Hitting the sweet spot: Beirut family keeps up pudding tradition

AFP English

At a shop nestled in a busy, crowded Beirut district, Hasan El-Makary is weighing out containers of warm, fragrant mufataka, a traditional sweet in the Lebanese capital that is rarely found in stores. A kind of rice pudding made with turmeric, tahini sesame paste, sugar and pine nuts, mufataka is traditional in Beirut but less known even outside the city. The shop used to sell other desserts but now only sells mufataka, because it is so popular with customers who cannot make it at home. Hasan El-Makary's son, Samir, now owns a dessert shop too, where he also makes mufataka.

Transcript

00:00It's been 50 years here, but we've been in this business for 30 years.

00:22We used to make sweets, but we've been in this business for 30 years.

00:28We've been in this business for 30 years, but we've been in this business for 30 years.

00:36I started making sweets for my children.

00:46I used to make sweets for my mother, but now I'm too old to make sweets.

00:55This is from Beirut, so my mother loves it a lot.

01:00My mother loves it a lot, so my mother loves it a lot.

01:05I used to make sweets for my mother, but now I'm too old to make sweets.

01:16Sweets shops don't make sweets.

01:20They only make sweets at home.

01:23When they make sweets, the whole family gathers to make sweets.

01:28It takes a lot of work.

01:31No one makes sweets on their own.

01:35At home, it's not like in the shops.

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