The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 09, The Terrace, the Wadi and a Kitchen Carried Out
Masoob
Hadhramaut
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 15 minutes
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
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
- 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.