That Translator Can Cook: Tharid

A lamb and vegetable stew, spiced with cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric, and other various spices, and served over bread.

 Ramadan Kareem everyone! Since the month of Ramadan began a few days ago, I will be featuring some dishes and treats that are normally served during Ramadan. I would gladly eat the stew part, but not the bread; I have a thing about texture. I’m not a fan of most soft, moist foods.

Tharid is said to be Prophet Muhammad’s favorite dish: “…And the superiority of A'ishah [his wife] to other women is like the superiority of tharid to other kinds of food" (Sahih Al Bukhari Volume 7, Book 65, Number 329). It is also said that tharid was a dish made by the Quraysh (a tribe that Prophet Muhammad was born into).

Now, red meat is not very healthy, but the vegetables and spices are. This is a time to celebrate, to break your fast with loved ones, so the most important aspect of this meal is to eat something satisfying and delicious. The meat is tender, the vegetables and broth made flavorful from the spices, and as the bread softens, it becomes tastier and easier to digest.

Here is how to make Prophet Muhammad’s [supposed] favorite dish. The pictures and recipe belong to Doaa.

Ingredients

• 1 kilo of meat (beef or lamb), cut into medium chunks

• 4 carrots, chopped

• 5 zucchinis, chopped

• 4 onions [chopped]

• 4 potatoes, chopped

• 4 tomatoes [diced]

• 2 dried limes

• 2 tablespoons of bezaar spice mix [or whichever spice mix you prefer]

• 1 tablespoon of cinnamon

• 1 teaspoon of turmeric

• 2 chili peppers [diced]

• 2 tablespoons of ground cardamom

• 4 cloves of garlic

• 4 loaves of ragag

Instructions

Put the meat in a pressure cooker or a normal pot and cover it with water. Next, add a little bit of salt and pepper, and let the meat simmer for an hour or an hour and a half until it’s cooked completely. Take the meat out of the pot and set the broth aside.

Put the onions in a pot and add oil. Toss well, then add the garlic, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, peppers, seven-spice, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom, salt, and dried lime. Next, add the meat and stir well. After that, add the zucchinis and stir. Pour the broth over all of it and let it boil until everything is completely cooked.

Put the ragag on a platter and pour a little bit of the broth over it until it becomes soft, then put the vegetables and meat on top of the ragag. It’s now ready to eat, bon appetit!

Translators’ Discussion

1. The ingredients list was a little confusing: most vegetables were listed in the format “[number] قطع [vegetable],” and I wrote them as “[number] [vegetables], chopped” because I felt “5 carrots, chopped” made more sense than “5 pieces of carrots.” It also fit the pictures provided with the recipe. How would you have handled this issue?

2. Now, what was originally written for the chili peppers was قرنان الفلفل الأحمر. I’ve found that in some dialects قرنة means jar, but that doesn’t fit grammatically nor logically. Two jars of chili peppers is a huge amount of chili peppers, even for a big stew like this. One of the meanings of قرن is ‘horn,’ and I thought that a chili pepper looks like a horn, so maybe it was a colloquialism for 2 peppers? I looked up other third recipes; not many even use chili peppers, and when they do, they use only use 2 chili peppers. Can anyone who knows Emirati dialect shed some light on this?

3. The recipe didn’t specify the spice mix, it simply said بهار مخلوط (mixed spices), so I looked up a common spice mix used in the UAE called bezaar. Do any of you (food/cooking translators) have advice or strategies for vague ingredients?