This is a beautiful dish with colorful layers of meat, vegetables, and rice. My mother-in-law made it for dinner a few nights ago and I was inspired to try it myself. It may look complicated, but if you can make biryani or arroz con pollo, you can make Makloobah!

“Makloobah” means “upside down” in Arabic – the dish is so named because you cook everything separately, then layer the ingredients into a large pot, then flip it upside down to serve.

Recipe after the link.

Ingredients
1 large or 2 small eggplant
1 medium cauliflower
1 large bag of frozen chopped spinach
1 whole chicken, cut into parts
2 cups of rice
4 cups chicken stock (or beef stock if you want to make this dish with beef, lamb, or goat)
garlic
onions
cumin
cayenne
salt
pepper
olive oil

Preparation

Step 1: Make the vegetables

Slice the eggplant into quarter inch slices and salt the slices on both sides. Let them sit in a strainer for an hour or so. Place on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray and spray the top of the slices with cooking spray. Bake in the oven at 450 for about 10 or 15 minutes until they’re pretty much cooked through, then broil on high on both sides until brown. Before you do this, you can sprinkle with paprika or cayenne for some color and flavor.

Cut the cauliflower into florets. Roast with some crushed garlic, salt, and pepper at 450 F for about 30 minutes until tender but not mushy.

Microwave the spinach a little to defrost it and squeeze out the extra moisture. Sautee with garlic, salt, and pepper. Pour a little chicken broth into it, about a half cup (or more if needed). The spinach will absorb some of it – put in enough to make it kind of come together. Not enough to be soupy, just soft.

Step 2: Make the chicken

In a large pot, heat some olive oil and sweat some onions and garlic (or use a few tablespoons of pureed onions and minced garlic). When soft, mix in at least a heaping teaspoon of powdered cumin and a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste. Mix until combined together.

Place the chicken pieces into the pot and mix to get the tomato-onion-garlic mixture to coat. Sear the chicken, then lower the heat and cover, letting the chicken cook. It’ll make its own sauce this way. Salt and pepper to taste.

Step 3: Make the rice

Wash two or three cups of rice with water. For two cups of rice, mix together one and a half cup of chicken stock and one cup of tomato sauce. Add a little more stock if this mixture looks to thick to cook rice. Cook the tomato rice mixture in a rice cooker or a pot as you normally would. You can also just use stock instead of mixing in tomato sauce. I also had some leftover chickpeas that I mixed into the rice before cooking. Put more liquid if you think it needs more – the rice should be a liiiitle bit softer than normal so that when you press it together it will keep its shape.

Step 4: Assemble

In a large round oven-safe pot, place the chicken and any of the sauce down first. Then, lay down the slices of eggplant to create as much of a cover as much as possible. Layer slices of tomato next, then the cauliflower florets, and then the spinach. (I forgot to put the tomato and had to put it in after a layer of rice. Still turned out fine). Press down to make everything stick together, but not too much so as not to break the cauliflower florets. Add about a third or half of the cooked rice. Press down to meld everything together. Add the rest of the rice and press down again.

Place this pot in a 250 or 300 oven for about half an hour to an hour. Make a salad.

Step 5: Serve and Eat!

Fry some almonds and/or pine nuts in olive oil until light brown and crunchy.

Very, very carefully, place a large platter or a bowl with a relatively flat bowl on top of the pot. Holding the pot from both sides, flip it over onto the platter. Slowly lift off the pot. Ta dah! Look at all the beautiful layers! Sprinkle the fried nuts on top and serve with yogurt, salad, and a fresh tomato relish. It looks pretty solid and keeps its shape when you serve it, but once you attack it with a spoon to serve it, your portion just falls apart in your plate like rice with chicken and vegetables.

Okay, so it fell apart a *little* while I was taking pictures – but look at the color on that chicken!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 10:26 pm . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.