Sumaqiyeh

As tradition built it

Chopping and cleaning alone about 8 hours; the stew simmers a further 5 hours or more, traditionally over one or two days.

Ingredients

• 2 cups (for the sumac infusion) water
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2, chopped onions
• 1.5lb (about 700g) veal, in small pieces
• 400g tin, drained (or dried, soaked) chickpeas, soaked
• 2 tsp salt
• 10 cups chard, chopped
• 1/2 cup sumac
• 3 tbsp flour
• 5 cloves, mashed garlic
• 1 green chilli, chopped, plus 1 tsp dried chilli flakes chilli
• 3 tbsp tahina, specifically Gaza's own more heavily toasted "red tahina"

Method

1. Heat the water and olive oil together first, then sauté the onions to gold.
2. Add the small pieces of veal and stir fifteen minutes.
3. Add the soaked chickpeas and salt, followed gradually by the chopped chard as it wilts down.
4. Once the meat is fully cooked, stir through a mixture of sumac, flour, garlic and chilli, and after a further hour, work in the tahina, specifically Gaza's own more heavily toasted "red tahina."
5. Simmer the whole stew a further four hours, stirring constantly.

Notes

This account comes directly from Al Jazeera Arabic's 2019 reporting, naming Samira al-Ajla, sixty, of al-Shuja'iya, as the source of the method and its timings, and Bushra Abu Fadl, seventy-two, of Shati refugee camp, fifty years into making the dish, as the source of its ingredient list; pre-cooking chopping and cleaning alone takes roughly eight hours, and more than ten women traditionally cook it together in large aluminium pots over one or two days, always overseen by an older woman. It is served specifically at both Eids, at weddings and at the pre-wedding gathering, and the quantity of meat used is, by Laila El-Haddad's own account in The Gaza Kitchen, a visible measure of a household's generosity.

What a modern chef changes

The veal cooked sous vide, the chard kept separate, and a freshly toasted red tahina

Sous vide veal, blanched chard, fresh-toasted sesame

Method

1. Cook the veal sous vide first at a precise low temperature, rendering it fully tender across a fraction of the traditional stew's own four-hour simmer, then fold it into the finished sauce only at the very end, so the long cooking time tradition spends tenderising the meat can instead go entirely into developing the sauce itself.
2. Blanch and shock the chard separately before it joins the pot, holding its own colour and structure rather than surrendering it entirely to a multi-hour simmer, then stir it back through only in the final twenty minutes.
3. Toast the sesame for a fresh red tahina in the spice grinder's own bowl immediately before grinding it, for a sharper, more genuinely toasted result than most shop-bought tahina, red or otherwise, carries by the time it reaches a British kitchen.