Mansaf

Ingredients

• Lamb on the bone — in large pieces2 kg
• Jameed — or 1 kg thick yoghurt500 g
• Long-grain rice700 g
• Thin flatbread4
• Almonds100 g
• Pine nuts60 g
• Ghee100 g
• Cardamom6
• Turmeric1 tsp
• Parsley30 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Soak the jameed in warm water for four hours, break it up by hand and pass it through a sieve to an even liquid.

   25 min

2. 2

   Simmer the lamb with the cardamom for an hour and twenty minutes, skimming. Keep the broth.

   85 min

3. 3

   Pour the jameed liquid in with the meat and bring it up, stirring continuously in one direction.

   15 min

4. 4

   Drop the heat to its lowest and hold it forty minutes. The sauce thickens and turns creamy.

   42 min

5. 5

   Cook the rice in the meat broth with turmeric and a spoon of ghee.

   25 min

6. 6

   Fry the almonds and pine nuts in ghee until golden and set them aside.

   8 min

7. 7

   Line a platter with the bread, moisten it with sauce, spread the rice, lay the meat on top, spoon over more sauce and scatter the nuts and parsley.

   10 min

About the dish

Jameed is salted sheep's-milk yoghurt dried to stone. It is soaked for hours and let down into a sauce; nothing else gives the same flavour.

The sauce must not be boiled unstirred: like any soured-milk sauce it splits. It is brought up with the spoon constantly moving, then held at the barest simmer.

The serving is part of the dish. Shrak bread, then rice, then meat, with almonds and pine nuts over the top, eaten from a shared platter with the right hand, standing.

Worth knowing

• — Without jameed, use thick yoghurt let down with broth, a spoon of salt and a pinch of citric acid. It is an approximation and worth calling one.
• — The sauce is brought in a separate jug: guests add more themselves as they eat.
• — Do not throw out the broth. The rice is cooked in it, or it tastes bland next to a salty sauce.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

820 kcal

Protein

48 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

74 g

More from Jordan

• Maqluba — Rice with meat and fried vegetables cooked in one pot and turned out whole onto a platter.