Lynn Strong

As part of my quest to make recipe post with history notes available for all the book recipes, here’s another from the Chai and Cat-tales collection.

This one is everything from historical to modern. Zulabiyya is one of the recipes that has the “peanut butter and jelly” problem, in that everyone assumes everyone knows how to make it so they describe it as already understood. You get consistency directions in tenth-century cookbooks that assume you already know what “the texture of zulabiyya batter” is when it’s used as a reference point for some other recipe.

Apparently the taste for sweet fried yeast-fluffy dough drenched in even more sweet stuff is pretty long-standing, too. Zulabiyya / zalabiya have direct connections with jalebi, zlabiya, mushabbak, and (probably) funnel cakes.

In Daniel Newman’s translation of Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa, the recipe for Cairene qahiriyya is described as applying zulabiyya batter over a sun-dried almond pastry ring and then deep frying the whole thing. I have dreams of someday being functional enough to try that one out. In the meantime, though, simple is helpful when cooking while disabled.

Zulabiyya generally come in three shapes depending on the region and the chef’s tradition. Some of them are lattice-style, some are little round balls, and some of them are pillowy beignet-shaped bites of deliciousness. (The featured image here looks like it contains both the beignet-type and the funnel-cake-type variations on zulabiyya, so I was happy to find Raju Alam’s photo.)

Old school:

If you’d like a look at the historic version, Daniel Newman shows a video of himself making yeast-leavened and saffron-dyed zulabiyya on the Durham University YouTube channel.

Simpler version, pillow style:

My mother made a fast no-rise variation that’s similar to the Egyptian beignet-like fluffy pillow style, when we were young and she was busy and premade yeast dough was a time-saver:

She’d buy ready-made yeast biscuits in a tube, snip them into quarters, and deep-fry them while simmering up the hot sugar syrup to dunk them in.

Simpler version, lattice/funnel cake style:

If you’d like to make your own but don’t feel confident with yeast, a box of pancake mix (mixed to a suitable consistency with water; leave aside the eggs and oil) will get you a self-rising sweet dough that responds nicely to frying. You could add almond extract, rosewater, orange blossom water, or anything else that pleases you before you cook it.

If you feel like saffron, grind it up with a teaspoon of sugar before stirring it into the batter; it will distribute more thoroughly that way.

For the latticed version, you’ll want to make the batter a bit thinner than for the pillow version. If you have a coconut shell handy, it provides both measurement and drizzling. (Funnels are fine too, of course!)

For the ball or pillow version, you’ll want it a bit thicker and something like a scoop or ladle to measure dollops into the oil with.

Once they’ve fried golden brown, fetch them out with a slotted spoon and set on wire racks or paper towels to drain until you’re ready for the sugar syrup.

Sugar syrup:

You can use half and half sugar and water, or you can heat up honey until it’s thin enough to drizzle.

(A splash of rosewater and a pinch of cardamom in the syrup makes it even more delicious in my book.)