Madeeda Hilba (Sudani Fenugreek Porridge)
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Overview
Madeeda hilba is a Sudanese fenugreek porridge, thick enough to set like custard, sweetened and enriched with milk. Its name is Arabic: madeeda for the porridge, hilba for the fenugreek that defines it. Its place in the Sudanese year is Ramadan, when it is served as a dessert after the fast is broken. A thick, sweet, milk based dish at the end of a day without food is a specific piece of practical wisdom, and madeeda hilba is one of a small number of dishes that appear on Sudanese tables in that month and rarely outside it. Fenugreek carries a second role. Sudanese households hold that it eases aches and settles the stomach, and the porridge is made for kerijo, the term for a woman who has recently given birth, on the understanding that it supports milk production. That the same dish serves both the Ramadan table and the postpartum household is not a coincidence: fenugreek's association with nursing mothers runs across North and East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and South Asia, wherever the seed is used in cooking. Madeeda hilba is what Sudan does with it.
AFN Heritage Note
Fenugreek is used across North and East Africa, the Arabian peninsula and South Asia as both a culinary and a postpartum ingredient, and in Sudan it is prepared as madeeda hilba, served during Ramadan and made for women after childbirth. Its earliest documented date in Sudanese cooking is uncertain.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Pour the oil into a heavy pan. When it is hot, add the fenugreek seeds and fry for a couple of minutes.
- 2
Add 3 cups of water and the salt, and cook on low to medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, until the fenugreek is well cooked.
- 3
Add the milk. When it is hot, add the sugar and stir until it dissolves.
- 4
Meanwhile, whisk the wheat flour with 2 cups of water in a separate bowl until the mixture is free of lumps.
- 5
Add the flour mixture to the pan, stirring continuously to keep lumps from forming.
- 6
Dissolve the baking soda in the remaining 1/3 cup of water, strain it, and add it to the pan. Keep stirring for a few minutes. This deepens the colour and keeps the porridge soft as it sits.
- 7
When the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and has reached the right consistency, take it off the heat and pour it into moulds.
- 8
Serve warm or chilled.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Nympha Nzeribe- Soak the fenugreek seeds for an hour and drain them before use if you want to shorten the cooking time.
- Whisk the flour into cold water separately before it goes anywhere near the hot pan. Flour added dry to hot liquid will lump immediately and the lumps will not come out.
- The stirring is continuous from the point the flour goes in until the porridge leaves the sides of the pan. This is not a dish you can walk away from.
- Fenugreek turns bitter if fried too hard. Two minutes in hot oil is enough to release the aroma; take it further and the bitterness will carry through the whole pot.
- It sets firmer as it cools. Pour it into moulds while it is still fluid, and judge the final texture cold rather than hot.
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