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The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 59, The Tigris Fire, the Shrine Kitchen and the Table That Left · Cooked by cue

Kahi wa geymar

Baghdad, and every town with a buffalo

Kahi wa geymar, layered pastry under thick buffalo cream with date syrup: a round layered golden pastry on a small plate covered with a thick sheet of pale ivory buffalo cream lifted whole onto it.

Illustration

Geymar is the cream that rises on buffalo milk left overnight, and kahi the layered pastry it is lifted onto: together they are the Friday breakfast. Al-Gardenia calls geymar with kahi or samoon "the icon of Iraqis on Friday morning, Eid and occasions". CNN's Arabic service, in 2025, found Kahi wa Gaymar Rasoul on Sadriya Street in central Baghdad drawing thousands each morning. The kahi comes from the baker. The cream is made the way Suroor Mirza Mahmoud describes it in Al-Gardenia, whose piece names the makers: Um Abdullah of Sadat al-Hindiya, the makers of Hillah, and Um Rihanah the teacher, in Baghdad.

As tradition built it

Overnight for the cream; minutes at the table. Serves as many as there is cream for.

Ingredients

Geymar is made by cue, milk warmed and never boiled, left under a basket overnight; no maker gave a volume or a temperature, and the method is Al-Gardenia's.

Method

  1. Pour the milk into a wide, shallow vessel and warm it slowly over a low fire, stirring with a wooden stick. It must never boil.
  2. When it is hot and steaming, take it off the fire. Set a curved basket over the vessel and cover the basket with blankets or sacking.
  3. Leave it overnight. By early morning the fat has risen in a thick layer.
  4. Lift the cream off whole with a flat spoon. Lay it over warm kahi and pour dibs or honey over it.

Notes

Away from the buffalo, Nasrallah gives her friend Khaula Dhiyab's route for four: 475ml whole milk and 475ml double cream, heated until it rises and never boiled, wrapped under an upturned colander and a blanket for six hours, then a day in the fridge before the slab is lifted.

What a modern chef changes

The same cream, with a thermometer and a British dairy

Rung 6

Method

  1. Buffalo milk is sold by a few British dairies; use it. Cow's milk gives a thinner cream and clotted cream is the usual stand-in, close in richness and wrong in sweetness.
  2. Hold the milk at 80 to 85 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes in a wide pan, below the boil throughout, stirring; then take it off and cover it as the tradition does, under a cloth and a towel, overnight in a cool room.
  3. Chill the vessel for the last two hours before lifting the cream, so it comes off in one sheet.
  4. Serve on kahi warmed in the oven, with a dark dibs that lists only dates.
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