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

Kubba Mosul

Mosul

Kubba Mosul, a flat disc of pounded bulgur and beef round spiced lamb, boiled and cut in wedges: a large pale flat disc of boiled bulgur dough the width of a dinner plate on a round metal tray, cut into wedges with one wedge lifted and turned to show the dark spiced minced lamb filling between two thin layers.

Illustration

The large flat kubba is Mosul's own, and Iraqis, in Nasrallah's phrasing, claim that every other form derives from it. Lebanese and Syrian cooks claim their own. The recipe here is the one in The Iraqi Family Cookbook, a diaspora blog of recipes "handed down through many generations, from grandmothers to mothers to daughters", published in December 2012, and it is the only kubba Mosul we found with its quantities stated. A second version, on an Egyptian site, fries the onion and meat for the filling first and adds raisins, and uses jireesh in the dough where this one uses semolina. Both are made.

As tradition built it

Serves 6 as a main.

Ingredients

For the dough

  • 480ml (2 cups) fine bulgur, no. 1
  • 240ml (1 cup) semolina
  • 450g lean minced beef
  • 1 tsp salt
  • about 180ml water

For the filling

Method

  1. Mix the bulgur, semolina, beef and salt with enough of the water to bring it together, and rest it 20 minutes so the grain softens.
  2. Add water a little at a time if it is dry, then pulse it in a food processor to a smooth dough.
  3. Mix the lamb with the onion, salt and the mixed spice of black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom for the filling. It goes in raw.
  4. Divide the dough into two balls the size of an orange. Press each on a sheet of plastic into a circle about 18 centimetres across.
  5. Spread filling over one circle, lay the second on top, and seal the edge with wet fingers. Chill the finished disc, or freeze it.
  6. Lower the disc into a large pan of salted boiling water and cook until it floats, about 10 minutes.
  7. Lift it out, cut it in wedges, and serve with pickles, salad and spring onion.

Notes

Mosul cooks, Nasrallah says, also fry the boiled disc, and one restaurant listing bakes it. Boiled is where this recipe stops.

What a modern chef changes

The disc made evenly, and the filling tasted before it is sealed

Rungs 2 and 5

Method

  1. Pass the beef for the dough through the mincer twice, then work it with the soaked grain in a stand mixer with the paddle for 5 minutes: the dough binds the way a pounded one does and the discs roll thinner without tearing.
  2. Fry a spoonful of the raw filling and taste it before you seal a single disc. Adjust the salt and the spice there, where it can still be changed.
  3. Roll the discs between two sheets of baking paper with a pin to an even 4 millimetres, so every wedge cooks in the same 10 minutes.
  4. Serve the wedges with a bowl of amba beside the pickles, which Baghdad does and Mosul tolerates.
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