That Translator Can Cook: Margoog
A hearty lamb and vegetable stew seasoned with various spices and dried limes. Discs of dough are added to the stew raw and become fully cooked in the stew’s broth.
Image Source: Almrsal.com
I have a very strong aversion to mushy wheat/bread products, which is why I wouldn’t eat this dish (though I haven’t had the opportunity) nor chicken and dumplings. If I did make this, I would simply serve bread on the side.
This hearty stew is also called ‘matateez,’ which is quite fun to say. I could not find anything about margoog’s history, whether I searched in English or Arabic, so I’m going to talk about the soft food diet for a little bit. This recipe and last week’s recipe make me think of the soft food diet because of the mashed meat and wheat in harees and the slow cooked meat and vegetables with dough cooked in the broth in margoog. You would have to tone down the seasoning and peel the vegetables because the soft food diet is prescribed to people who can’t tolerate “normally textured or highly seasoned foods.”
Margoog could be beneficial for people who have trouble swallowing (called dysphagia). There is even a National Dysphagia Diet (NDD), in which margoog could be suitable for NDD Levels 2 or 3, depending on how (long) you cook it:
NDD Level 1 — Dysphagia-Puréed: uniform texture, pudding-like, requiring very little chewing ability
NDD Level 2 — Dysphagia-Mechanically Altered: cohesive, moist, semisolid foods, requiring some chewing
NDD Level 3 — Dysphagia-Advanced: soft foods that require more chewing ability
Regular: all foods allowed
Here is how to make this savory stew (recipe belongs to Fno):
Making the margoog dough:
1 cup of red flour
Salt
A little bit of water
Instructions
Fry the onion with a bit of oil and add the garlic. Then, add the tomato, meat, and Saudi spice blend. Next, add the tomato paste, spices, and bouillon, and stir until it bubbles. Add the water and let it sit until the meat is cooked through.
Add all the chopped vegetables and the whole chili pepper (don’t chop it up). After that, make the dough, knead it, roll it out, cut it into medium pieces, and throw the dough onto the vegetables. You can fry some onion with oil, add salt and black pepper, and throw it on top of everything after it's been cooked. However, I didn’t do it here. Bon appetit! Serve with shatta (hot sauce/chili paste).
Ingredients
Beef or lamb, washed and cleaned
1 potato if it's large, or 2 potatoes if they're small, roughly chopped
1 zucchini, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
1 eggplant, chopped
Pumpkin (optional)
For the broth
1 onion, minced
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 tomato, crushed
1 chili pepper
1 tbsp. of tomato paste
1 bouillon cube
1 tbsp. of seven-spice blend
Bay leaves
Dried lime
Cinnamon
Dried coriander
Ground cumin
1 tbsp. of black pepper
Translators’ Discussion
For the vegetables, the author used مقطع كبير, which basically means ‘cut into large pieces’, which is why I used ‘roughly chopped.’ However, it still bothers me a little bit; what do you all think?
The author listed معجون (paste) as a broth ingredient but didn’t specify what kind. I put tomato paste since we would already be using a tomato. Are there any other kinds of paste that are commonly used with stews in general or this stew specifically?
The author also listed بهارات صحيحة, which doesn’t really have many references, but a Saudi spice blend has many recipes available. I chose to use ‘Saudi spice blend’ because it was a Saudi recipe and بهارات صحيحة literally means “healthy spices” or “correct spices.” However, most of the spices in the Saudi spice blend are already listed in the recipe’s ingredient list. I’m not quite sure what is going on; can any of you shed some light on this?
I tend to translate تبسك as ‘bubbles’ because this verb is the passive version of the Arabic verb “to stew/braise” according to the Hans Wehr dictionary. The register is also pretty casual, so ‘bubbles’ seems appropriate to me. How would you translate this term?