Pacha

As tradition built it

Serves a table. Most of the work is the cleaning, and the chickpeas are soaked the night before.

Ingredients

The pot

• 1 sheep's head, split and cleaned
• as available trotters, scalded and scraped
• 8 pieces of tripe, each a palm across, cleaned until white
• 2 to 3 onions, whole, skinned
• 1 head garlic, whole, unpeeled, washed
• 1 tbsp curry powder
• 3 to 4 nomi Basra, pierced in several places
• 3 bay leaves
• 225g chickpeas, soaked overnight and drained
• 1 tbsp salt

The stuffing for the tripe

• 225g rice, washed and soaked 30 minutes
• 225g minced lamb or beef
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baharat
• ½ tsp allspice
• ¼ tsp black pepper

To serve

• to serve bread, broken into a deep dish
• to taste sumac, at the table, in Kirkuk
• 250ml yoghurt, for the sauce if you want it
• 15g parsley, chopped, for the sauce
• 1 clove garlic, grated, for the sauce

Method

1. Clean everything first; it is most of the work. Rub the head, trotters and tripe with salt, curry powder and flour, then wash them again and again until the tripe is white and the water runs clear. Strike the head on the nose on a hard surface to clear it, as Nasrallah's mother did.
2. Sew each piece of tripe into a triangle with strong cotton, leaving a mouth. Mix the stuffing, fill the pieces loosely so the rice can swell, and sew them shut.
3. Put every piece in a very big pot with the onions, garlic, curry powder, nomi Basra, bay leaves and chickpeas, and cover it deep with cold water. Bring it hard to the boil and skim until the broth is clear.
4. Lower the heat and simmer 3 to 4 hours, until the tripe is tender and the head meat falls; add the salt halfway, and hot water as it needs it. Pierce the stuffed tripe with a fork as it cooks so the broth gets in. Lift out anything that is done early, the brains above all.
5. Break bread into a deep dish and pour broth over it to cover. Lay the meat on top with the chickpeas and the nomi Basra, and put the rest of the meat in a bowl beside with some broth. Sizzling hot oil over it if you like, or the yoghurt sauce, and greens, herbs and pickles on the table; sumac in Kirkuk.

Notes

The pot is Nasrallah's, from Delights from the Garden of Eden, and the stuffed tripe is her qibbayat, Mosul's speciality, cooked in the same broth. Iraqi kitchens season pacha with curry powder, as she does; the chapter's earlier pot said baharat.

What a modern chef changes

The broth clarified, the pieces finished separately

Rungs 4 and 5

Method

1. Blanch everything from cold, drain, rinse, and start again in fresh water: the second broth is clear from the first skim.
2. Cook the tripe parcels and the trotters sous vide at 85 degrees Celsius for 12 hours and the head in the pot, so each is done when it is done and nothing is overcooked waiting for the rest.
3. Pass the broth through a chinois lined with cloth and season it with salt and lemon at the end.
4. Serve the head meat on toasted samoon with sumac and raw onion, which is the Kirkuk breakfast done at a counter.