This Middle East one-pot wonder’s secret? It’s served upside down

The dish

Maqluba, the Levant

Maalouba (a variant in spelling) at Cairo Takeaway in Enmore.Credit: Jennifer Soo

Plate up

You will notice something above: there’s no country that the dish maqluba is attributed to, but rather a vast swathe of the world, the Levant. This area takes in the likes of Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, a region of shared culinary history, where the exact origins of certain dishes are impossible to untangle – and indeed, many foods date back to times before these modern borders existed.

We will get to the assumed history in a second. First though, the dish itself, that has a name meaning “upside down” in Arabic. This is a classic and much-loved rice pilaf, a little like an Indian biryani in that it’s a one-pot wonder of meat, vegetables and spices. The difference is that the bottom of the maqluba pot is layered with eggplant slices, and at the end of cooking the dish is flipped upside down, revealing that delicious cap of soft, flavour-rich vegetables. It’s beautiful to look at and even better to eat.

First serve

As fair warning, we don’t really know when and where and even how maqluba was invented. It’s probably one of those things that was never actually invented, but which gradually morphed over decades and centuries into a form that was recognisable as maqluba. Some will tell you it was so named by Saladin, the Ayyubid conqueror, upon his capture of Jerusalem in 1187. Others point out the first recorded mention of the dish is in a 13th-century cookbook published in what was then the Abbasid Empire. Still more claim it was conjured by a Syrian cook trying to impress a dignitary. Regardless, this is a dish with a long history and plenty of modern passion.

Order there

Maqluba is typically eaten at home in the Levant, so one of the best ways to sample it is by taking a cooking class with locals. Try Beit Sitti in Amman, Jordan.

Order here

In Sydney, check out the maalouba (a variant in spelling) at Cairo Takeaway in Enmore. Melburnians should head directly to Jordanian eatery Arabesque in the CBD.

One more thing

The spices used for maqluba will always differ a little from household to household. What you’re most likely to find, however, is a mix of cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, turmeric, salt and pepper.