The Horn · Volume 11, The Indian Ocean Kitchen
Maraq fah-fah
Somalia and Djibouti, where it is soupe djiboutienne
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 20
- Researched
- Researched from 103 sources in the brief
Maraq is the universal broth of this corridor, shared with Yemen and the Gulf. Fah-fah is its Djiboutian and northern Somali name, usually goat, usually with green chilli and coriander, and frequently eaten at breakfast. The proportions move with the kitchen. A worked British version for Somali families gives 600 g of white cabbage against 300 g of lamb; the one Djiboutian recipe found gives a kilo of meat to half a cabbage.
As tradition built it
About 1 hour 20 minutes.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- 1kg meat, in pieces
- 500g potatoes, peeled
- ½ cabbage
- 2 leeks
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 green chilli
- as needed water
- coriander, crushed
- 2 cloves garlic
Method
- Peel the vegetables. Cut the meat and vegetables into pieces, put them in a pot with water, and simmer gently 20 minutes.
- Add the crushed coriander and the garlic, and more water until the pot is half full.
- Simmer about an hour, until the meat and vegetables are cooked through. Serve hot.
Notes
After a weighed British version published for Somali families.
The recipe is Djibouti Fresh's, a Djibouti grocer's, which names no cook; it is the only Djiboutian recipe found, with more meat than vegetable. Mysomalifood.com cooks the meat tender first, then adds potato, carrot and cabbage for 10 to 15 minutes, with ground coriander and lemon.
What a modern chef changes
Two stocks, two vegetable timings, and the acid at the bowl
Rungs 5, 4 and 6
Method
- Make the broth at 71 to 82°C and keep the meat out of the boil. Rung 5. Forty minutes at a rolling boil on lean goat gives you strings; the same forty just under a simmer gives tender meat and a clear broth, and clear matters, because this is a soup you look into.
- Split the vegetables into two timings. Parsnip, carrot and potato need the full fifteen minutes, cabbage needs six and tomato needs three, and cooking all five for fifteen is why the diaspora version tastes uniformly of soft cabbage.
- Build the broth on bones and reduce it before the vegetables go in. Rung 4. Bone-in goat neck for an hour and a half, strained and defatted, with the diced meat cooked separately and returned.
- Lime and chilli at the bowl. Rung 6. Squeeze at the table and put the basbaas on the side. Acid added in the pot and held for service is acid that has already flattened, and this is one of the two or three dishes in the cuisine where brightness is the whole point.