By Badea Abu Al-Naja
Saudi Gazette
THE people of Makkah love taking their traditional dishes such as balila (chickpeas boiled with a variety of spices and sauces) and grilled liver during the holy month of Ramadan.
There several famous cooks who run exclusive balila and liver stalls in Makkah throughout the holy month after inheriting the tradition through generations.
Khalid Yali is one such cook. Yali said he learned the art of preparing delicious balila and grilled liver from his late father, who also taught him how to make sharbet with the juice of grapes, raspberries and blackcurrants, and flavor it with herbs and spices.
“I have been preparing traditional Ramadan dishes for the last nine years. I only work in Ramadan. My father ran the same stand before he died. He passed down this skill to me,” Yali said.
Yali has a health certificate issued by the municipality and his stand is officially licensed by the local authorities. He uses very clean utensils and strictly follow the hygiene rules when preparing dishes because he takes people's health very seriously. This is one of the reasons why many people flock to this stand located in the Al-Shawqiya neighborhood. Yali's stand is 7 kilometers away from his home. He starts work after the Isha prayer and has hundreds of customers until he closes at 3:30 a.m.
“I sell two types of grilled liver: lamb and camel. People like the liver of camel more and prefer to have it between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. every day. People of Makkah love their traditional dishes a lot,” he explained.
A liver dish is sold at SR10 per person while the balila is sold for SR3 and it usually comes with pickles and different sauces. Balila is three riyals and usually comes with pickles and different spices.
Yali works with the same stand his father used to sell the dishes for more than 20 years. "It is still in good condition," he said.
Yali preferred to keep the same stand because he wanted to preserve this beautiful heritage of Makkah. "I take my sons with me to help prepare and serve the dishes to customers because tomorrow they will be the ones carrying this tradition forward," he said.
