Mansaf is a typical Bedouin dish that comes from Hebron in the West Bank. It is served at large family gatherings, for celebrations or simply to honor special guests. Traditionally it was made with a whole lamb, with the lamb’s head proudly placed in the middle of the dish to indicate that the animal had been slaughtered for the occasion; but nowadays it is more often than not made with a shoulder, leg or shanks. The meat is cooked in a yogurt sauce made with jameed, or dried yogurt. Jameed is how Bedouins preserve the milk from their goats. To make it, the yogurt is drained in cotton sacks to remove the whey and salted every day until it thickens. The sacks are regularly rinsed with water on the outside to get rid of every trace of whey. The strained yogurt is then rolled into balls (either round or with a pointed top) and set to dry in the shade (if dried under direct sun, the jameed will be yellow instead of white) until the balls of jameed are rock hard to the core, after which they are stored away. Jameed is mixed with water to reconstitute it before being used in this dish. You can also make mansaf with fresh yogurt, although the flavor will not be as sour (the fermentation process gives jameed a particular flavor that imparts a faintly sour taste to the lamb as it cooks). I personally use a mixture of jameed for the sour flavor and fresh yogurt for creaminess. I have adapted the recipe below from one I found in a small Arabic cookbook, "The Palestinian Kitchen." In the original recipe, the lamb is cooked in the yogurt-jameed mixture from the outset, but the yogurt can curdle during such long cooking, so I boil the lamb separately, then finish it in the yogurt sauce. While the flavor may not be quite so intense, the consistency of the sauce is creamier. You can also make mansaf with chicken but the dish will not be as celebratory as when made with lamb.