Cuisine

Saudi Arabian

Kabsa is a pot of rice and meat designed to be shared from the centre of the table. Chicken or lamb is cooked with tomato, onion and a warm spice mix — cardamom, cinnamon, clove, black lime, sometimes saffron — then the rice is cooked in that liquid so every grain is stained and scented. Raisins, toasted nuts and a fresh tomato salsa (daqqus) often sit on top or beside. The meat should be tender enough to pull. This is hospitality rice, not a side. Mandi and mathbi are related Peninsula grilled-or-smoked rice plates with different fire and fat.

Rice-and-meat hospitality on the Arabian Peninsula absorbed spices from Indian Ocean trade and tomato from the New World. Kabsa as a named Saudi everyday-and-guest dish is home cooking that restaurants standardised. Bedouin fire cooking and Hejazi and Najdi city pots do not taste identical. The dish overlaps Gulf and Yemeni rice plates. It is not Levantine mezze and not a biryani with the name swapped, even when the spice list looks familiar. Dates, yoghurt and flatbreads sit around the rice. The catalog's single plate is the rice pot, not the whole of Saudi cooking.

Whole spices are bloomed in oil with onion before tomato and meat. The rice must drink the stock without going sludgy. Black lime (loomi) adds a sour funk that generic garam masala will not. Nuts and raisins are a finish, not the main sweetness. Kabsa is eaten with the right hand, rice packed into a bite with meat.