The Palestinian upside-down triumph of rice

There are many rice and pilaf recipes in the Levant, most with a selection of warm spices, often with a range of fried vegetables, and almost always with a kind of meat — with chicken or lamb being the most frequent choices.

Maqluba, which literally translates as ‘upside down’, is a Palestinian specialty, loved and cooked all over the Arab world. Of the three rice moulds in this book — the other two being the Iranian tahchin, and the