Fahsa

Ingredients

• Lamb — meat with a little bone1 kg
• Ground fenugreek60 g
• Tomatoes4
• Onion1
• Garlic6 clove
• Green chilli3
• Coriander50 g
• Hawaij spice mix1 tbsp
• Lemon1
• Flatbreads — to serve5
• Saltto 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

   Cover the ground fenugreek with cold water and leave it six hours, changing the water twice.

   20 min

2. 2

   Simmer the lamb with the onion and salt for an hour and a half, keeping the broth.

   95 min

3. 3

   Break the meat into small pieces and return it to the strained broth.

   15 min

4. 4

   Pound the garlic, chilli and coriander into a sahawiq paste in a mortar.

   12 min

5. 5

   Add the tomatoes, hawaij and half the paste to the stew and reduce it to a thick body.

   25 min

6. 6

   Drain the fenugreek and whip it with a spoon of cold water into a white froth.

   15 min

7. 7

   Ladle the stew into scorching bowls, spoon the froth over and serve it boiling with flatbread.

   10 min

About the dish

It is served in a scorching stone madra, and the stew must be boiling at the table. That is not showmanship: the bowl finishes the meat in front of the diner.

The hulba is whipped from soaked fenugreek to a froth. It rises as a cap and boils on top of the stew without mixing into it.

The fenugreek soaks at least six hours with two changes of water. Without that the bitterness stays and the cap comes out inedibly bitter.

Worth knowing

• — Heat the stone bowl in the oven twenty minutes at 250 °C. Ceramic or cast iron is a fair substitute; glass will crack.
• — The froth falls within five minutes. Whip it last, when the stew is already in the bowls and the table is set.
• — Taste the fenugreek for bitterness before whipping. If it remains, change the water once more — a finished froth cannot be fixed.

Nutrition

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

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

48 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

30 g

More from Yemen

• Saltah — A meat stew served boiling in a stone pot under a whipped fenugreek froth called hulba.
• Bint al-sahn — A many-layered enriched bread brushed with ghee, drenched in honey and scattered with nigella.
• Zurbian — Yemeni rice with lamb and potato, coloured with saffron and baked sealed.