On the heat. Mild

Ingredients

• 2 kg lamb neck slices or shanks
• 500 g jameed (dried fermented yoghurt), soaked overnight — or 1 kg thick yoghurt plus 2 tbsp lemon and extra salt
• 2 onions · 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tbsp ground cardamom · 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tbsp cornflour (insurance against splitting)
• 500 g rice · 3 tbsp ghee
• 150 g almonds and pine nuts, fried
• Large flatbreads (shrak) · parsley

Method

1. Simmer the lamb with the onion, cinnamon and cardamom in water to cover for 2 hours, skimming. Keep the stock.
2. Blend the soaked jameed (or the yoghurt) smooth with the cornflour and a ladle of the stock.
3. Heat the yoghurt mixture in a separate pot, stirring constantly in one direction until it comes to a bare simmer. Never stop stirring and never let it boil, or it splits.
4. Once it has thickened, add the lamb and simmer very gently 30 minutes.
5. Cook the rice in the reserved stock with the turmeric and ghee.
6. Build on a large platter: flatbread, rice over it, lamb on the rice, yoghurt sauce ladled over everything, nuts and parsley on top. Eaten communally, with the right hand.

Cook's note. Stir in one direction only. It sounds like superstition and it is not — the shear from reversing direction is what breaks a yoghurt sauce at a simmer.

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