Awarma

Lamb is diced small or minced, salted, and cooked for hours in its own rendered tail fat without ever coming to a boil. Once it has given up all its water it is packed into jars and sealed under a finger of fat. As long as no air reaches it, the jar keeps for months on a cool dark shelf. The name shares a root with Turkish kavurma. The work is the same work.

Where it sits in the pantry

The winter pantry in Syria is not one jar but a system: kishk, makdous, tomato paste, dried mulukhiyah, pomegranate molasses and awarma. It is laid in through autumn and drawn on all winter. Awarma is the expensive shelf, because what goes into it is meat. So it is measured by the fork tip rather than the spoon.

Where it turns up in winter

A spoonful goes into the morning eggs. Another lands in the middle of a plate of hummus, hot fat and all. It is stirred into kishk soup, melted over fatteh, set beside a bulgur pilaf. It is not a main course. It is a salted keeping-meat that turns everything else on the table into a meat dish.

Is it still made

Refrigeration removed the necessity, and most city households no longer fill jars. In the countryside and the mountain villages the autumn work continues. In town it is bought ready in the market, weighed out by the jar. As a visitor you are unlikely to see the name on a menu, but if a plate tastes unexpectedly deep, this is usually why.