Kuindiong (Dinka Sweetened Semolina)

Kuindiong is semolina cooked with water, yoghurt, milk and sugar into a thick sweet porridge, served under miok, butter and yoghurt cooked together until they separate. It is a Dinka dish, made in South Sudan and southern Sudan, and it is served to welcome guests. The miok is the part worth paying attention to, because it is a technique rather than a topping. Butter and yoghurt cooked together and stirred constantly eventually break: the fat separates from the milk solids, and those solids brown into pale golden granules. What you pour over the semolina is browned butter with toasted dairy solids suspended in it, which is why it tastes nutty rather than simply of butter. Twenty minutes of constant stirring is what it takes, and taking it off the heat at the right moment, as soon as the granules turn a pale nutty colour, is the whole skill. The Dinka are a cattle-keeping people, and the quantity of dairy in this dish reflects that directly. Over a kilo of yoghurt and half a kilo of butter between the two components is a lot by most standards and entirely unremarkable in that context. The source appears to come from an Australian publication, its notes reference Australian cup measures, which is worth recording.