Me-ne Me-nena

Forget Mahna Mahna by the Muppets, I bring you Me-ne Me-nena by a Muppet.

Menena, in Arabic Ma’amoul, are datey or walnuty cookies come crumbly shortcrust pastry pies. You can also make them with a crushed pistachio filling- the luxury option.

As I write Youtube has segued from Mahna Mahna to the Muppets’ Bohemian Rhapsody. I’m not going to share the link, Sunday is not a good day to take down musical icons.

Back to the Menena: the pastry dough is made with an entire packet of butter, flour, and not much sugar at all. This makes sense because the crushed walnut filling has sugar in it and the whizzed up date filling is naturally sweet. The key ingredient in the dough is the rose water, a tablespoon of it, which sounds a lot, and is. When you eat it, it works, but the initial smell is quite….bath salty. Emily walked into the kitchen when I’d taken them out of the oven and wondered if someone had spilt a cleaning product everywhere. I hasten to add we don’t usually have rose scented cleaning products lying around, we are not a hammam, though the kitchen can get a bit steamy. But you know what they say, if you can’t stand the heat, open a window.

The fillings are easy, crushed walnuts (the food processor did the crushing for me) mixed with sugar and cinnamon, and then a date paste alternative, which is just pitted dates blended in the processor with some water.

Less easy was the assembly. You start with a walnut sized piece of dough. Next time I make them I’m going to buy a walnut for comparison because as ever, I really struggled with the size. You press your thumb into it and then work it as if you were making a clay pot. Move over Demi Moore. You fill each pot three quarters and then seal them up and roll them into a ball. I couldn’t get the date filling to stop oozing out. This meant that when it came to decorating the cookies before they went in the oven- you can prick them with a fork or use special pincers- I had to abandon that step. It felt like puncturing the balls and giving the date more of an excuse to escape wasn’t a great plan.

As for the special pincers, Claudia Roden explains that for years her mother looked for the exact ones with which to make a little design on top and in the end found somebody to make one for her. I am going to search, sadly I don’t know anyone who could make one for me…..yet…..because you never know what pincer movers and casters are going to come into your life.

Claudia says the cookies should then go on a lowish heat 160 degrees for 20-30 minutes. The trick apparently is to cook them until they don’t go brown. This reminds me a bit of my mother’s route when she used to drive me to university. She’d been reliably informed by someone that the best way was to aim for the Blackwall Tunnel and then at the last moment miss it. I grew to love the Blackwall Tunnel.

The good news is that if you do the menena equivalent of going through the tunnel and slightly browning the pastry, you can dust the whole lot with icing sugar.

I’m going to finish on a serious note, which might sit ill with the jocular start. Menena/Ma’amoul have links to four religious festivals: Some Jews make them for Purim, Greek Orthodox Christians make them for Easter, Muslims make them during Eid al-Fitr, and Muslims and Druze enjoy them for Eid al-Adha.

The serious note is this BBC article I read just last night (two days after making the menena) ‘Lebanon Easter biscuit woes symbolise crumbling economy.’ I’m not sure that ‘biscuit woes’ in the headline does justice to the difficulties the Lebanese are facing. The final sentence of the article however does, “Many families this year aren’t able to make any.” I count myself extremely lucky that I am.