This Spaghetti with Yogurt Sauce Reminds Me of Everything I Learned from my Mom

I was raised in Sierra Leone in West Africa in a small town without many of the conveniences that we take for granted in America today. There were one or two grocery stores in the entire town and maybe a handful of restaurants. There was a large population of Lebanese people, yet eating the homemade Lebanese food that my parents grew up with did not come with ease.

Most of our meals were home-cooked and made from scratch. I used to watch my mom make her tomato paste by cooking fresh tomatoes for hours. She would soak multiple bowls of legumes (like chickpeas and kidney beans) overnight to use in various recipes. She even made her own yogurt from scratch by heating milk and incubating it with beach towels for a couple of days. The result was huge batches of tomato paste, chickpeas, and yogurt with a short fridge life that had to be used within the week. Luckily, my mom always had ample ways of using up any of these ingredients to ensure there was no waste.

For example, homemade yogurt is something that we grew up eating in savory recipes rather than sweet ones. In fact, I never ate yogurt for breakfast or as part of a snack until I moved to the U.S. Instead, yogurt was used as a topping over piping hot freshly cooked vermicelli rice to cool it down and add protein to an otherwise simple meal. It was used as a dip with spinach or meat pies. It was diluted with water to make a drink. And it was warmed up and used as a sauce for many dishes like fatteh, kibbeh, and this macarona (which translates to spaghetti in Arabic).

What Is Spaghetti in Yogurt Sauce?

Macarona bi laban is the official name of this spaghetti in yogurt recipe, which you can also find in my new book The Feel Good Foodie Cookbook. I like to think of it as the "mac-and-cheese of the Middle East" because it was one of the easiest and most convenient meals my mom made for us. It can be made simply by tossing spaghetti with cold yogurt, or in a more elevated method, by warming yogurt with sizzling fresh garlic and tahini to create a silky rich sauce with a pronounced flavor. In its simple form, my mom served this dish to us just like she did the vermicelli rice with yogurt. She could cook a pot of rice in less than 20 minutes, she always had fresh-made yogurt in the fridge, and together they created an unfussy meal that was nostalgic, comforting and enriching to any Lebanese kid I knew. The spaghetti with yogurt sauce is a very similar "recipe formula" where my mom could easily cook a pot of spaghetti in less than 20 minutes and immediately toss it with yogurt to cool it down and serve something nutritious and delicious.

As with most Middle Eastern recipes, this one comes with variations and tweaks depending on the region, and the energy of the home cook making it. When my mom wanted to make the dish more elaborate, she would warm up the yogurt in a separate pot and add some fresh garlic to it. Warming the yogurt with garlic not only infuses the flavor of the garlic into the yogurt, it also transforms it into a glossy pourable sauce. My mom used to add a little water to the yogurt to enhance the sauce effect. Now I use pasta water to make sure the sauce clings well to the pasta.

Modern Modifications

I hated the idea of cooking growing up. Can you blame me? My mom was a wizard in the kitchen, cooking up such beautiful meals and making something out of nothing 7 days a week. But once we moved to the U.S, I started watching my mom find time-saving shortcuts and tweaks to laborious recipes. When I started to learn how to cook 11 years ago, it was over the phone with my mom and out of a longing for the Middle Eastern meals I grew up with, from the simplest ones like this spaghetti with yogurt sauce, to more complicated recipes. My goal was to demystify my mom’s cooking and find a way to make it more measurable, more approachable, and more plausible for me and the everyday home cook.

Some of the recipes I learned from my mom were simplified by combining two steps into one, or combining multiple pots into just one, or using tools like an immersion blender or garlic press to speed up a step. Most of the other recipes were naturally made easier just by using the modern-day conveniences that are easily available now. Canned chickpeas, boxed vegetable broth, and store-bought yogurt tubs save time compared to soaking dried beans, simmering homemade stock, or making yogurt from scratch. These options allow me to recreate her dishes with more ease while preserving the flavors.

When you think about how those conveniences can easily jumpstart so many recipes, the idea of home cooked meals has a new meaning that feels more approachable for anyone with limited time. This spaghetti with garlicky yogurt sauce is an example of how a few humble ingredients can be transformed into a recipe that is loaded with flavor, satisfies any crowd and easy to whip up in less than 20 minutes. At the end of the day, I think that’s all I’ve ever wanted for my family and what most home cooks are looking for. My mom just took the scenic route to get there, and I learned so much watching her journey to inform my own!

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