Saturday, January 24, 2004

Kubanneh!

[Please apply a liberal sprinkling of your very best Jamie Oliver accent to the following...]

As the wind whistles through the shutters, it's time for your Saturday mornin' 'Yemenite delights with anglosaxy!'. As Tel Aviv was battening down the hatches last night, mrs. anglosaxy was busy making her first ever kubanneh. For those of you new to the game, kubanneh is a greasy kind of bread/cake, similar to that other Yemenite delight, jachnun, but oh so different! And for those of you who are curious, mrs anglosaxy is not of Yemenite extraction, she's more of an Iraqi-Iranian cross-breed...

So, it all started last night, and, as for jachnun, it involved leaving it cooking overnight. After mixing the dough, including yeast of course (as you can see, we swapped our usual Friday night partaking of yeasterly substances packaged in green bottles for yeast of another kind), by hand for that authentic Yemenite, er...or Iraqi-Iranian taste - see picture 1 below, the mixture was left to stand for a couple of hours. Much to our delight (we're new at this kubanneh mularky) the mixture had risen (picture 2). Margarine was then added and then the whole lot was placed in one of those jachnun-like pots and it was stuck in the oven. Only this morning were we able to sample some home-made kubanneh (picture 3)...

TIP: Don't put too much sugar in it, otherwise you have yourselves a cake...

NOTE: Don't worry, later today I'm sure to partake in a few yeasterly mixtures packaged in green bottles - lots of English football on TV...