Egyptian · Main

Hamam Mahshi

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50 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

warm-spiced · bright · smoky · rich Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, acid holding everything up to the light, on a rich, rounded finish.

Ingredients

4 pigeons, about 350 g each, cleaned
100 g freekeh, rinsed and drained
150 g onion, finely chopped
100 g samna or clarified butter
4 g ground coriander
3 g ground cumin
2 g ground cinnamon
2 g black pepper
10 g fine salt
1800 ml chicken stock
150 g onion, halved, for the broth
4 green cardamom pods
3 bay leaves
1 lemon, in wedges

The skills inside

Roasting in a hot oven The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil

Allergen screen

Found: dairy

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Salt the pigeons inside and out with 7 g of the salt an hour ahead and leave them in the fridge.
Fry the chopped onion in 60 g of the samna until golden, stir in the freekeh, the ground spices and the remaining 3 g salt, toast until the pan smells of green wheat smoke, then add 125 ml of the stock and cook 12 minutes, so the grain is half done and still chalky at the centre, and spread it out to cool. 12 min
Fill each bird two thirds full, since the freekeh keeps swelling, close the vent with a cocktail stick and tie the legs together.
Lower the pigeons into the remaining stock with the halved onion, cardamom and bay, in a pot narrow enough that they sit just covered, and poach at 85C (185F), covered, for 35 minutes, until both the thigh and the stuffing read 74C (165F). 35 min
Lift them out, dry them, brush with the last of the samna and roast at 220C (425F) for 8 minutes, until the skin blisters and browns, then serve with the lemon wedges. 8 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes

The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.

Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

At the Table

The Pour: Riesling or Grenache
Also Right: Cru Beaujolais
From the Taps: Farmhouse saison
Zero-Proof: Cloudy apple juice, chilled

Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Hamam Mahshi The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Egyptian kitchen