The Cooking Bug

Over the past few months, I've started feeling embarrassed that I've lived in the Middle East for almost five years, and I've rarely cooked an Arab dish in my own home. I did a few times when we first moved to Jordan, but not since our move to Nazareth. However, at the start of the New Year, I said to myself, I'm going to try to cook a local dish at least once a month. It could be Lebanese or Palestinian or Egyptian, but something regional. Also, both my cooking abilities and my familiarity with local cuisine have significantly improved over the past 4+ years, so it was time to give Arab food another try!

I should state, Arab food is a bit of a misnomer. It's like saying "American" food. Sure, there are certain things we all serve, but there are also many dishes that are indigenous to a particular region, like Cajun or Southwestern cooking. Most of the main dishes in this part of the world (Jordan/Palestine) feature rice paired with some sort of spiced meat, occasionally served with a sauce. There are variations on this formula, such as stuffing squash or rolling grape leaves with the rice/meat mixture, or adding vegetables to the dish.

My first attempt started out simple - ruzz hashway, which is basically rice and ground beef mixed with spices and sprinkled with pine nuts and/or almonds. It was a dish I had made before, but like I said, it was in Jordan a few years ago, and to be honest, it didn't come out very good! This time, it was much better, so I upped the ante for the second dish and made ma'luubi, another rice/meat dish with fried veggies and spices. It's a bit time-consuming, but very tasty.

For Arab dish number 3, we had a guest from the USA staying with us, and I wanted to make something special, something he'd probably never eat on his own. Enter mansaf, the national dish of Jordan. I was feeling rather brave and my confidence had soared after successfully making the first two dishes. My husband had just come back from Jerusalem with some jameed, essential to the mansaf cooking process. Jameed is a ball of dried, salted yogurt made from sheep's milk that needs to be reconstituted. To make the mansaf, I used this recipe, as it most closely resembled what I'd eaten before. Here are some pictures from the cooking process:

Making the jameed into a sauce

Adding the lamb, which is simmered in the yogurt sauce

Spices have been added and meat has simmered for a while; almost done!

Finished product!

I will tell you that, although the dish is very tasty, the smell is incredibly strong! I don't think I'll be making this again any time soon; it's INCREDIBLY labor-intensive and I don't like the dish enough to deal with the smell. Some things, like lard, I can deal with the smell because the finished product is fabulous. However, since I didn't grow up eating mansaf in my home only on special occasions, it's not something near and dear to my heart. I'm glad I tried to make it though; the guys really liked it and there wasn't much left when they had finished eating!