Awameh

A slack yeasted batter: flour, water, yeast and a little starch. The cook squeezes it up through his fist, cuts it off with a spoon and drops it into hot oil; the balls turn themselves as they fry and come out on a skimmer once they are gold. Then straight into cold syrup. The whole trick lives in the gap between those two temperatures.

Where the crunch comes from

Hot dough meeting cold syrup takes on a sugar shell without drinking the syrup in, so the crust stays brittle and the inside stays soft. Warm syrup is absorbed instead and the sweet turns heavy. Awameh left standing on the counter goes spongy for the same reason, which is why you buy a few and eat them there.

The name and the age of it

Syrians say awameh; the Gulf says luqaimat. The same sweet was described in the 13th century by the Baghdadi writer as luqmat al-qadi, the judge’s morsel, and the Turkish lokma keeps that older name. Close to a thousand years, and still sold the same way.

Where to eat it

At sweet shops, and at street pans during Ramadan, where the crowd around the oil thickens after iftar. It is sold by the bowl or by weight. You can ask for sesame or cinnamon over it, and some places add crushed pistachio.