Featured recipe

Mansaf

Lamb in yogurt sauce with rice

Mansaf is Jordan's national dish and the centrepiece of its weddings, Eid gatherings and big family days, set down on a huge round tray for everyone to eat from together. Bone-in lamb is simmered until tender in a sauce of jameed, the dried, salted goat's-milk yogurt of the Bedouin, then served on thin shrak bread and turmeric-tinted rice, scattered with almonds and pine nuts and drenched in more of the hot sauce. If you can't find jameed, a mix of thick yogurt and labneh gives a fair stand-in. Chef's tip: stir the yogurt sauce in one direction constantly as it heats, and never let it boil hard before the lamb goes in; that is what keeps it smooth.

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