Banana judhaba (جوذابة)

This highly popular delicacy (also known as judhab), is a drip pudding; a chicken is roasted above a kind of bread pudding made by layering flatbread and, in this case, bananas (though other fruit, such as dates or apricots, was used as well). The juices of the chicken suffuse the pudding and keep it wonderfully moist. It was usually served with pieces of chicken on top of the pudding, but you can also simply have parts on the side. This particular variety is said to have been the creation of the third Abbasid caliph Ibrahim al-Mahdi (779-839), a renowned gourmet (and author of a cookery book), as well as a gifted poet and singer. In the course of its history, the dish underwent a number of transformations (in Muslim Spain, for instance, it referred to layered waffles and nuts stuffed with chicken) before disappearing from the Arab culinary repertoire altogether.

Chicken cooking in the oven over the bread pudding.

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