2 — Middle Eastern Rice with Spices, Pistachios, Cashews and Raisins (Photo courtesy https://grantourismotravels.com/middle-eastern-rice-recipe/)

Middle Eastern Rice with Spices, Pistachios, Cashews and Raisins

September 24, 2026

Lara Dunston, Asia-based travel and food writer, writes:

“This Middle Eastern rice recipe with spices, nuts and raisins makes a spiced rice dish inspired by Arabic rice dishes from the Middle East, such as Arabian machboos and kabsa, Palestinian qidreh and Syrian maqluba. While authentic in flavor, our rice dish is stir-fried in the speedier Asian-style rather than slower Middle Eastern pilaf method.

My easy recipe is fantastic with smoky kofta kebab or garlicky shish tawook, and salads such as fattoush and tabbouleh. It’s one of our best Middle Eastern recipes and one of our most popular recipes. While my recipe is authentic in taste — there are few more quintessential Middle Eastern spice blends than the ‘seven spice’ mix known as ‘baharat’ and nuts such as pistachios and cashews — the technique I use is inauthentic. Instead of the pilaf method, I use the Asian stir-fry method to use up leftover rice.

The next day, I combine any leftover Middle Eastern rice with kofta kebab meat or garlicky chicken leftovers, which I break up into bite-sized pieces and quickly stir-fry again. The result is a wonderful rice dish that makes an easy yet comforting meal for a filling lunch or casual dinner.

My recipe is inspired by the spiced Arabic rice dishes that we fell in love with during our many years living and working in the United Arab Emirates, and travelling in the Middle East as travel and food writers and guidebook authors. During my time working as an academic in Abu Dhabi, then Dubai, I was lucky to eat Emirati food, including Arabian rice dishes, in the homes of my female students, at the end of semester picnics they organized for us, and at their lavish weddings – where a Bedouin delicacy of roasted baby camel on a mountain of spiced rice was the highlight.

I say “lucky” because in those days it was next to impossible to find Emirati food outside local homes or cultural events. Most Arabic restaurants served the cuisines of the Levant — mainly Lebanese food, but also Syrian food. The other popular cuisines eaten out in restaurants were Iranian/Persian, Moroccan, Afghani, Pakistani, and Indian.

It was far easier to find restaurants that specialized in an Indian regional cuisine than Emirati cuisine, which is why I treasured the chance to try the food of the Emirates whenever I could. One of the most popular Emirati rice dishes was machboos, also written as makbus or maqbus, and also called kabsa. Eaten right across the Arabian Peninsula, where every country claims it as their national dish.

Made in the UAE with the beloved Emirati spice blend, bezar — a mix of turmeric, cumin, cardamom, coriander, star anise, cinnamon, fenugreek, fennel seeds, chili, and pepper — machboos is served with everything from fried fish to braised chicken cooked in a tomato based spiced broth.

Another Arabic rice dish I adored was hashweh, that is best known in the Arabian Peninsula countries as a Bedouin rice dish, but is cooked right across the Middle East and thought to have originated in Palestine. A versatile rice dish, hashweh is eaten as a side dish to grilled meats at home, but during religious holiday feasts and celebratory meals for weddings, hashweh serves as a bed for larger roasted meats such as a lamb or goat that are piled on top, and used as a stuffing in baby camel – ‘hashweh’ in fact means ‘stuffing’ in Arabic.

Like machboos, hashweh rice is heavily spiced — in this case, typically with a spice blend of cardamom, cumin, cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, and pepper that infuses the rice as well as the minced meat, usually beef — and is garnished with nuts, such as almonds and pine nuts. Of all the Arabic spiced rice dishes, it’s machboos and hashweh that have probably most influenced my Middle Eastern rice recipe.

Middle East specialists after eight years living in the United Arab Emirates, and over 12 years writing on the MENA region and Europe, our home is now Siem Reap, Cambodia, and our work these days focuses largely, but not solely, on Asia and Australia.”

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Topics: Middle Eastern cooking, Rice

People: Lara Dunston

Janice Dzovinar Okoomian’s Great-Grandmother Khosrofouhi’s Midia (Mussels) Pilav

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups cooked jasmine rice

2 tablespoons pistachios

2 tablespoons cashews

2 tablespoons olive oil divided, more to tase

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 fresh thyme sprigs

2 tablespoons raisins, any variety

Preparation:

Remove the leftover cooked jasmine rice from the refrigerator, use a fork to thoroughly separate the grains and set aside. Combine all the dried spices in a bowl or glass jar until well incorporated and set aside.

In a big flat-bottomed wok, fry the pistachios and cashews for a minute or two until they start to color, continually stirring them so they don’t burn, then transfer to a dish and set aside.

In the same wok, heat a tablespoon of olive oil over high heat, add the dried spices, stir to incorporate well, then add the cooked jasmine rice, thyme sprigs and raisins, and stir fry until the spices, nuts and thyme, are evenly distributed and the rice has changed color and is hot.

Taste, adjust the seasoning to suit your palate, transfer to a serving plate, garnish with more fresh thyme sprigs and lemon slices and serve immediately while piping hot.

Note: Garnish: thyme sprigs and lemon slices.

For this recipe, go to: https://grantourismotravels.com/middle-eastern-rice-recipe/

Lara Dunston is a Cambodia-based travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides. She and her husband Terence Carter are food and travel writers and photographers who have lived in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East since 1998. They have authored hundreds of travel and food stories for the world’s best publishers, hosted culinary tours and writing and photography retreats, and are currently developing cookbooks in Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a vibrant resort city in northwestern Cambodia and the primary gateway to the ancient temples of Angkor. Lara also loved being the Asia editor for Truth Love and Clean Cutlery, a guide to the world’s most ethical, responsible, altruistic, and sustainable restaurants; founding editors include Alice Waters, Jill Dupleix and Giles Coren.

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