Right now all I can think about is food, food glorious food, as I have been subjecting myself to a tormenting semi-fast for the last ten days, nourishing myself on nothing more than weak herbal teas and rice, and dreaming of flying cheeseburgers at night.

The enjoyment of food is my favourite past time – hence why my dating record has included three chefs in the past (not all at once mind you, that would just be weird and would spoil the broth). I have also taken to obsessively watching cooking programmes on German telly. This is clearly a form of masochism, as I sip my unfulfilling Yogi tea (can anyone really notice any difference in various flavours of Yogi tea? ‘Cos I sure as hell can’t).

My favourite show at the moment is ‘Das Perfekte Dinner’ (The perfect dinner) where five hobby cooks compete for the title and 1000 euros in cash by each creating the ‘perfect’ 3-course dinner. Each evening a contestant hosts a dinner at his/her house, inviting their fellow competitors to rate the food, the atmosphere and – something I always find absurd – the table decoration.

What appeals to me about this programme is the generally sober German attitude towards hosting a dinner party, which although a little Miss. Jean Brodie for my liking, is made all the more interesting when the one or two freaks assembled at the table upset the straight laced entertaining.

Memorable recent episodes included a 51-year-old self-professed shaman who tried to ‘heal’ the group whilst serving them warm ginger ale as an aperitif. Or, the 42-year-old part-time white witch, who dressed like an extra from a ‘Knights Tale’ and made them pick ‘angel cards’ while they were eating.

Whilst watching this, and salivating over one contestant’s goat’s cheese soufflé, I was taken to think about how great my Syrian family dinners and get-togethers were when I was growing up, and how we could show these contestants a thing or two on the fine art of ‘Entertaining’.

Though I must profess that at the time, when I was a young teen malcontent, I always found family dinners garish and painfully embarrassing. They were always loud, feud-ridden and over laden with food. Any time I had non-Arabic friends over for dinner I always felt like the Woody Allen character in that scene from Annie Hall where his live wire Jewish family dinner is juxtaposed against Diane Keaton’s’ more reserved WASP dinner. Friends always felt either completely overwhelmed or found it highly amusing, in a dinner-theatre sort of way.

Let me paint a picture for you – the typical Arabic family get together involves subtle codes of conduct played out on levels not immediately discernible to the non-Semite guest. It is a little bit like ‘Das Perfekte Dinner’; however, the competition is not between strangers but between family members, who vie to put on the perfect show.

The criteria for rating is also a little bit different. First, there must be endless amounts of food: a practical feast befitting the Gods on mount Olympus. The biggest shame is not to be able to offer guests at least fifth or sixth helpings, whilst the biggest success is when everyone can take food home with them and be completely nourished for the next week solely on leftovers.

Second, there is no time for first, second, third courses. No! All the food apart from dessert and coffee must be displayed all at once on a Henry VIII sized table, in sumptuous bacchanalian fashion. This leaves barely enough space for cutlery, let alone table decoration; the less you can see of the actual table the better – every millimetre must be solely dedicated to food.

There are mounds of rice, multiple mezze dishes with accompanying bread, half or a whole lamb – depending on the size of the gathering – a grilled chicken or two, a smorgasbord of fresh leafy vegetables and soups. I remember that at one family dinner the main table was so dominated with dishes, that the edge of my aunt’s piano had to be used as a second surface in which to balance a few extra plates of hummus and vine leaves.

Be prepared to be forced fed, it’s part and parcel of Arabic entertaining. It falls under those codes and conduct of saving face. It is assumed that non-family members may feel shy or may be worried of being seen as greedy if they were to serve themselves second helpings; so to eliminate the possibility of embarrassment the host (usually my grandmother) would heap goliath amounts of food onto partially empty plates, in spite of the remonstrations from guests of being full. If you should ever be invited to an Arabic family dinner – trust me, try not to eat anything for a whole day before!

My Syrian heritage always made me feel like the main character from ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. I kid you not, several scenes from that film feel as if they have been lifted from my teenage years. When, at 17, I decided to become vegetarian (which was a six month fancy), the reaction of my family at dinners was quietly confused. My grandmother would whisper to my mom:

“Why won’t Bassma eat any lamb this year? She always loved it before, I don’t understand is something wrong?”

Then the whole evening my uncle would subject me to the same joke over and over again:

“Come on Bassma lamb is vegetarian, they only eat grass”.

After everyone was fed and watered, the coffee and sweets would be served. Oh I loved that part of the evening. Even if you were stuffed you always found room to squeeze in a few syrupy baklavas. Then the strong aroma of the home brewed Turkish coffee would waft through the house signalling stage two of the dinner.

Stage two always involved the adults dispersing into the living room with the coffee, whilst the kids would head upstairs and play in their bedrooms. The adults would sip coffee and smoke, play backgammon or listen to Arabic music. Sometimes my gran would do the equivalent of reading tealeaves, with the traces of coffee sediment in everyone’s small cups.

A family dinner wouldn’t be complete without several passionate and heated arguments between family members, always refereed by my grandmother. Someone would always get offended or upset and head off to the kitchen in a huff, then my gran would go and appease them, luring them back to the living room. If non-family guests were present, tongues were bitten and fights were postponed till after they had left.

I remember many dinners where my mom and her sisters would turn up the music, wrap the nearest shawl, scarf or tie around their hips and treat everyone to an impromptu Syrian belly dance. It was always an animated dance off between my mom and her twin sister, the competition between the two was fierce, as they tried to outdo each other and hold everyone’s attention. Even at other non-family dinners, my mother would get everyone involved in the Arabic equivalent of a conga line. As a 13-year-old adolescent I would cower in the corner mortified, thinking ‘God, my mom is sooooooo embarrassing’ in that typical hormonal coming of age way. Now as an adult I look back and think how cool and outgoing my mom was, creating a really high-spirited atmosphere that everyone was involved in and seemed to really enjoy.

Now as I continue my acetic fasting regime whilst watching Germans fight it out for ‘Das Perfekte Dinner’, I am considering the idea of pitching syndication of a programme called ‘My Big Fat Syrian Dinner’, wonder what the consensus there would be? Most likely I’ll forget to do this once I start eating real food again and the flying cheeseburgers stop mocking me in my sleep.