Egyptian · Soup
Molokhia bi Taqliya
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 400 g frozen finely minced molokhia leaf, or 100 g dried molokhia
- 1.2 litres strong chicken or rabbit stock, skimmed clear
- 25 g garlic, about 8 cloves
- 10 g ground coriander seed
- 40 g samna
- 1 dried red chilli, crumbled
- 5 g salt
- 1 lemon
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothMashing & puréeing
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
- Bring the stock to a bare shiver and season it properly now; it carries the whole dish, the leaf brings almost no salt of its own.
- Stir in the molokhia, breaking up the frozen block, and hold the pot at about 85C (185F) with only the odd bubble at the rim until the leaf swells and hangs suspended through the broth, 8 to 10 minutes. It must never roll. 10 min
- Pound the garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt and fry it in the samna over medium heat with the ground coriander and chilli, 60 to 90 seconds, until the garlic is pale gold and the smell turns sharp and toasted.
- Crash the taqliya into the pot so it hisses, clap on the lid for a minute, stir once and kill the heat.
- Serve at once over rice, with lemon, bread and raw onion in vinegar.
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.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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