Maqluba: the exotic upside-down rice now in Kuala Lumpur

The past couple of decades has seen Middle Eastern restaurants mushroomed in Malaysia. Before the turn of the century only a handful of places serve Arabic dishes and these names are well known to those who savor the taste from the desert region. Even with such a myriad of Middle Eastern dining places available in the Klang Valley, maqluba is often not listed in the menu whereas this is a very popular dish from where it came from.

I attended high school and university in Canada as a scholarship student back in the 90s. In Hamilton I was very close with many muslims who frequent the mosque especially the Balika families from Lebanon. They often invited me to their houses and brought me around to sight seeing. The elder Balika was a single father and often showed me the preparation of various Middle Eastern dishes. A Syrian refugee, Ali Abassi, was like my big brother and he showed me a slightly different version. We wanted to marry off his sister to me.

When I came back to Malaysia, I met my brother who had been living in Turkey for over a decade. From him I learned maqluba the Turkish way which is slightly different in the spice preparation but still share the same principles that make maqluba a unique dish as it is. Over the next couple of decades the maqluba recipe has been refined to best utilize the ingredients and spices that are available in Malaysia and to the preferred taste of our people. My wife who stayed with local Arabs in their homes during her pilgrimage shared her part of experience in mixing the Middle Eastern spice and the elaborate cooking techniques.

Maqluba is well known in the Middle East especially within the Fertile Crescent surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. I have known the Lebanese, Syrian, Iraq and Turkish version. People in Palestine seem to have great pride in their version as well. The meal is a pot of rice cooked together with meat and vegetable, often brinjal, cauliflower and potato, with selected spices with the most prominent being the Baharat Spice mix. Slight alteration to the mix makes the maqluba more refined as the spices we have in South East Asia give slightly different effect compared to their Middle Eastern counterpart. Therefore we make our own mix to obtain the balance needed such that the taste of meat and vegetable will be optimized.

At Naily Erica Kitchen we do not order ingredients in bulk. Every item to be used in the maqluba is hand-picked to ensure it is fresh and in prime condition. The meat used is cleaned thoroughly and any excess fat is trimmed away to make the dish not only tasty but also healthy. How we prepare your meal is just like how we do when serving our family.

Find us at our facebook Naily Erica Kitchen to get a bite of this otherwise hard-to-get dish. We will share the recipe to make your own maqluba in upcoming post.