Fahsa (Shredded Lamb Stew with Fenugreek Froth)

Variations

• Saltah: the stew Korean Wikipedia introduces as Yemen's national dish — the same maraq, with the hot relish sahawiq, rice or potato and vegetables, finished under hulba. Fahsa is shredded meat cooked as one thing; saltah gathers several things into the pot.
• With sahawiq: a spoonful of saltah's hot relish on top of the hulba lays a line of heat across the froth.
• With chicken: chicken on the bone instead of lamb cuts the simmer to an hour and gives a lighter broth.
• Yemen's other meat dish here: kabsa calls mandi "The Yemeni cousin" — meat hung in a pit oven and smoked as it cooks, then laid on rice. The same country's meat going to smoke rather than broth.
• Another way with shredded meat: ropa vieja also shreds a long-simmered cut along the grain, then cooks it down again in a sauce until glossy. Fahsa only brings the shredded meat back to the boil under the froth.

Tips

• The foam is put on, not skimmed off. Farinata says of the chickpea foam that rises on its batter, "Skim it off and throw it away." Fenugreek is a legume — Korean Wikipedia files it in the pea family — and its article describes hulba as the ground seed that swells when water is poured on and it is whipped. Here that foam is raised on purpose and becomes the top of the dish. This page does not claim the two foams are the same substance; what differs is which way the cook treats the foam.
• Soak first, whip second. That is the order the encyclopaedia gives: leave the powder in water at room temperature for an hour or two, then whip until it grows in volume and turns paler. Farinata rests its batter four hours for a reason on the same side: "Coarsely milled pulse flour simply takes that long to hydrate." So the whisk waits an hour or two.
• Volume and colour are the signal. Dosa describes a pulse batter holding air: "Its mucilage holds air as a foam". Hulba, too, grows and pales as you whip it. Dosa keeps that air inside a batter and ferments it; here the air is the part you eat.
• The fenugreek is dosa's fenugreek. It is the same seed dosa soaks — "Soak the rice with the fenugreek" — ground to a powder. Indian grocers sell it as methi powder. The kasuri methi in butter chicken is the dried leaf of the same plant and will not do.
• Hulba goes on last. Korean Wikipedia says of fahsa that the spices and the hulba are added after the cooking. Spread it on once the meat is done and the stone pot is boiling, and a minute is enough.
• The pot reaches the table boiling. Heat control says the ttukbaegi is "slow to heat and slow to let go, which is why that stew is still boiling when it reaches the table". Yemen's stone pot does the same job. In a thin pan the bubbling stops before it reaches the table.