Start-up Shahiya serves up huge virtual cookbook for the Mideast - FT.com

An argument is brewing on the brightly-coloured pages of Shahiya.com, a Middle Eastern recipe-sharing site. One user is taking issue with another’s recipe for Shish Barak bi Laban – a Lebanese dish of meat dumplings in a warm yoghurt sauce.

Giving it a mere two stars, the user goes on to outline a litany of improvements: “the yoghurt must be from goat’s milk . . . we use mint instead of coriander.” It is prefaced by a clinching argument: “Here is how my mum and grandma do it.”

“In every house in the Middle East there is a great cook, with recipes hidden in a drawer or even in her head,” says Hala Labaki, one of the three co-founders of the Beirut-based company. “We’re tapping in to a deep sea.”