Yemen

A dense, glossy porridge of sorghum or wheat flour stirred and worked over intense heat until it forms a smooth, cohesive, elastic mass, served with spiced meat broth, clarified butter, or honey ladled into a well pressed at its centre.

Festive Yemeni deep-fried leavened dough balls drenched in honey or sugar syrup.

A Yemeni festive bread built from stacked, butter-and-egg-coated paper-thin dough rounds baked together in a circular pan, then flooded with honey the moment they leave the oven.

A Yemeni dish of slow-braised lamb that is shredded into its own deeply spiced broth, served bubbling in a stone or clay pot and crowned tableside with hilbeh — a whipped fenugreek foam.

Fattah is a celebratory layered dish featuring toasted bread, rice, and braised or roasted lamb (or other meat) moistened with a vinegared tomato‑garlic broth.

Whole or large cuts of lamb (or goat/mutton) rubbed with spices and slow-roasted in a sealed underground or tandoor-style pit oven until fall-off-the-bone tender.

A thick savoury porridge of whole wheat and slow-cooked meat, usually lamb, pounded together until the grains and meat meld into a smooth, glutinous mash.

A Yemenite-Jewish rolled, butter-or-fat-laminated dough that is baked slowly overnight until deep brown, traditionally eaten on Shabbat morning with grated tomato, hard-boiled egg and zhug.

A long-grain rice dish slow-cooked by absorption in a spiced meat broth built on dried limes, warm spices, and tomato, finished with the braised meat placed on top and garnished with raisins and toasted nuts.

A lacy, porous, spongy fermented pancake made from sorghum (or teff) batter that is cooked on one side only on a hot griddle, producing a honeycomb-textured surface from fermentation-driven bubbles.

A pan-fried laminated flatbread of Yemenite Jewish origin, flaky and rich, served with honey or zhug.

A Yemeni-Arabian feast dish of whole lamb or chicken slow-cooked by dry radiant heat and aromatic wood smoke inside a sealed underground tandoor (tandir), served atop saffron-and-spice rice that has absorbed the meat's dripping juices throughout cooking.

A Yemeni dish of long-grain rice spiced and tinted with saffron, cooked with the dripping juices of lamb or chicken suspended and smoke-roasted in a tandoor-style underground oven.

A long-simmered bone broth built from lamb or goat on the bone, seasoned with aromatic spices, that forms the liquid backbone of Yemeni and Horn of Africa meals — served as a standalone soup, a bread accompaniment, or a cooking medium for rice.

A thin sheet of stretched dough folded around a savory spiced-meat-and-egg (or sweet banana) filling and pan-fried flat.

Qishr is a traditional Yemeni spiced beverage brewed from dried coffee husks, ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom, served hot.

Saltah is a Yemeni meat broth stew finished with a fenugreek froth and zhug, traditionally served over flatbread.

A cultured, clarified butter — aged and sometimes lightly spiced — used as the primary cooking and finishing fat across the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Middle East.

A Yemeni dish of thin flatbread soaked in a cool, herb-laden spiced buttermilk or yoghurt, eaten as a light savory meal.

A raw Yemeni condiment of pounded fresh chillies, abundant cilantro, garlic, and cardamom bound with olive oil into a coarse, vibrantly green or red paste.