The recipe's bright flavor is built from its simple and fresh ingredients: diced onions, garlic, tomato, green pepper, olive oil, salt and pepper. Similar to galayet bandora, bamyeh is another simple and quick pan-fried dish that consists of okra, the main ingredient, along with tomatoes, green pepper and spices that bring it all together. The bamyeh that I tried (to the right) also had ground meat in it to make it a little more filling, but this is optional. Alongside the bamyeh, I enjoyed dipping pita bread into a creamy mutabbal, which is a smoky, eggplant-based dip.
You may come across a variety of vegetables in Jordanian cuisine that are stuffed with seasoned rice and meat. The general name for these kinds of dishes is mahashy, which means "stuffed." Some vegetables that are commonly stuffed are zucchini, eggplant, cabbage as well as grape leaves. There is a notable distinction to make between two kinds of stuffed grape leaves. Those that include meat are called dolma, while the version without meat is referred to as yalanji.
There are several other kinds of dishes that take a lot more time to prepare and are usually made for large gatherings or special occasions. Some of them are rice-based like mansaf, maqlooba, kabsa with daqoos dressing (a spicy tomato sauce), and mandi, each of which carry a distinctive blend of spices that the rice and meat is cooked in. Mansaf is the national dish of Jordan, made with tender lamb that is cooked in a tangy, fermented yogurt sauce called jameed. It's served atop fluffy rice and thin flatbread.
