Maqluba: A Middle Eastern Layer Cake for Dinner
By Francis Lam
“Why did you take your shoes off?” Maha Sarsour demanded as she emerged from her kitchen to greet me. I debated whether it would be better or worse to say that I thought Muslim families go shoeless in their homes. Then it occurred to me that her daughter Linda, who had invited me to cook with her mother, might have forgotten to mention my visit to her. So I stood, a shoeless stranger in Maha’s house. “The floor is too cold!” she said.
Another daughter, Hanady, arrived with her children, and eventually Linda walked through the door at true New Yorker speed. I’d never met her but knew she was a social-justice activist with an intense work ethic. She was on a conference call, muted, as she beelined to give her niece a hug, me a nod and a quick look at the mail. “You ready to make some maqluba?” she asked.
A feat of engineering, maqluba means “upside down” in Arabic. It’s a pot of stewed chicken, tender vegetables and richly spiced rice, cooked and then flipped to reveal itself in aromatic glory, a layer cake for dinner. When I asked Maha why she calls it “her favorite,” she wasn’t shy. “You’ll taste it,” she said, sizzling cauliflower to a dark caramel. “You’re going to see.”
Linda told me: “Our neighbors are from Yemen, and they’d never seen maqluba before. They learned to make it from us.” Maha looked up from the stove, adding, “And they say it never tastes the same as ours.” It’s a dish she actually learned to make in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where she arrived with her husband, Nidal, from the West Bank in the late 1970s. “I was so excited: America!” Maha said. “But when I got off the plane, the houses were made of small bricks or wood, not like the big stones in my country that are built so strong. If those houses burn, you can live in it again — unless there’s a bomb.”
While Sunset Park is known mostly as a Latino and Chinese neighborhood, Palestinian and Yemeni families settled there around the time the Sarsours did. “Back then, there was already a mosque here, and even if your family wasn’t really religious, they knew their people would be here,” Linda said. Maha, who never cooked growing up, found she had a cousin nearby, whom she could learn from. Thirty-eight years later, I stood in her kitchen and took notes as she took 18 pounds of chicken and rice and flipped it upside down without losing a single grain.
We brought it to the table. Linda’s brothers had arrived, as well as one of Linda’s daughters and some more children. The house was buzzing on a Tuesday with three generations of Sarsours. “In Palestine,” Hanady said, “maqluba is something you might do once a month. But here, we can have it whenever, because we can have the money to do so.”
Gizelle, Hanady’s 2-year-old, ran to get Nidal in the living room. “Welcome! Your food is ready,” she said, and took his hand. He got up, she ran to the table, he waited for a moment and sat back down. She ran back to him. “Welcome! Your food is ready,” she said, and took his hand again. It’s their ritual, and she insists on sitting on his knee. Nidal said to me: “I’m so happy. The grandchildren come every day.” Hanady laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “He doesn’t give us a choice. We’re all here every night.”
The maqluba was glorious: The chicken gave its flavor to the rice, intertwined with toasted cinnamon, cloves, allspice and garlic. I tried to serve some to Maha. “You are the guest!” she said, refusing. Gizelle and one of her cousins yelled, “You’re ugly!” at each other until they collapsed in a hug, and Nidal shouted, “Shut up!” at a crying baby to everyone’s laughter. When you’re privy to this kind of playful snapping around a family table, you feel pretty instantly like part of the family.
I was soon walking around the room to get some more chicken for Linda and for Robbee, Hanady’s kindergarten-age son. We spent hours together, part of it mercilessly teasing Robbee about his secret crush, and I marveled at how this family has Thanksgiving every night. Just a few days after a postelection Thanksgiving that was profoundly contentious for so many families — so much arguing about who belongs in America — it was lovely to be welcomed into this one.
Recipe: Maqluba (Upside-Down Chicken and Rice)
A Palestinian tradition, maqluba means “upside down” in Arabic and is a pot of stewed meat, rice and fried vegetables, cooked and flipped onto a serving dish to form an impressive tower. In Maha Sarsour’s version, the rice is richly spiced with cinnamon, allspice and more, and the chicken simmers to tenderness as it gives its flavor to the rice.
Serves 6-8
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
INGREDIENTS
- 1 medium eggplant (1 pound)
- Salt
- 3 ½ pounds bone-in chicken pieces
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 6 cloves
- 6 green cardamom pods
- 3 bay leaves
- 2 ½ cups long-grain rice, rinsed well and drained
- 1 small onion, cut into large wedges
- Vegetable or olive oil, as needed
- 3 to 5 medium carrots, 2-or-3-inch pieces
- 1 medium potato, 1/2-inch slices
- ½ medium-head cauliflower, in florets
- ¾ cup broken vermicelli noodles (see note)
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- ½ teaspoon Goya Sazón seasoning (optional)
- 3 garlic cloves, grated
- ⅓ cup pine nuts
- Plain yogurt, for serving (optional)
- Chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil, for serving (optional)
PREPARATION
- Cut the eggplant into 1/2-inch-thick half-moons. Season well with salt, and let sit 30 minutes. Place the chicken in a large pot (a 10-inch, 5-quart size is ideal), and season well with salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper, ground cumin, cloves, cardamom pods and bay leaves (ideally, do this the day before). Pour 3 cups of boiling water over the rice. Soak for 10 minutes, then drain well.
- To the chicken, add the onion wedges, 1 tablespoon salt and 4 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, covered, over high heat, then turn down to a simmer, and cook for 20 minutes. Drain the chicken, keeping the broth and discarding the onion and spices.
- Heat 1/2 inch of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering hot, then fry the carrots, in batches if necessary, turning occasionally until browned, about 4 minutes. Drain on paper towels, then season lightly with salt. Repeat with the potato, about 3 minutes per side. Repeat with the cauliflower, about 7 minutes per batch. Finally, press the eggplant with paper towel until dry, then fry the eggplant in one layer until browned, about 4 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels, but don’t season. (If the eggplant is too oily, press on it with paper towels.)
- Pour out the oil, keeping 2 1/2 tablespoons in the pan. Heat it over medium-high heat and add the vermicelli, stirring until browned, about 2 minutes. Add the drained rice and cook, stirring, to dry it out, about 4 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, the turmeric, cinnamon, allspice, ground cloves, Sazón and garlic, and cook, stirring, until very fragrant.
- Place the chicken back in the pot, skin side down. Place the vegetables on top, then rice. Pour in 4 cups of the chicken broth. Press down on the rice; add more broth or water if needed to bring the liquid barely to the level of the rice. Cover the pot and bring to a boil over high heat, then turn it down to medium low. After 10 minutes, carefully stir just the rice to evenly combine the harder rice on top. Repeat after another 10 minutes. After a total of 30 minutes, the rice should be cooked, but not soft, and the liquid should be absorbed.
- Place a very large serving dish on top of the pot, then, protecting your hands (and maybe with a partner), invert the pot onto the dish in one smooth motion. If there is liquid seeping out, spoon it out or soak it up with paper towels. Let the pot rest at least 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a small pan over medium-high heat until shimmering. Fry the pine nuts, stirring constantly, until browned, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towels.
- Lift off the pot to reveal the maqluba, and scatter the pine nuts all over. Serve with yogurt and chopped tomatoes, cucumbers and parsley on the side, seasoned with lemon, salt and olive oil.
