Brotherhood of mansaf

Jordan is multicultural, but if

theres one thing that unites
everybody, its mansaf - a rich and
plentiful melange of rice, lamb and
rehydrated yoghurt. Such is
mansafs significance and
popularity, its considered to be the national dish. Yet it has its roots in Bedouin
culture, and is emblematic of survival and hospitality in the most inhospitable of
desert conditions.
For the nomadic tribesmen who herded their goats and camels in search of pasture and
water amid the harshness of the sands, mansaf was vital. Owing to the scarcity of
water, it was made with dried ingredients such as rice and hardened yoghurt called
jameed, which could easily be transported by the nomads. It would be served on a
large platter, and everyone would get a share, especially wayward travelers who had
been invited into the bedouin tents as shelter from the unforgiving dunes. Such a
gesture of hospitality in the face of hardship still defines Jordanian culture today.
Mansaf is eaten at weddings, religious festivals and other special occasions. You can
try it any time at many of the traditional restaurants in downtown Amman and
beyond. Whether you choose between lamb or chicken, it will be cooked with a subtle
blend of baharat spices, and the plate will be garnished beautifully with pine nuts
and chopped parsley.

Mansaf Recipe The National Dish of Jordan

Ingredients

2 Kilos lamb, preferably with bones, cut into thick pieces

2 cups yogurt
1 large onion, chopped
1 egg white, beaten with a fork until frothy
2 teaspoons corn flour
cup clarified butter
cup pine nuts
cup slivered almonds
water
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoons turmeric
teaspoon allspice
1 small piece cinnamon bark
3 cups basmati rice, rinsed

Directions
Place yogurt (or jameed mixed with water) in a heavy-based pan.
Add yogurt, frothy egg white, corn flour and 2-teaspoon salt to pan and stir gently just
enough to blend. It is very important to use a wooden ladle and to stir in the same
direction. So, if you stir to the left, you must continue stirring the yogurt mixture to
the left throughout the whole cooking process. Otherwise, the yogurt will curdle.
Place pan over medium heat and stir constantly with wooden ladle. Heat the yogurt
mixture until it begins to boil, stirring continuously in the same direction. Lower the
heat and leave to boil gently, uncovered, for 3-5 minutes until thick.
Place lamb in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring slowly to boil. Skim the surface
to remove particles. When well skimmed and boiling, add salt and paper to taste.
Cover and boil gently for 30 minutes.
Heat butter in frying pan and add pine nuts and almonds. Fry until golden and remove
pine nuts to a plate, draining butter back into the pan.
Add onion to pan and fry gently until transparent. Stir in turmeric, allspice and
cinnamon bark and cook for another 2 minutes. Add this mixture to the boiling lamb.
After lamb has been cooking for 1 hour, remove lid and let liquid reduce until it only
half-covers lamb.
When reduced, add yogurt sauce, shaking pan to blend it with liquid. Let the mixture
boil gently on low heat until lamb is tender and sauce is thick.
In the meantime, prepare the rice as directed on package.
Once rice is cooked, remove it from pot and place it in a large round serving platter,
then spread half of the nuts on top of rice.
When lamb is done,
remove the meat chunks
with a slotted spoon and
place on top of rice and
nuts platter. Then
sprinkle the remaining
nuts over entire platter.
Place the cooked yogurt
in a large serving bowl.

Main Meals
Chaacheel: A local dish found only around the Rasoun area in Ajloun made of green
leaves called loof with anti-cancer properties. The loof is sauted with onions and
made into balls by adding flour and eggs. It is then cooked with a yoghurt sauce
called labaniyyeh.
Kofta: Minced beef or lamb ground with spices and
onions and grilled to perfection.
Mjadarra: A rice dish, cooked with lentils, onions and
cumin, topped with caramelized onions.
Msakhan: traditional taboun bread soaked in olive oil,
and then topped with caramelized onions, sumac and
pine nuts served with roasted chicken.
Oozy: A rice dish, cooked with minced meat and a variety of spices, topped with
carrots, peas, nuts and grilled chicken.
Sayyadieh: Rice cooked with caramelized onions, an array of spices ranging from
ginger to paprika, and topped with seared fish (grilled, baked, fried or cooked with the
rice.)
Shawerma: Chicken, beef or lamb grilled on a vertical metal skewer, shredded and
served in pita bread, or shrak bread and topped with tahini, pickles, tomatoes and
onions.

Appetizers
Arayes: Arabic bread
stuffed with minced
meat, tomatoes, onions,
garlic, lemon, chilli
sauce, topped with olive
oil and then grilled in
the oven.
Baba Ghanoush:
Mashed grilled
aubergines mixed in
with diced tomato
cubes and capsicum
cubes with chopped
parsley, thinly diced
onion cubes, pomegranate molasses, salt and lemon juice and garnished with
pomegranates.
Falahiyyeh Salad: A salad with history, created by farmers (farmers salads) a long
time ago consisting of tomatoes, onions, garlic olive oil and lemon.
Fattet hummus: Hummus with pieces of pita bread, tahini and yoghurt, often mixed
with pine nuts and almonds.
Fattoush: A regular salad with a secret mix of ingredients (the secret is in the fried
pita bread, sumac, and verve).
Freekeh soup: smoked green wheat, cooked in chicken broth, onions and small
pieces of chicken.
Foul: Dried fava beans cooked and mashed with olive oil, lemon, chilli and tomatoes.

Street eats
To know a citys street food is to know the city, and Amman is no exception. Amid the
jumble of traffic-clogged lanes and hills of the old east side, the clamour of daily life
is perfumed with enticing aromas. They drift from little shops huddled at the base of
apartment buildings, and stalls laden with bounties of seasonal greens; carts piled high
with breads and nuts, and holes in the wall dispensing fresh juice with myriad health
benefits.
From the crowded souqs stretching back from Al Husseini mosque, to the warren of
narrow streets that wind through the Downtown area, food punctuates the rhythm of
Ammani life. If the desert is the home of bedouin cuisine, then the streets give rise to
a rich array of pan-Arabian treats, with influences from Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine and
Iraq.
Tables spill out into dead-end alleyways, where creamy hummus, felafel sandwiches
and bowls of steaming ful medammes (stewed fava beans) are relished. Crowds
descend on shawarma dens, where wraps of grilled chicken and lamb are slathered in
tahini (sesame seed) sauce. People meet on street corners to sip juice freshly squeezed
from bundles of sugar cane outside cramped kiosks.
And since no meal in Amman is complete without something sweet and sticky to
finish, clusters of pastry shops send sugar addicts onto the pavements, excitedly
clutching their wares in paper bags. Baklava pastries of every shape are eaten on the
go. The sugar-syrup drenched kunafe - soft cheese with a crumbly orange semolina
crust - can present more of a challenge for the casual street eater. But this is social
eating laid bare - man or woman, rich or poor, nobody will mind if you drip a little
sugar syrup on your clothes.

Desserts
Baklava: a rich, sweet pastry made out of puff pastry, filled with pistachios and
drenched in sweet honey or syrup.
Knafeh: A sweet pastry soaked in rose-water syrup, made with layers of shredded
dough on top of akkawi cheese and fresh cream, topped with a sprinkle of pistachio
nuts.
Mamoul: Samolina pastry mixed with milk, shortening and butter, filled with dates,
pistachios or walnuts.
Um Ali: A type of bread pudding cooked with raisins, dates, nuts, rose water, milk and
heavy cream.

Herbs
Sumac: Ground auburn-red
berry with a slightly acidic
flavour.

Zaatar: ground thyme mixed

with sesame seeds, sumac and
salt.

The sugar rush

We admit it - Jordanians have a sweet tooth. In fact, it would be unthinkable to end a
meal in Jordan without some kind of syrupy dessert. It's ingrained in the national
psyche, but to find out why, you have to go back in time.
It may have been the natural sugar in dates that gave the ancient Bedouins a taste for
all things sweet? But it was the spread of the Ottoman Empire - and Ottoman tastes that really started the sugar rush in the Levant.
At the heart of the Ottoman Empire, the chefs of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul found
ever more ingenious ways to combine paper-thin phyllo pastry, sugar syrup, nuts and
dried fruit to make baklava. The sweets were distributed throughout the empire, but
each region had its own interpretation, from Palestine and Syria, to Lebanon and Iraq.
Since today's Jordan is a mix of cultures, the sheer variety of sweets available is
nothing short of staggering.
Peek through a sweetshop window and you'll see mountains of baklava beautifully
arranged on steel platters. Diamond-shaped pastries and 'burma' rolls; tiny vermicelli
bird's nests stuffed with roasted pistachio and drizzled with syrup. Huge orange disks
of knafeh are sprinkled with rosewater before being sliced up and packed to go with
'warbat bil ishta' pastries filled with clotted cream.
There are hundreds of varieties of traditional Levantine sweets. But in Jordan, that's
not enough. You'll also find French pastries and Italian desserts, Japanese wasabi ice
cream and American pie. No matter where it's from, if it's sweet, it's good to eat in
Jordan.

Simple Tahini Salad

INGREDIENTS:
5 tablespoons tahini, sesame seeds paste
1 juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon parsley, chopped
2 teaspoons olive oil
salt to taste

COOKING METHOD:
1. In a bowl, mix tahine with lemon juice and salt. Then add a little bit of warm water
and stir until the tahini gets dissolved and becomes lighter in texture. (You can adjust
the amount of warm water according to the desired thickness of tahini paste).
2. Stir in the garlic and combine well. Pour the resulting tahina mixture in a serving
plate and sprinkle with cumin and parsley.
3. Drizzle the olive oil on top and serve with Arabic bread.

Siniyet Kafta 4-5 portions

with potatoes and tahini

Ingredients :
1KG minced meat
1 Onion
bunch parsley
2 cloves garlic
3 medium sized potatoes
tspn black pepper
tspn salt
Juice of 2 lemons
2cups tahini
1 cup yoghurt
tspn nutmeg
Recipe
1. spice the minced meat with salt and black pepper
2. grind the onions and chop the parsley finely and massage into the minced meat
3. spread the minced meat onto a pan it so that a full layer covers the full pan
4. cut up the potatoes into circular slices and fry them half way so that the potatoes are
slightly
translucent in color
5. put the minced meat in the oven for 20minutes on medium fire and then broil for
another 7 minutes
6. in a pot mix tahini and lemon for 3 minutes until knotted, then add the yoghurt and
3 cups of water
and put on medium fire and keep whisking the mixture so that it doesnt knot
7. continue whisking for around 10 minutes
8. take the pan out of the oven, use the sauce that is in the pan and put it on the
mixture and whisk for
another 3 minutes so that the mixture thickens
9. line up the half fried potatoes on top of the minced meat until the whole meat layer
is covered
10. follow by pouring the mixture on top of the potatoes and so the minced meat and
potatoes are
immersed in it
11. place the pan in the oven for another 10 minutes then broil for 3 minutes so that is
is golden on top
Make sure to eat it with pita bread. Enjoy,