Kawari (Sheep's Hooves Stew)

Kawari is Sudanese hooves soup, and it belongs to the family of dishes built on the parts of an animal that carry no muscle at all. Sheep or cattle hooves are cleaned and cooked for hours until the collagen breaks down and the broth turns thick and gelatinous, which is the whole reason the dish exists. It is spiced in a way that places it squarely in the northeast of the continent. Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, coriander, black pepper, ginger and garlic together are a Red Sea and Nile valley combination, and vinegar goes in to cut the richness. That combination reaches across the region: Egyptian kawaree uses calf feet with turmeric, Moroccan hergma uses ginger and paprika, and Turkish paça uses beans. All are the same idea handled by different kitchens. It is regarded in Sudan as a dish worth taking seriously, and the source that carries this recipe calls it the country's most popular soup. Like most long cooked offal dishes it splits opinion, and like most of them it is cheap, which is not incidental. A cut that takes six hours and yields a thick broth from almost nothing is a dish built by households that could not waste an animal.