Mansaf

Musakhan

Ingredientsl2 kg lamb meat, cut into large chunks.l2 lumps (approx. 200g) jameed: Broken and

soaked in boiled water a day in advance.l4 cups short grain rice.l4 tbsps gheel½ cup meat stock.lpine nuts and almonds for decoration

PreparationlOne day in advance: Break the jameed into

small peaces and soak in boiled water. Blend this mixture with 3 litres water until thin and milky: the liquid is now called marees. Return the marees to the boil, add-ing 1 litre water, then add the lamb pieces,

the ghee and meat stock and leave to boil gently for at least 90 mn, until the meat is tender and the jameed has dissolved.

lPrepare the rice separately, spooning 2 tbsps ghee over the cooked rice at the end for added flavour.

lSpread the rice onto a large circular presen-tation tray, remove the cooked lamb from the sauce mix (called sharab) and place over the rice. Place the remaining stock or sharab in a serving bowl alongside the tray. Pan-roast the pine nuts and almonds in a little butter until golden brown, then sprinkle over the mansaf before serving.

lA cup of sharab is also offered as an ac-companying drink for the meal.

Ingredientsl1 whole chicken, cut into 4-6 piecesl2 tsp lemon juicel½ cup plain flourl1 tsp vinegarlLarge onions, finely choppedl2 tsps sumaqlDash of ground cardamoml2-3 tbsps olive oillMusakhan or taboon Arabic breadlHandful pine nutslSalt and pepper

PreparationlCoat the chicken pieces in a little flour,

lemon and vinegar and then wash and pat dry.

lMarinate the chicken in a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, sumaq, cardamom, salt and pepper for at least 2 hours. Fry the onions gently, adding salt and pepper and a little sumaq to taste.

lAdd the chicken pieces then transfer to a pre-heated oven and roast at 180ºc for about 40 minutes or until golden brown. Meanwhile, cut the bread into wide strips to go under the chicken.

lMoisten the bread with spoonfuls of stock from the chicken dish and add a layer of on-ions. Top each piece of bread with a piece of chicken, sprinkle with pine nuts and a little sumaq and return to the oven for a few minutes until the sides of the bread are gently toasted. Serve with yoghurt and / or a side salad.

Mansaf is the most traditional of Jordanian dishes. The main ingredi-ent which gives the dish its distinc-tive flavour is jameed, yoghurt made from fresh goat’s milk which is dried into large lumps the size of a coffee cup. The quality of the jameed will also determine the quality of the dish. Different areas in Jordan prepare their own homemade jameed, the most famous one being from the town of Kerak, where it is supposed to have a fine, lighter colour. You can substitute the jameed with laban, but the dish will lose a certain amount of authenticity.

What mansaf is to Jordanians, mu-sakhan is to Palestinians. Musakhan is the Palestinian national dish, and is ideally cooked in a special tanoor clay oven that each family tradition-ally has at the bottom of the garden! Hand-made oven bread is soaked in chicken stock and the chicken pieces, marinated in bittersweet sumaq powder, are then roasted and placed over the bread. My friend Suzanne Husseini, the TV chef, makes won-derful little musakhan tartelettes, the recipe for which will be in her new book, out shortly. Look out for it!

hi.alyoumalsabe@gmail.com

Friday, May 7, 2010 Friday, May 7, 201020 21

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GOOD morning, read-ers! The deadline for delivery of this week’s article turned out to be exactly the same day

that I was flying to Amman, the capi-tal of Jordan, for a few days. Apart from a pleasant holiday in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba a few years ago, I had not been to Jordan for almost two decades, and was eager to see if it had changed much since I drove there from Baghdad way back in 1990.

Jordan has never quite attracted the number of visitors as that of its neighbours, which is a shame, as the country has a great deal of charm. The vast majority of tourists to the broader region are lured by the splendours of the Nile, the Pyramids and the magnifi-cent history of Egypt. Others are more attracted to the hedonistic charms of Beirut and Lebanon, seeking the elegant lifestyle that Lebanon had in its heyday. To the north, Syria, - with its ruins of Palmyra, and the magnificent cities of Aleppo and Damascus, (two of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the world) - at-tracts those interested in the wonderful, rich history that the region holds in abundance.

And yet Jordan has so much to offer in terms of history, culture and diverse, natural beauty. From the vast, unspoilt Roman ruins of Jerash to its modern capital, built on seven hills; from the heavy, saline waters of the Dead Sea, to the desert and wonderful King’s Highway in the south; and from the kaleidoscope of corals and aquatic life of the Red Sea port of Aqaba, to the magnificent World Heritage site of Petra, the country can more than adequate-ly cater to all visitors’ tastes.

Amman itself is a vibrant Arab city – a village of barely 2,000 inhabitants in the late 19th century, the city has since expanded exponentially and is now a bustling metropolis of almost two million – not quite the sprawling urban metropolis of Cairo or Damascus, but it has started in some ways to catch up. Nor does it have history on every corner, although downtown Amman is fun: unpretentious, and with scattered historical ruins on a number of streets, including a delightful Roman amphitheatre at the heart of the downtown area. On my latest visit, last week, I took a hotel just one minute from the theatre and awoke every morning to an impressive view of the cascading steps of the theatre and its col-umns. A few minutes’ walk away, on the edge of a lively fruit and vegetable market, was the recently restored Roman Nymphaeum, built in AD 191. The original complex housed stone columns, mosaics, stone carvings, and statues of nymphs, the mythical girls who lived close to rivers, although there was no sign of any nymphs when I visited last week!

Amman is a city built for its inhabitants, rather than its visitors. There is no aggressive hawking of tourist trinkets, though there are the occasional stalls selling old wedding silver, beads, and a

few coins – amazingly intact considering they are supposedly 2,000 years old!

As a souvenir of my year spent in Iraq some time ago, I picked

up a 25-dinar note from the time of Saddam – itself a part of recent, regional history.

There are several dis-tinct districts in Amman, each one built on a dif-ferent hill, which each, in its turn, descends

down winding roads and slopes to the city centre.

Shmeisani is a smart, residential neighbourhood

containing swish hotels,

By Mike Harrison

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patisseries and ice cream parlours. Rainbow Street, with its cafés, pizzerias and smart cars driven by Amman’s jeunesse dorée is a nice place for a visit, but I personally prefer a bit of souq-plunging and street life, so Downtown was just right for me.

The streets downtown come alive at Maghreb prayers where everything happens on the pavements: Iraqi ladies, though fewer than before, sit on street corners selling bundles of second-hand clothes, piled up haphazardly; noise pounds out from DVD players, their tapes of wedding music a-blaring next to banana stalls with hundreds of bunches of fruit sway-ing in the evening breeze, almost in rhythm to the music. The pavements overflow with functional products: plastic sockets, bulbs, sandals, brass pots, tee shirts of all sizes, lurid coloured dresses for a special occasion, and butchers displaying meat carcases.

There are nut shops selling all manner of sweet, sugar-coated almonds, pistachios, melon seeds and roasted chick peas. There are spice shops selling fresh and dried thyme and sage, dried hibiscus and loomi (dried limes) – a speciality of Oman, but also of Basra in southern Iraq. There are pyramids of gold-red saffron strands. And the aroma of dozens of types of fresh za’atar – the Middle Eastern mix of thyme and sesame that we like to use to flavour our croissants here in Oman! Every fourth or fifth store seems to have a huge coffee grinder and heavy baskets of fresh beans. One of them advertises its wares thus: ‘We keep roasting the coffee beans until they pop twice – once from the heat, once from the heart’.

I spend a happy few hours wandering the vegetable markets, allowing the aroma of the fresh herbs to assail my nostrils. Cabbages, cucumbers and radishes are all in season, intermingling with splashes of ten different hues of green: sage, mint, thyme, and fresh vine leaves waiting to be turned into dolma, stuffed with rice and meat, and rolled into finger-sized bites.

Over half of the population of the city is Palestinian, and their influence is in evidence in the shawarma and falafel stalls, leaning out onto the pavements with their vats of hot oil a-bubbling. With a local friend, I visit ‘Al Quds’, a popular Palestinian restaurant, and we gorge on silken moutabel and hummus, followed by a hearty bowl of lentil soup scooped up with fresh pitta bread, before moving on to a plate of fareekah (pearl barley) with chunks of lamb. Osama samples the house musakhan, special oven-roasted chicken coated with bitter-sweet sumaq powder and drizzled with toasted pine nuts. All of this is then washed down with a glass of tamarind juice for Osama, and a freshly-pressed sugar cane juice for me. It’s one of the more popular street drinks.

But the evening’s repast would not be complete without a visit to Habiba’s, and a plate of kunafa, the hot, melted, sweet cheese dish served dripping with honey syrup and an orange crust. It’s certainly not for the faint or weak-hearted! But like all cholesterol and calorie-filled dishes, it’s very naughty, and deliciously nice! Kunafa, made with the best Nabulsi cheese, is also a bit of a Jordanian national institution.

For today’s recipes, I am featuring the two dishes which probably represent the food of the country’s history and tradi-tions best. Mansaf, with its ingredients of plain, boiled meat soaked in a slightly pungent, but distinctive sauce made from dried goat’s yoghurt, would seem to reflect the Bedu roots of the Jordanian. Musakhan, the Palestinian national dish, baked in a special tanoor oven, might be seen to reflect a more seden-tary, agricultural lifestyle, and attachment to the land.

My thanks to Chef Mamoun of Al Qurum Resort for pre-paring for us today’s taste of Jordan.

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Official name:The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Population:5.4 million (estimated: 2006)

Capital:Amman (population: 1.9 million)

Other main cities:Aqaba, Jerash, Irbid, Madaba

Main tourist attractions:Petra (ancient Nabatean city carved out of rose-coloured rock); The Dead Sea; Mount Nebo; Red Sea resort of Aqaba; various Biblical and Roman sites

Getting there:There are direct flights from Muscat and the flying time from here is just under 4 hours. Several budget airlines operate from the UAE – flying time is approximately 3 hours

CHEF MAMOuN has worked for the Sheraton hotel chain

in Muscat for longer than he cares to remember, and has helped me out on numerous occasions in the past! Always reliable!

Based at the Al Qurum Resort while the Sheraton in Ruwi is undergoing renova-tion work, he is responsible for outside catering, specialis-ing in weddings and other cer-emonies requiring elaborate Arabic buffets. Always ready to help out when this writer requires some Middle Eastern specialities at short notice, Mamoun was happy to com-ply when I asked him for help with some specific Jordanian dishes.

Mamoun lives here with his wife and three children, who have grown up in Muscat and most definitely call it home. ‘They must be half-Omani by now,’ I quip. ‘No’, he replies, quick as a flash, ‘Full Omani!’

My special thanks to Ma-moun for today’s Mansaf and Musakhan.

Chef Mamoun Ahmad YousefAhlan wa Sahlan!

By Mike Harrison