Gabout

Kuwaiti dumplings of flour and date syrup dropped into a spiced meat stew and steamed on its surface

Origin: Kuwait City & Kuwait

From the journey of Wheat.

Gabout is a winter dish and a Ramadan one, and it works on a trick worth knowing: the dumplings are not boiled in the stew but steamed on top of it. Rounds of dough are laid over the simmering surface, the lid goes on, and they cook in the rising steam whilst their undersides take up the sauce, so each one is soft and sauced below and dry and light above. The dough itself carries date syrup, which is unusual for a savoury dumpling and is what makes gabout Kuwaiti rather than generic. It gives them a faint sweetness and a darker colour, and against a stew heavy with bezar, the Gulf spice blend, and dried lime, the effect is the same sweet-against-savoury logic that runs through the whole Khaleeji kitchen. Kuwait's cooking sits at the top of the Gulf where the Mesopotamian, Persian, and Bedouin traditions meet, and the pearl-diving economy that sustained the town before oil shaped what was eaten: dishes that stretched a little meat a long way, kept without refrigeration, and could be cooked in one pot. It is served straight from the pot with the dumplings lifted off the top and the stew ladled around them.

Ingredients

Dumplings

  • 400 g plain flour
  • 4 tbsp date syrup (dibs)
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 0.5 tsp ground turmeric
  • 200 ml warm water, approximately

Stew

  • 800 g lamb or beef on the bone, in pieces
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 3 tbsp tomato purée
  • 2 tomatoes, chopped
  • 2 tbsp bezar or baharat
  • 2 dried limes (loomi), pierced
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 3 tbsp oil
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1.2 litres water

Method

  1. Make the dough first so it can rest. Mix the flour, salt, and turmeric, work in the oil and date syrup, then add the warm water gradually to a soft, slightly sticky dough. Knead five minutes, cover, and rest for thirty minutes.
  2. Brown the meat in the oil in a wide heavy pot. Add the onions and cook until soft, then the garlic and bezar for a minute.
  3. Stir in the tomato purée and cook it out for three minutes, then the chopped tomatoes for eight minutes more.
  4. Add the water, salt, and pierced dried limes, and simmer covered for fifty minutes until the meat is tender. Fish the limes out once they have given their sourness or they turn bitter.
  5. The stew should be soupy at this stage rather than thick, since the dumplings will absorb a good deal of it. Top up with hot water if it has reduced too far.
  6. Divide the dough into eight and flatten each into a disc about 1cm thick and 8cm across.
  7. Lay the discs gently on the surface of the simmering stew in a single layer. They should sit on top rather than sink.
  8. Cover tightly and steam for twenty-five minutes on a low heat. Do not lift the lid in the first fifteen, since it is the trapped steam that cooks them.
  9. The dumplings are done when the tops are dry and springy and a skewer comes out clean. Lift them out, ladle the stew into a wide dish, and set the dumplings back on top to serve.

Notes

Keep the stew loose before the dumplings go on; a thick stew gives them nothing to steam in and they will sit raw in the middle. They must rest on the surface rather than be pushed under. Date syrup in a savoury dough looks like a mistake and is the whole character of the dish, so do not leave it out. Bezar is sold in Gulf and Middle Eastern shops; baharat is a fair substitute.

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