Khmei’a

Khmei’a is a winter dish from the Arab villages of the Jazira and the Euphrates countryside. Saj or clay-oven bread is broken into small pieces, then melted Arab ghee and hot milk are poured over it. Sometimes it is sweetened with sugar; in some places tea replaces the milk.

When it is eaten

At breakfast and on winter evenings. It also comes to the table in Ramadan: when Qamishli’s popular Ramadan dishes are listed, khmei’a, made from ghee, milk and bread, is among them. In Syria it is tied to the countryside of Hasakah, Qamishli and Deir ez-Zor. It is also known in southern Iraq and northern Saudi Arabia.

How it differs from hnaini and fatteh

Hnaini, from the Euphrates basin, also uses ghee, but its base is dates; khmei’a has no dates, only bread. It shares bread with the fatteh of Damascus, but fatteh has yoghurt and chickpeas. Khmei’a is milky and rich with fat.

Where to find it

It is a village house dish, not a restaurant one. In the Jazira countryside you are unlikely to see it without sitting down to a breakfast or a winter meal. It is recorded in collections on the Arab heritage of the Jazira, but the sources give no measurements: the ingredients are bread, ghee and milk.