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Exotic Ramadan dining
Somewhere between Morocco and Yemen lies the perfect Arabian meal. By Pinaki Chakravarty

It is said that Moroccans living abroad become weepy simply at the mention of tajine. If it is true, they'd probably wail through a dinner at Shahrazad. The stars twinkling above might be electronic pinpoints, but everything else is sheer Moroccan romance. And the tajine is rich enough to evoke the history of its original creators, the Berbers, a pre-Arab nomadic tribe in the Maghreb.

Ours was tajine lamb t'faya, its meat braised with onions, saffron, cinnamon served with honey prunes, boiled eggs and fried almond. The lamb was cooked so well you didn't need a knife, and we sunk into the meat with a fork, dabbing at the thick gravy. The staff is authentically Moroccan too, from the acclaimed chef Mohammed Ettaib from Casablanca to the waiter who might break into French from under his fez.

The crowning glory of the meal might funnily be at its beginning �the freshly made fiery red sauce that you can dip your bread in. Chances are it's hotter than anything else you could find in Muscat. This North African dip would shame most South Asian spiced curries into submission. As theatrical as the deft flick of a Berber blade in the desert, it will also prime you for the next exotically spiced course.

But spice, it seems, is limited to a little saucer at the start. While you expect the food to take off from there, unloading every spice north of the Saharan camel trails on to your plate, it doesn't. Instead, you are left with a lingering sweetness, from the dark depths of the tajine gravy to the soft anonymity of the couscous royal. One didn't necessarily need something with more spice, but it would have been fair to expect something richer.

Instead, you are served something hot, well cooked and mild. This has all the genuine-ness of home cooking, but earthy flavours might be lost on someone dressed up for seven-star luxury. But Moroccan food has never been elitist. Indeed, its most widespread dish is harira, so universally adopted it’s generally considered Arabic rather than specifically Moroccan. While it is served throughout the Middle East, any honest Maghrebian will tell you that it is best had in Morocco.

For the light eater, harira is a meal in itself, for the heavier eater, a wonderful appetiser. Moroccans eat it to break their daily fast after sundown during Ramadan, while some households serve it for breakfast in winter. In summer in Fez, it is served alone for dinner. Residents say that harira soothes the liver and settles the stomach. It is a soup that has many variations. In her exhaustive book on Moroccan cuisine, Les Secrets des Cuisines en Terre Marocaine, Zette Ginaudeau-Franc, the author, offers nine variations but stresses that there are an infinite number of versions of this classic soup.

Harira is a fairly simple soup, especially when compared with other soups and traditional Moroccan dishes, many of which are as elaborate as Chinese or French cooking. Another advantage is that all the ingredients are readily available in most markets around the world. Finally, it takes only about an hour to cook, and requires very little supervision.

One begins by chopping finely and gently and then sautéing one large or two small onions and a cup of chopped celery in a small amount of high quality olive oil in the bottom of a pot. The celery is optional, and most classic recipes do not call for it. After the onions have turned transparent (do not let them turn brown) add a handful of chopped parsley and two to three large tablespoons of tomato paste. Mix this with the onions, celery and oil for about five minutes over low flame, so that an almost pasty mixture emerges.

Then add spices. This is very much a matter of individual taste, but essential spices include two to three large pinches of saffron, salt and pepper. Some recipes call for crushed ginger or lemon rind; some even use a form of piquant paprika (or several drops of Tabasco sauce as a substitute).

To this mixture, two quarts of water should be added and brought to a boil. Bring the mixture to a simmer and add the meat or poultry of your choice, about a pound of small cubes of lamb, beef or chicken. Cook this, gently simmering, for about 45 minutes, until the meat or poultry is thoroughly cooked and tender. Then add fava beans or chickpeas, or both, and lentils (soaking in water beforehand makes them cook much faster) or rice or pasta, and cook until tender. Turn off the heat and beat into this mixture softened butter mixed with an approximately equal amount of flour that gives the soup texture and thickness. Just before serving, finely chopped fresh mint leaves, or dried leaves if fresh ones are unavailable, are sprinkled over the soup.

Moroccans serve the soup with delicious flat bread, with lemon on the side, and harissa, a tomato-based spicy paste with the consistency of tomato paste and the zing of Tabasco. Use it sparingly if you have never tried it before.

Some of Morocco's other specialties are definitely worth trying too. One of their favourites is couscous �a crushed grain �which has as many variations as Moroccans have imagination �and they are a very imaginative people. Another favourite is mechoui, virtually a national dish. It is a whole roast lamb, cooked very slowly over charcoal and basted continually with butter until it is golden brown and almost falls from the bone.

Far away from seven-star luxury and Moroccan dinners, a tiny restaurant in Al Khuwayr will offer you food just as exotic. You will be soaked in the little room as steaming kilos are hauled out of the bowels of Wadi Hadramout, but we guarantee you it's a sight not to be missed at any cost. Sealed underground and cooked over glowing wood, the juices of the meat gradually seep into the rice below. This is mandi, and although this is originally from Shabwa in Yemen, it has been developed and perfected in Jeddah by the local Hadrami community there.

The oven, a one and a half meter deep underground affair, is filled with logs of the wild somor tree. The wood is lit and is left to burn to heat the oven. Meanwhile, the carefully selected lamb meat is prepared in large portions and spiced with salt and saffron. The rice is first cooked aside and brought to a specific degree of preparation. Then comes the placement of the rice and meat. By now, the burning wood has already turned into smaller pieces of charcoal and is lying at the bottom of the oven. The huge rice container is lowered down by three or four men and sits on the glowing wood. Then a net of the smaller meat chunks and chicken pieces is placed on top of the rice dish, and over this comes spears of larger meat pieces, hung over the mouth of the oven. It is then sealed from the top by using wet cloth all around a heavy steel lid. The flames have long gone since there is no more oxygen inside. Only the stored heat in the oven's bottom and surroundings is cooking the food. The rice gets all the dripping juices from the meat on top until the oven contents are ready to be extracted in three or four hours.

When the meat and rice are out, the rice is mixed so as to spread the juices from the top. In addition, don't miss their mathbi, a Yemeni barbeque, madfoun, meat wrapped in foil with potato and buried and madghout, pressure-cooked with rice. To end your meal, try the subtle Yemeni khunafah, made on a specially designed range and then dribbled over with sugar syrup. Wadi Hadramout, like its North African cousin, deserves to be a cross-cultural attraction, an introduction to an unknown land.

Such Middle Eastern flair is also available in a more mainstream package, and you can try it out at the Grand Hyatt Muscat. While they offer an entire range of Middle Eastern cuisine fine tuned for Ramadan, you might want to try their biriyani. The distinct combinations of flavour and the ingredients originally came from India, where it was first introduced by the Persians in the 16th century. Now, Chef Ahmed of the Mokha Café is dabbling with fresh interpretations of such traditional food. Of particular interest will be his acclaimed harees �a vegetarian version that you will not find anywhere else in Oman.

Your choice might stretch from North African shores to the Red Sea, but its all here in Muscat. And Arabian food is at its most celebrated during Ramadan iftar nights.