That Translator Can Cook: Masoob
Mashed overripe bananas mixed with chunks of bread, dates, cream, cardamom, honey, and other dried fruits and nuts. It can be garnished with a dollop of yogurt or clotted cream.
Image Source: Tareekaa
While this dish tastes delicious, I dislike mushy things like overripe bananas (I prefer mine slightly underripe), and moist bread (I prefer toast, even for sandwiches). That being said, I would like to try creating a dish using the flavors of masoob: fried banana slices on a piece of toast or a pancake, topped with nuts and a dollop of yogurt, sprinkled with cardamom and cinnamon, and drizzled with honey.
Masoob, also known as malikia in Yemen, is a breakfast and dessert (depending on personal preferences) that is popular in the Arabian Peninsula. According to many sources, masoob originated in Yemen, particularly in the Hadhramaut region, but they don’t specify the time period or the people who created masoob. Historically, Yemen was an important trade center for spices and incense (and later on coffee and honey); and the Hadhramaut region played an important role in that trade within Yemen. It’s because of this that Yemeni cuisine is especially fragrant and often spicy.
Because this dish is chock-full of bananas, it also gives you a lot of potassium, which is an important nutrient that is often overlooked. Potassium is important because it functions as an electrolyte that helps regulate your fluid balance, nerve impulses, and muscle contractions. Unfortunately, many people in Yemen today cannot enjoy masoob and other traditional dishes because of the war, humanitarian crisis, and COVID-19 pandemic. People are struggling to survive the fighting and airstrikes, famine, communicable diseases, and now COVID-19. If you can, please donate to help the Yemeni people through UNHR or Yemeni children specifically through UNICEF.
Neither masoob’s delicious flavors nor its health benefits were on my mind when I was translating this recipe: I kept thinking about how mushy it would be when it was finished. My aversion to mushy foods kept nagging me so much that I examined this social, psychological, and physical phenomenon further.
Food aversion is often studied in children because many young children have aversions to certain types of food, but they usually “stop being fussy” by the time they’re five. Children may avoid a certain food because of issues with oral motor skills, which “include the ability to move the jaw to chew effectively, use the tongue to position food on the molar surfaces and place the chewed food in the right spot to swallow.”
According to Linda Bartoshuk, a psychologist and professor of food science and human nutrition, “supertasters, or people born with more tastebuds, may be physiologically more sensitive to a food’s mouthfeel. In the same way that they experience flavors more intensely, so, too, do they experience textures to a greater degree.” Similarly, people with sensory processing disorder (SPD), which affects how a person handles sensations coming from outside the body, can extend to how a person handles food texture.
Another common psychological phenomenon is conditioned taste aversion: when you develop an aversion to a certain food/taste after becoming ill and you avoid it afterwards. I can’t have spaghetti with tomato sauce because of the stomach flu; dried mango because of motion sickness; and milk (even plant-based) by itself because of my lactose intolerance. I’m sure we all have at lest one conditioned taste aversion.
According to Sybil Kapoor, a travel and food writer, cultural/social associations can influence our preferences: “In China and Japan, different textures are valued much more highly than in the West.” Elise Inamine at bon appétit examines why chewiness doesn’t get as much appreciation in the West as it does in East and Southeast Asian countries. On the business side, companies in the processed food industry research food texture extensively to ensure their products are a success; I didn’t know food sensory research was a thing, but apparently it is.
How much saliva we produce while eating has a profound effect on how we perceive food.’ According to Professor Paul Breslin, who studies ‘oral haptics,’ or ‘mouth feel (“the sensation of food or liquid coming into contact with your mouth”), our personal texture preferences are related to how much saliva we produce individually, which is related to genetics.
Whew, sorry for the information overload, but it was all so interesting that I had hard time limiting how much information to share. What tastes or textures do you dislike and why?
Here is how to make this delicious breakfast/dessert (recipe belongs to Mais Khalil [ميس خليل]).
Ingredients
¼ kilo of brown flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A dash of salt
2 tablespoons of oil
100 g of cold water
6 bananas
3 tablespoons of powdered milk, dissolved in a cup of water
1 jar/can of qishta [clotted cream]
A dash of ground cardamom
100 g of honey
Lemon juice
Steps
Sift the flour and baking powder, then add the salt. Add the water and oil, then knead the mixture well until the dough becomes the consistency you want. Let it rest for some time, at least 15 minutes, so that it rises.
Roll out the dough in a circular shape and mix it on medium heat, then let it sit until it cools. Next, cut the dough into squares.
Grab a frying pan and mix the bread, milk, cardamom, a half cup of honey, and 3 bananas together. Cover the frying pan and let it simmer for at least three minutes. Then, add a part of the qishta and stir the ingredients well.
After that, take the remaining bananas and add lemon juice then a bit of honey; mix the ingredients well. Next, add them to the frying pan and mix in the remaining ingredients until the dish becomes well blended.
Now prepare the serving platters: pour the ingredients in them but leave a hole in the center, where you will put the qishta. Garnish with the remaining honey.
This recipe can be served either hot or cold, both taste flavorful and delicious.
Translators’ Discussion
Has anyone ever seen “brown flour” before? I’ve seen whole-wheat flour and white flour, but the recipe literally says “brown flour” (دقيق أسمر), which I’ve researched and learned that there is a difference between brown flour and whole-wheat flour. Any culinary translators care to chime in?
There seems to be a style that over-clarifies fruits and vegetables, at least when it comes to how many there are. I’ve discussed this before about حبات for tomatoes and potatoes and قرن for (chili) peppers, but now I’ve come across ثمرات for bananas. The recipe lists ست ثمرات من الموز (lit. “six fruits of bananas”), which made me wonder if the author meant you should be using 6 hands of bananas (fun fact: a bunch of bananas is called a ‘hand,’ one banana is a ‘finger’), but that seemed like way too much. Can any Arabic speaker shed some light on this tendency?
For Step 2, I had no idea what the author was trying to convey after you roll out the dough, and I would really appreciate it if a native speaker could help me with this one. Here is the original:
نقوم بفرد العجينة بشكل دائري ونقوم بخلطها في درجة حرارة متوسطة ثم نقوم بتركيبها حتى تبرد ونقوم بتقطيعها الى مكعبات