Luqaimat: Crisp Emirati Dumplings Under Cold Date Syrup

There is a specific sound a good luqaimat makes when you bite it, a dry crack before the give, and it lasts about four minutes after the syrup goes on. That short window is the whole craft.

Luqaimat means "small bites". They are the dessert of the Gulf iftar table, present at almost every Ramadan gathering in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, and at cultural festivals year round. The lineage runs a long way back: in medieval Baghdad a very similar fritter was known as luqmat al qadi, the judge's mouthful, and it was served at the caliph's table.

The batter is nothing much on paper, flour, yeast, sugar, water, scented with cardamom and saffron, and most versions agree on that much. What turns it into something worth queueing for is fermentation, oil temperature and a piece of counterintuitive advice about the syrup that most recipes skip.

Ingredients

Makes about 40 dumplings, serving 6. About 2 hours, of which 90 minutes is the batter proving untouched.

• 250 g plain flour
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 1 1/2 tsp instant dried yeast
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
• A generous pinch of saffron threads, crushed and soaked in 1 tbsp warm water
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric, for colour (optional)
• 300 ml warm water, around 40C
• Sunflower or another neutral oil, for deep frying
• 250 ml date syrup (dibs), well chilled
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted, to finish (optional)

Method

1. Whisk the flour, cornflour, yeast, sugar, salt, cardamom and turmeric together in a large bowl. Add the saffron with its soaking water.
2. Pour in the warm water and whisk until you have a smooth batter with no lumps. It should be thicker than pancake batter and looser than a dough, roughly the consistency of double cream. Add water a tablespoon at a time if it is stiff.
3. Cover the bowl and leave somewhere warm for 90 minutes, until visibly doubled and covered in bubbles across the surface. Do not rush this. Under-proved batter fries dense, and dense luqaimat are just doughnuts.
4. Chill the date syrup properly in the fridge while the batter proves. This is the step that matters most and the one most often ignored.
5. Heat 8 cm of oil in a deep pan to 170C. Use a thermometer if you have one. Too hot and the outside sets before the inside cooks, leaving a raw centre; too cool and they drink oil and go heavy.
6. Do not stir the batter down. Wet one hand and a teaspoon in cold water. Scoop a rounded teaspoon of batter and drop it gently into the oil. Work in batches of 8 to 10 so the oil temperature holds.
7. Fry for 4 to 5 minutes, turning them with a slotted spoon so they colour evenly. They will bob and turn themselves as they puff. Take them out when they are a deep even amber, not pale gold. Pale luqaimat go soft within a minute.
8. Drain briefly on a wire rack, not on kitchen paper, so steam escapes from underneath and the base stays crisp.
9. While the dumplings are still hot, pour the cold date syrup over them, or dip them and lift them straight out.
10. Scatter with toasted sesame seeds and serve immediately, with Arabic coffee if you are doing it properly.

Why the syrup has to be cold

This is the one piece of technique that separates a good plate from a soggy one, and it is a matter of physics rather than tradition.