Kabūlāʾ (ʿAṣīda — Spiced Semolina-and-Rice Porridge)

History

Al-Baghdadi opens this recipe by naming the dish al-Kabūlāʾ "which is called ʿaṣīda" — his own gloss tying a refined Baghdadi sweet to a much older staple. His 1226 version is elaborate: fine semolina (samīdh) is toasted, then cooked with sesame oil (shīraj), a little whole cumin and rice into a stiff porridge, stirred with an iron rod, and finished with pounded walnuts and pistachios, husked toasted sesame, and jullāb (rosewater syrup) or honey — with clarified butter (samn) offered in place of the oil. ʿAṣīda itself is ancient: the word derives from the Arabic root ʿ-ṣ-d, associated with twisting or kneading, and the earliest documented recipe — a thick pudding of dates cooked with clarified butter — appears in Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq's 10th-century Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh. The scholar Maxime Rodinson held ʿaṣīda to be a typical food among the Bedouin of pre-Islamic and probably later times. It survives across the Maghreb and Arabia as a celebration sweet — served for births and the ʿaqīqah, given to women in labour, and eaten at breakfast for Mawlid and Eid, said to have been a food the Prophet favoured.

Ingredients

• raṭl roasted semolina flour
• ūqiyya sesame oil
• ūqiyya whole cumin
• raṭl water
• ūqiyya rice
• walnut and pistachio
• hulled roasted sesame
• julep syrup or honey
• clarified butter

Instructions

1. Roast three raṭl of semolina flour and set aside.
2. Heat three ūqiyya of sesame oil (shīraj) and a quarter ūqiyya of whole cumin (kammūn) in the cauldron (dast) until it boils and its aroma wafts.
3. Pour in about two raṭl of water and boil for an hour; add one ūqiyya of washed rice and cook until done.
4. Sprinkle in the roasted flour, stirring constantly with a rod (isṭām).
5. Feed in about one ūqiyya more sesame oil little by little; cook until set and fragrant, then remove from the fire.
6. Grease vessels with sesame oil, ladle out, and top with boiled sesame oil, pounded walnut and pistachio, and hulled roasted sesame.
7. Finish with julep syrup (jullāb) or honey — or clarified butter (samn) instead of sesame oil on top — and eat.