Saudi Roast Lamb Shoulder on a Bed of Fragrant Rice
MESHWI LAHM ‘ALA ROZZ
SAUDI ARABIA
Lamb and goat—and baby camel for special occasions!—are the meats of choice in the Arabian Gulf. Here, in this Saudi version of roast lamb, the shoulder (you can also use the leg) is marinated in a luxurious saffron yogurt marinade and served on a bed of fragrant rice. Simple to prepare and absolutely exquisite to serve and eat.
SERVES 4
1 lamb shoulder on the bone (about 4½ pounds/2 kg)
1½ cups plus 1 tablespoon (14 ounces/400 g) Greek yogurt
3 cloves garlic, minced to a fine paste
2 good pinches of saffron threads
Sea salt
2½ cups (500 g) basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes in lightly salted water
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground galangal
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
5 whole cloves
Juice of 1 lemon
1½ tablespoons rose water
FOR THE GARNISH
¼ cup (40 g) blanched almonds, toasted in a hot oven for 7 minutes
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted in a hot oven for 5 minutes
1. Trim the lamb of all excess fat. Place in a large roasting pan.
2. Mix the yogurt and minced garlic in a large bowl. Add half the saffron and salt to taste and mix well. Let the yogurt sit for 15 to 30 minutes, stirring it every now and then, until it has turned a lovely yellow color from the saffron.
3. Pour the yogurt over the lamb shoulder and coat it well. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for a couple of hours.
4. Thirty minutes before the shoulder is ready, preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).
5. Add 2 cups (500 ml) water to the roasting pan. Mix well with the yogurt and loosely cover the lamb shoulder with foil. Roast until done to your liking—if you like your meat pink, calculate 20 minutes per pound, and if you prefer it well done, calculate 30 minutes per pound or a little longer.
6. About 20 minutes before the meat is ready, drain the rice and put it in a saucepan. Take the meat out of the oven and uncover. Drain the juices and add to the rice together with the spices, lemon juice, and salt to taste. You may need to add a little water (up to 1 cup/250 ml). Return the meat to the oven, leaving it uncovered so that it browns.
7. Bring the rice to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the liquid. Check on the level of liquid and if the rice looks too dry, add a little more if needed. When done, take the rice off the heat. Uncover and sprinkle the top of the rice with the rose water. Then wrap the lid with a clean kitchen towel and place back over the rice. Let sit for 5 minutes.
8. Transfer the rice to a large serving platter, making space in the middle to place the shoulder of lamb. Garnish with the toasted almonds and pine nuts and serve.
ROASTING A CAMEL HUMP
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
A few years ago, I was co-presenting a travel/cookery show in the United Arab Emirates with a delightful poet, Tariq Al-Mehyass, who, unlike many Emirati men, was interested in cooking and not afraid to show it. One day when we were shooting in Al-Ayn, a relatively lush emirate near Abu Dhabi, the producer announced that a local grandee had invited us all to a lavish feast, where camel hump would be the centerpiece of the meal.
We finished our morning filming and got into our respective cars to drive up to the grandee’s compound—a collection of villas for him and his children, as well as a separate majliss (reception quarters that are very common in the Gulf). As I got out of my car, the producer led me to a different place from where Tariq and the rest of the male crew were headed. When I asked why I was being separated, he explained that our host was very conservative and that, as a woman, I was not allowed into his majliss. Instead, I would be dining in the main house, where the women were waiting for me. I was assured, they would bring us food as soon as it was served to the men. I reluctantly accepted the situation, and I could barely muster enough grace to greet my charming hostesses, the grandee’s beautiful wife and her mother. I resignedly sat with them in a large dark drawing room, chatting over Arabic coffee while waiting for the food.
After an excruciating wait, several servants arrived with a large covered platter. I eagerly looked on as they uncovered the dish to reveal a pile of large chunks of dark, gristly meat sitting atop a bed of rice. Nothing that looked like a hump. I politely asked if we were going to get any hump. They explained that it was reserved for the men. The offering before us was positively nasty, the meat both tough and tasteless. The camel must have been too old. Most of the time, only baby camels (h’war or qo’ood; the latter being slightly older) are served. The rice was good though.
We left soon after lunch—Emirati people don’t linger once they’ve eaten. The traditional sign that it’s time to leave is when someone brings out burning incense called ‘otoor. You perfume yourself by fanning the scented smoke toward your hair and clothes, and then you hightail it. As we drove back to the hotel, I sulked, wondering if I would get another chance to taste hump. To obtain one, you need to buy a whole camel—preferably a baby—and have it killed for you. And even if I were prepared to spend the thousand or so dollars it would cost to buy the camel, I had nowhere to cook it.
But the very next day, I was standing in a catering kitchen where I’d come to learn to cook Emirati dishes. As I was being shown around the kitchen, I noticed a chef rubbing a big lump of fat with a yellow marinade. I tried to temper my excitement, thinking that it might just be the tail from a fat-tail lamb. I stopped dead in my tracks and asked nervously if it was a hump. It was. The chef explained that a local man was celebrating the return of his brother from a long job posting abroad, and he had sent them a whole baby camel to cook for the feast. I told the chef my sad story of being denied a taste of the hump because of my gender. He immediately offered to remedy the situation even if the camel in question belonged to someone else. I just had to wait a couple of hours for the camel and a couple of baby goats to roast in a massive covered cauldron topped with glowing charcoal, and set atop a huge gas burner. When the meat was ready, he carefully cut a piece of the fatty hump from the bottom before arranging the rest of the meat over rice. It was better than any camel meat I had eaten—not exactly tender but not stringy either and beautifully seasoned with saffron, rose water, and a complex mixture of spices that is typical to the Emirates called b’zar—but, to be honest, still not the camel nirvana I had built up in my mind.
For that, I had to wait another couple of years. When I was staying with my brother in Dubai for the Emirates Literary Festival, I saw my wonderful friend Sheikha Bodour al-Qasimi at the opening of the festival. She had been instrumental in introducing me to the pleasures of Emirati food, and if anyone could help me get a camel hump it was she. So I asked her how I could lay my hands on a camel hump, explaining that I was writing an article about it. With her customary grace and generosity, Sheikha Bodour asked lovely Amani who runs her executive office to help arrange it for me. The very next day, Amani called to give me the choice of just having the hump or going to the camel market to choose the baby camel and have it killed there and then. The market was too far in an area called Maleha, but I did want to see the slaughter, so we decided to have the baby camel brought to Sharjah (a smaller emirate about 30 minutes’ drive from Dubai) to the slaughterhouse behind the live animal market—Emiratis often cook whole animals and usually buy them live to have them killed especially for them.
The baby camel arrived alive in the back of a van, sitting quite placidly with his legs folded and tied so that he could not move. A group of immaculate-looking butchers arrived, sporting long white plastic aprons and wellington boots and carrying their knives in white plastic sheaths hanging from one hip with the sharpener hanging on the other. The camel must have realized his fate, because he began braying as soon as the van backed onto the ramp. The men in white dragged him off the van and untied his legs so they could walk him to the killing chamber.
Once they had seated the baby camel in the middle of the chamber, one of the men opened the mouth of the camel and showered it with water. The animal did not resist, nor did it resist when one of the butchers said “Allah Akbar” and slit its throat. After letting the body relax a little, they proceeded to first skin, then butcher it, and finally I could claim my very own camel hump.
I thanked the butchers and carried my prize home to my brother’s house. There, I massaged it with saffron, rose water, and b’zar before roasting it. I followed the same principles as the caterer in Al-Ayn, putting the oven on high and cooking the hump for 2 hours, covering it part of the time with foil so that the top wouldn’t burn. The hump looked gorgeous as it came out of the oven, crisp and golden. Both the fat and meat were scrumptious—the baby camel must have been milk-fed. The meat was pale and tender and the fat very soft and not at all fatty if you get my meaning. Some fats coat the tongue in an unpleasant manner but not this one. It was almost the same as lamb’s tail fat, which in Lebanon we eat raw with raw liver. Apparently, people also eat the fat from the hump raw. I will have to try it next time around.
Finally, I’d secured the prize that had eluded me for so long. When you want the good stuff, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. And now that I’d broken through the camel-cooking barrier, I would be planning a baby camel feast on my brother’s terrace, overlooking the Arabian Gulf. I would serve the whole animal, with the hump as the centerpiece, and there would be no one to tell me to go to the women’s quarters. To be honest, I never did manage the camel feast because I have not been back to Dubai since, but my advice to you, now that camel milk is in vogue, is to look for a camel farm or a supplier of camel meat (there are a few) and see if they can supply you with the hump, still on the bone as the meaty parts are the two fillets nestled between the rib cage and the spine. And if you manage to get one, follow the recipe for Baby Goat Roast to roast your camel hump.