Name: Stew of Chickpeas and Diced Meat (Margat Qeema)
Yield: Makes 4 servings
Cuisine: Iraqi
Ingredients: 3 heaped tablespoons (one 6 oz/175 g can) tomato paste diluted in 4 cups (950 ml) hot water or one 15 oz/425 g can tomato sauce diluted in 3½ cups (860 ml) hot water; ¾ cup (4½ oz/130 g) bite-size prunes, halved; 1 lb (450 g) of trimmed boneless lamb or beef, diced qeema-style, i.e. into ¼in/6mm cubes (1 lb lean ground/minced meat may be substituted); 3 cloves garlic, grated; 1½ cups (12 oz/340 g) split chickpeas, washed, and cooked in enough water to cover until they start to soften (about 15 minutes); 1 teaspoon turmeric; 2 tablespoons oil; ¼ teaspoon chili, or to taste; 1 teaspoon honey; 2 teaspoons prepared noomi Basra; ½ teaspoon ground coriander; 2 medium onions (about 9 oz/250 g), finely sliced; 1½ teaspoons salt; 1 teaspoon cumin; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ½ teaspoon ginger

Preparation info

Makes
4
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Delights from the Garden of Eden

By Nawal Nasrallah

Published 2019

About

A simple and versatile marga steeped in religious traditions. It derives its name from the way the meat is prepared. Qeema means ‘meat cut up into small pieces’. The term is used in al-Warraq’s thirteenth-century augmented version (Istanbul MS, fol. 268v). The word carried the same sense in the late-fifteenth-century cookbook Ni’matnama written in Urdu, as it still does in Iraq. Interestingly, the word found its way into the Greek cuisine, as in the dish macaronia me