Mansaf

Jordan's dish of honour: lamb simmered in reconstituted dried yoghurt and poured over rice and flatbread, eaten standing with the right hand

Origin: Amman & Jordan

From the journey of Rice.

Mansaf is the national dish of Jordan and it is a ceremony before it is a recipe. It is what is cooked for a wedding, a funeral, a reconciliation between families, and the arrival of a guest who matters, and the manner of eating is as fixed as the ingredients: the company stands around a single wide platter, each person eats from the segment in front of them using the right hand only, and the host does not eat until the guests have begun. The sauce is jameed, and nothing else will do. Ewe's milk is fermented, salted, strained, and dried into hard white stones that keep for years without refrigeration, and these are soaked and worked back into a thin tangy liquid before cooking. It is a pastoralist's preservation technique from a country that was overwhelmingly Bedouin within living memory, and its sharpness is what stops a dish of lamb and butter from being merely heavy. The construction runs in layers. Shrak, a paper-thin flatbread, lines the platter and softens into the sauce; rice goes over it; the lamb sits on top; and toasted almonds and pine nuts are scattered over with a little parsley. The remaining jameed is served in jugs and poured on as the meal goes on. The yoghurt must not be allowed to boil hard or it will split, and it is stirred in one direction throughout, a piece of practical technique that has acquired the status of superstition. Palestinians make mansaf too and the dish belongs to the wider Bilad al-Sham pastoral tradition rather than to a modern border, though Jordan has made it a national emblem in a way no one else has.

Ingredients

1.5 kg lamb shoulder or leg on the bone, in large pieces
500 g jameed, broken up and soaked overnight, or 1kg thick plain yoghurt plus 2 tsp salt
500 g long-grain or basmati rice, rinsed and soaked 20 minutes
3 shrak or very thin flatbreads
1 onion, quartered
80 g ghee or butter
1 tbsp whole allspice berries
3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp salt, or to taste

To finish

100 g blanched almonds and pine nuts
1 small bunch parsley, chopped

Method

Soak the jameed overnight in warm water, then blend and pass through a sieve into a thin, smooth, tangy liquid, about 1.5 litres. If using yoghurt, whisk it with the salt and 500ml water until entirely smooth.
Simmer the lamb with the quartered onion, allspice, bay, and cinnamon in water to cover for ninety minutes, skimming the surface, until tender. Keep the stock and discard the aromatics.
Pour the jameed into a wide heavy pot and bring it up very slowly, stirring constantly and always in the same direction, until it just trembles. It must never boil hard or it will split, and once split it cannot be recovered.
Let it tick over gently for twenty minutes, still stirring often, until it thickens slightly and loses its raw edge.
Add the drained lamb to the jameed and simmer very gently for a further twenty minutes so it takes up the sourness.
Cook the rice in the reserved lamb stock with the turmeric and a knob of the ghee, using 1.5 times the rice's volume in liquid, covered, on the lowest heat for fifteen minutes. Rest ten minutes off the heat.
Toast the almonds and pine nuts in the rest of the ghee until golden and lift them out.
Lay the flatbreads over a very wide platter and moisten them with a few ladles of the jameed sauce. Spread the rice over the bread, then arrange the lamb on top.
Pour over more sauce, scatter the nuts and parsley, and bring the remaining sauce to the table in a jug for people to add as they eat.

Notes

Jameed is sold as hard balls or as a ready-made liquid in Middle Eastern shops and is worth seeking out; yoghurt makes a decent approximation but is milder and needs the extra salt to come close. The one rule that cannot be broken is the heat: bring the jameed up slowly, stir in one direction, and never let it boil. Stabilising yoghurt with a spoonful of cornflour slaked in cold water is a legitimate insurance policy if you are nervous.

The Gastrographer

Name: Mansaf
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 8
Cuisine: Amman & Jordan
Ingredients: 1.5 kg lamb shoulder or leg on the bone, in large pieces; 500 g jameed, broken up and soaked overnight, or 1kg thick plain yoghurt plus 2 tsp salt; 500 g long-grain or basmati rice, rinsed and soaked 20 minutes; 3 shrak or very thin flatbreads; 1 onion, quartered; 80 g ghee or butter; 1 tbsp whole allspice berries; 3 bay leaves; 1 cinnamon stick; 1 tsp ground turmeric; 100 g blanched almonds and pine nuts; 1 small bunch parsley, chopped; 2 tsp salt, or to taste

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control