Lamb Mansaf

I've just returned from Jordan, inspired. Some people think all arabic food is the same, and living in Dubai, I can tell you I've had tabouleh and humous up to here (imagine me gesturing at my larynx).

However, I've recently been delving into the different cuisines of the area, and have also been treated to an Arabic food crawl by Arva Ahmed in Deira, and I'm finally starting to find some real gems. One of them is Mansaf, the traditional lamb and yoghurt dish of Jordan.

Ingredients (notes on ratios below)

• Lamb with bone in (I used a 1.8kg leg. Shanks would also work very well)
• Laban or yoghurt
• chicken or vegetable stock
• shawarma spice (my recipe at end if you want to mix your own)
• olive oil or ghee for browning meat
• lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• rice cooked with a pinch of saffron threads (in the rice-cooker)
• coriander (cilantro) leaves and toasted nuts (pine nuts and slithered almonds work well) to garnish

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 140°C, then brown lamb over a high heat on the stove. When cool enough rub with shawarma spice and salt, then place in an oven pan large enough to enclose meat.
2. Mix enough yoghurt (laban) and stock to surround meat at least to halfway, then cover and put in the oven. Leave it for 2 1/2 hours, then turn it, then leave for another 2 1/2 hours.
3. Take cooked rice and arrange on a large dish, then place meat pieces over it and scatter with coriander and toasted nuts.
4. Blend yoghurt sauce if necessary (tends to congeal a little), adding lemon juice, salt and pepper for flavour), then pour half over the dish, and reserve half in a bowl or jug for individual portions.

Not my picture - from hummus-recipes.blogspot.com

It's not a pretty dish (hence my picture concentrating on the yoghurt sauce) - the nicest one I found on the web was this one to the right from hummus-recipes.blogspot.com, which also includes the traditional preparation, unlike my slapdash version above.

Notes:

Ratios
If using yoghurt, 1 part yoghurt to two parts stock, but laban is thinner - one-to-one works better. I needed 500ml of laban and 500 of stock to surround my lamb leg, which I placed in a regular roasting pan, then covered with 4 well-sealed layers of foil.

Substitution
If you've read previous postings, you will know that my household is now casein (milk protein) free, so that makes yoghurt a little difficult to include. Traditionally, it is made with jameed, a dried yoghurt, which is then re-hydrated to provide the sauce and trap the natural liquids of the meat. For our family, it's not only a banned item, but almost impossible to find anyway. You can make it yourself, but that's a journey for another time for me. I used camel laban (no bad casein), but this could be easily changed for regular natural yoghurt or laban (soured milk like drinking yoghurt).
I used Egyptian rice, a fat, absorbent rice like calrose. It is much more suitable than a long grain rice like basmati, as it softens up beautifully.

Blasphemy
This is not a Jordanian Mansaf recipe, but a variation for my own kitchen inspired by recent tastings in Jordan. It is not quite as tangy or gamey in flavour as the traditional version, but I would suggest, much easier.

Shawarma Spice mix:

• 1 tbsp. cumin
• 1 tbsp. ground coriander
• 1 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. cardamom
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Tastes better if you use whole spices and toast them a little then grind them, but using fresh ground spices is a whole lot easier.