49 recipes from Idlib.
The first dedicated English-language collection of Idlib province home cooking — recorded from Faten's kitchen in Beirut.
Idlib has long been folded into pan-Syrian and Aleppo cookbooks. Its food is real, particular, and has rarely been documented in English on its own terms. Sofra changes that — 49 of the 214 recipes in the app are specifically from Idlib province, taught to Faten by family and neighbors there.
The Idlib dishes in Sofra include: kibbeh idlibi (a slightly coarser bulgur shell than the Beirut version), bamia bil zeit idlibi (okra in olive oil, the Idlib variant), fattet hummus idlibi, sambousek faten (Faten's own samboosak shaped the way her mother taught her), makdous (eggplants stuffed with walnut and pepper), kishk (a fermented yogurt-grain mix), naatif idlibi, and many more.
Sofra does not claim to be the first to value Idlib cooking, nor the first to write about it. Aleppo and Syrian cookbooks (Anissa Helou, Salma Hage, Aline Kamakian and others) have covered overlapping dishes. The claim is "first dedicated English collection that surfaces Idlib home cooking as its own kitchen" — not "first documentation." If you are an Idlib daughter, son, neighbour, or scholar and we got something wrong, please write to us. We will correct and credit you publicly.
Why it matters
Idlib is one of the most embattled regions in modern Syria. Families have been displaced. Kitchens have been broken. Recipes that lived in oral transmission for generations are at risk of being lost — not because the dishes are unimportant, but because the conditions for handing them down have collapsed.
Sofra is one home cook's attempt to put 49 of those recipes on record, in English, accessible to the diaspora and to anyone who wants to learn. Faten — originally from Idlib, now living in Beirut — taught each recipe to Tom. Every recipe is tested at least three times before it goes into the app.
How to access
All 49 Idlib recipes — and the 165 Lebanese recipes in Sofra alongside them — are free to read and cook in the app. The premium tier adds Lebanese-Arabic voice narration by Layla, an AI cooking assistant, offline access, and Charbel Rouhana's oud music as ambient cooking soundtrack.
Free to download. All 214 recipes free to read and cook.
If you have Idlib heritage recipes that should be in Sofra, or corrections to any of the 49 already there, please write to support@sofrabeirut.com. Faten and Tom will review every message.