Laban Ummo
Recipes for meat cooked in yogurt abound in medieval Arabic cookery manuals, where the dish was called madira. As early as the tenth century, the Arab writer Badia’z Zaman wrote a tale entitled “Al Madirya” about the dish. Such dishes are still popular in the Arab world. The name of this Lebanese version, which means “his mother’s milk,” implies that the meat of a young animal is cooked in its own mother’s milk. It can be made with chunks of meat or lamb shanks. Serve with plain rice (page 337) or rice with vermicelli (page 340).
Recipe information
Yield
serves 6
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Put the meat in a large pan and cover with water. Bring to the boil, remove any scum, and add salt and pepper. Cook with the lid on for 1 hour.
Step 2
Add the onions and cook for 1/2 hour more, or until the meat is very tender and the onions are soft, adding water to keep the meat covered at first and letting it reduce, uncovered, so that most of it has evaporated at the end and there is hardly any broth left.
Step 3
Prepare the yogurt by mixing with egg white, or the cornstarch dissolved in a little water, following the directions for stabilizing yogurt on page 113, to prevent it from curdling during cooking. Add it to the cooked meat, stir in the garlic if using, and simmer gently, uncovered, for 10 to 15 minutes, adding a little salt. Stir in the mint, if using, towards the end.
Step 4
Some cooks pass round a little bowl of dried mint for people to help themselves if they wish.
Variations
Step 5
Use 6 small lamb shanks instead of the cubed meat, and cook them until they are so tender that the meat falls off the bone.
Step 6
For an Egyptian version, add 5 cardamom pods to the meat and onions from the beginning. Just before serving, fry 4 crushed garlic cloves with 1 tablespoon ground coriander in 2 tablespoons butter or oil, until the garlic just begins to color, and pour over the meat and yogurt as you serve.
Step 7
A Turkish version has a large bunch of chopped dill added towards the end of the cooking.
