“Unwinding”

Recipes are for 2 full portions or 15 bite-size servings

Ingredients:

• 14 ounces barley seeds
• ¾ cup warm water
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ ounce kurrāth or spring onion
• ¼ ounce cilantro
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3½ ounces leeks
• 2 tablespoons oil of untoasted sesame
• 6 ¼ cups water
• ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

For making the sourdough bread (bappiru ‘beer-bread’):

1. Wash the seeds and soak them in water overnight. Dry them, toast them lightly, and then grind them into flour.
2. Make the flour into dough by adding warm water. Let it ferment slowly for about 12 hours in the refrigerator.
3. Shape dough into clumps, sprinkle them with salt, and bake them in a medium-hot oven (375ºF) for about 20 minutes, or until they are done. Let the bread cool completely and then coarsely crush it.

For making the broth:

1. Chop kurrāth or spring onion and cilantro, and set aside.
2. Pound the garlic and leeks together into paste using a mortar.
3. Heat the sesame oil in a pot and add the mashed garlic and leeks, stirring constantly, until they start to produce a pleasant aroma, a few minutes.
4. Add water and salt, stir the pot, and let it simmer gently for about an hour. About 15 minutes before the pot is done, stir in the set-aside chopped leeks and cilantro.
5. Just before removing the pot from the fire, scatter the crushed bread all over the stew, give it a gentle stir, and then serve it.

_{Recipes by Gojko Barjamovic and Nawal Nashrallah from Yale University Babylonian Collection – Babylonian Cooking}