The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 09, The Terrace, the Wadi and a Kitchen Carried Out
Masoob
Hadhramaut
Illustration
- Time
- 15 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 91 sources in the brief
Over-ripe banana, crumbled flatbread and cream or soft cheese are mashed or blended together with honey into a dense sweet pudding, documented specifically as a Hadhrami dish, later carried to Saudi Arabia and the UAE by Hadhrami diaspora communities.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 15 minutes.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- 4 very ripe bananas
- 4 lahoh or khubz flatbreads, crumbled
- 150ml double cream or soft white cheese
- 3 to 4 tbsp honey
Method
- Mash the bananas well.
- Combine with the crumbled bread and cream or cheese, mashing or blending until dense and well combined.
- Spoon into bowls, drizzle generously with honey, and serve at once.
Notes
No precise traditional quantities were found; the recipe above is an indicative reconstruction from a consistent description of the dish's texture and components.
What a modern chef changes
A cleaner mash, and a better honey
Rung 6, adapted
Method
- Blend rather than mash, in a high-power blender, for a genuinely smooth, mousse-like texture rather than a lumpy one.
- Use a verified, genuine Sidr honey where it can be trusted, rather than a generic supermarket honey; masoob is exactly the simple, three-ingredient dish where a truly good honey, rather than technique, does most of the work. Sidr honey's sourcing risk is covered in full in Sourcing in Britain below.
- Serve slightly chilled, rather than at room temperature, for a dessert that reads closer to a mousse than a porridge.