Mutabbaleh (coastal wheat and yoghurt)

Mutabbaleh is the cold summer plate of the villages on the Syrian coast: wheat is boiled in water until soft, mixed with homemade yoghurt, chilled and eaten cold. In the Baniyas and Tartus countryside it comes to the table in the midday heat. It is also the food carried out to people working the fields on threshing and garlic-harvest days. The name sounds like the aubergine dip mutabbal, but the two have nothing to do with each other.

How the wheat is prepared

At threshing time the wheat is used fresh, still in its husk. In the old method the grain is soaked lightly and pounded with a stone pestle in a stone mortar, a jurn of 50 by 50 centimetres, until the husk splits. It is turned by hand every twelve strokes, then spread out in the sun. Homes today also use wheat that is already hulled.

How it is made

The yoghurt is set at home three days ahead. The wheat is boiled in water over a wood fire until soft. When the yoghurt goes in depends on the house. In a recipe from the Baniyas villages the wheat cools first. A recent home recipe adds the yoghurt while the grain is still hot, so that it does not turn sour. The mixture is chilled for 3 to 24 hours. Some homes add crushed garlic and tomato. One measured home recipe uses half a kilo of hulled wheat, half a bowl of chickpeas and three kilos of yoghurt.

When it is eaten

In summer, in the heat of midday. At the threshing floor, yoghurt is stirred into freshly pounded wheat and handed cold to the threshers; at garlic harvest it is the food taken out to the field. Older homes keep it in a jame, an earthenware pot set aside only for soup, milk, yoghurt and mutabbaleh.

How it differs from mehîr

The family likeness is plain: both are wheat and yoghurt. The method runs the other way. In mehîr from Qamishli the wheat cooks in the ayran itself. In mutabbaleh the wheat cooks in water and rests, the yoghurt goes in afterwards, uncooked, and the dish is eaten cold. One is a Kurdish winter and Ramadan dish; the other is summer field food on the coast.