Balah el-Sham

The name comes from the shape: balah means date, and the pastry is the size and form of one. Dough made with yoghurt or milk, starch and flour is piped through a ridged nozzle into hot oil in short fingers. Once fried it goes straight, still hot, into cold qatr — crisp on the outside, hollow and full of syrup inside.

What makes it crisp

The gap between two temperatures. Hot dough meeting cold syrup sugars on the outside without drawing the syrup in. If the syrup is warm the dough soaks it up and the sweet turns heavy, which is the same reason a tray left standing for hours goes soft.

Ramadan and the street

It is counted as Damascene, and it is one of the fixed sweets of the iftar table. During Ramadan the pan comes out in front of the sweet shops, the piping bag works directly over the oil, and it is sold by weight. You find it the rest of the year too, but the crowd is there.

The same sweet, other names

It travels the region under several names, so most visitors meet something they already know:

• Turkey — tulumba
• Iran — bamieh
• Iraq — datli

How it is eaten

Hot, where it was fried. Sold by the bowl or by weight, and buying a little makes sense because it softens within hours. Plain coffee or tea goes beside it.