I am soon to discover some of the specialities such as saltah of the Yemeni cuisine, and the numerous varieties of their bread. I’m only wondering whether there is any kind of quark, or curd cheese available in Yemen? And if that is the case, how is it called? Being much less carnivorous than the average person, I have developed a long lasting relationship with quark that is usually very rich in protein. Soon an entire (and holy) month without it might be avoided if I managed to get hold of some of this white stuff!

There are plenty of harira recipies out there but here’s one that I use, courtesy of M, who nowadays may be smoking ergileh as a dessert after each harira meal. This is one of my favorite dishes ever and I usually make it quite thick and leave the lamb meat out. Originally harira is a Moroccan dish and it is often served during the holy month of Ramadan to break the fast, or in other special occasions too. This year I’ll be in Sana during the Ramadan so I’ll possibly make a Yemenite version of the soup with whatever ingredients I’ll be able to find.

Here’s more or less what you need:

- 100g chickpeas and 100 g lentils

- 1 white onion, 10 tomatoes, celery (4 to 5 sticks) and one whole parsley

- 1 teaspoon turmeric and 1teaspoon (or more!) cinnamon

- coriander, pepper, fresh mint and fresh lemon juice, Garam Masala, (salt)

- 1 bouillon cube and ½ liter water

1. Stir the onion-cinnamon-celeri mix for a little while

2. Add parsley and turmeric and stir a little more (10 minutes or so)

3. Add the tomatoes and coriander and stir for five more minutes

4. Add bouillon and pepper (and salt if you like) and let everything simmer for about 1 hour

5. Some 10 minutes before serving add the chick peas (cooked) and lentils and half a lemon and some fresh mint. Voilà!  

If I have fresh coffee - and dark chocolate - in front of me, nothing can upset me, not even the fact that my blog template had once again messed up my widgets and I had to switch back to my softer looking template. When I say fresh coffee I mean really fresh. I love the home roasting thing because of the aroma that it spreads around the apartment. The whole process from washing the green beans to listening to their cracking in the pan and finally sipping a cup or two (or three if you are in Ethiopia) is about switching yourself into “coffee mood”. So here I am having a little break from squeezing all our belongings into cardborad boxes.. The landlord is here any minute now to show the apartment, maybe the coffee aroma will do the trick and the potential tenants will be charmed to make a decision on the spot!

I plan to go to Yemen later in the summer and of course I will bring back coffee as much as I can carry and afford. I Just noticed while surfing that there is a Syrian coffee seller whose products include bottled coffee called Bunna Al-Hamwi. This somewhat obcene idea is against all my principles, though I admit a bottle of coffee may indeed come handy in exceptional circumstances. I only wonder what the taste is like.. 

Tante Astou, one of Cheikh Aliou Ndao’s female characters, got sacked from the Koranic school - daara - because she had an attitude. She wanted to understand the verses written in Arabic in her wooden tablet, instead of only reciting and memorizing them, and she also refused to accept the occasional physical punishments by the Marabout. Way to go Astou!

I wanted to add here a clip of the Arabic version of the children’s ABC song called Alif-Baa-Taa but unfortunately it is missing from my archives.  I may have deleted it in my yesterday’s ardour before formatting my laptop. I never really learnt to sing this song myself but I remember it had a funny, somehow nationalist, echo in it. If you know more about the background of this song I would appreciate if you could share it with us all - many thanks in advance!

It was not a Sheherazadean encounter by any standard, rather it was closer to Ionesco and his absurd theatre and yet pure arabica: I had my first dream last night where I had a proper conversation in Arabic. In this dream I was somewhere in the Middle East I guess, it looked very much like the Damascene neighbourhood called Rukn el-Diin, where I studied Arabic in a mosque for a little while. I also had lots of shawarmas there, hence the dream: I meet with an ambulant hot dog seller (!) and I buy one hod dog from her. I am eager to have a bite but I can only keep staring at the hod dog in my hand because we are exchanging so much information on who we are and what we do, it’s almost the model example of a study book dialogue… I know that there can’t be that many women in Syria who work as ambulant hot dog sellers and also this one turns out to be a Spanish language student, who had studied Arabic in Aix-en-Provence. Then I woke up too early to find out more… and hungry I was!