The Art of the Upside Down

helengoeslightly

Aug 31

5 min read

What Maqlubeh teaches us about emunah, trust and letting go

There are some recipes that ask you to cook.

And there are recipes that ask you to trust.

Maqlubeh is the second kind.

In Episode 5 of "Finding Assaliya," where I cook my way through my Lebanese grandmother's recipes, the instructions begin simply enough. You roast the vegetables. You prepare the rice. You season everything carefully. Then you begin to build.

Layer by layer.

Meat.

Vegetables.

More vegetables.

More rice.

You arrange everything with care, knowing that the way you build the dish will determine what it becomes.

Then you cover the pot and let it cook slowly.

And this is where something changes.

Because eventually, there is nothing left for you to do.

You cannot keep rearranging the layers.

You cannot peek inside every few minutes.

You cannot reach in and make sure everything is holding together.

You have prepared it.

Now you have to wait.

And then comes the moment the entire recipe has been leading toward.

You place a platter over the pot.

You hold them together.

And you turn the whole thing upside down.

For a few seconds, you don’t know what has happened.

You have to lift the pot and find out.

Will it hold?

Will all those carefully arranged layers remain intact?

Will the rice have taken the shape of the vessel?

Or will everything collapse across the platter?

I think about that moment whenever I think about emunah.

Not faith as certainty that everything will turn out exactly as we hope.

Not faith as pretending we aren’t afraid.

But emunah as a kind of faithfulness: doing what is ours to do,

and then learning to trust what is beyond our control.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that the biblical word emunah, often translated as "faith," is better understood as faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, and steadfastness. It is something we practice. We keep showing up. We do our part even when we cannot yet see the outcome.

That feels very different from passive belief.

Because the first half of making Maqlubeh is anything but passive.

You roast.

You season.

You arrange.

You pay attention.

You build.

You do your part.

Then you surrender the outcome.

Emunah is not the absence of effort

Sometimes "trusting God" can sound like giving up, or being passive. Whatever happens, happens.

But that's not what I see in this dish.

You don't throw everything into a pot and hope for the best. You take care. You choose good ingredients. You prepare them. You season them. You arrange them. You give them time.

There is tremendous agency here.

And then there is surrender.

We live in a world that constantly tells us to optimize the outcome. Anticipate every possibility.

Plan further ahead. Monitor. Measure. Make sure.

We are encouraged to believe that if we are careful enough, informed enough, vigilant enough, perhaps we can eliminate uncertainty altogether.

But we can't.

There is always a moment when the lid has to go on.

There is always something we cannot see.

There is always a future we cannot control.

Maybe this is where emunah begins to become less about what we believe and more about how we move through what we cannot know.

Mussar offers a useful distinction between faith and trust.

Perhaps emunah is knowing that there is something worth trusting.

Bitachon is what happens when we actually place our weight on that knowledge.

It is one thing to say, "I trust."

It is another thing to turn the pot over.

That is the difference between an idea and a practice.

We can understand intellectually that we cannot control other people. We can know that uncertainty is inevitable. We can accept that life will not always follow our carefully constructed plans. And still, when the moment comes, we grip the pot.

We want one more guarantee. One more piece of evidence. One more reassurance that everything is going to be okay.

But eventually, the platter is underneath.

The pot is upside down.

And there is nothing left to do but lift.

THE RECIPE

A dish of layers, patience, and a little emunah.

Maqlubeh means “upside down”—and the final flip is part of the magic. The vegetables and chicken are carefully layered with rice and stock, cooked slowly until everything comes together, and then turned upside down onto a platter.

The secret ingredient? Emunah.

No peeking. No prodding. You’ve done the work; now you have to trust what you can’t see.

Ingredients

For the lamb stock — optional

Lamb bones, ideally with some meat attached
Onion, roughly chopped
Carrot and/or celery, optional
Garlic, optional
Salt
Water

For the maqlubeh

Chicken pieces of your choice — bone-in, skin-on pieces work beautifully
1 eggplant, sliced into rounds or long slices
1 small head cauliflower, cut into florets
2 cups short-grain rice
4 cups stock or liquid — we used homemade lamb stock, but chicken stock works beautifully too
Olive oil
Salt
Lebanese spice blend, to taste

Make the lamb stock — optional

Place lamb bones in a large pot and cover generously with water. Add onion and any additional vegetables or aromatics you like. Season with salt.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer. Cook slowly until the stock is rich and flavourful, skimming the surface as needed.

Strain and set aside.

Prepare the chicken + vegetables

Preheat your oven to 425°F.

Coat the eggplant slices, cauliflower florets, and chicken pieces generously with olive oil, salt, and Lebanese spice blend.

Roast on a sheet pan until browned and cooked through, or pan-sear in a heavy cast-iron skillet until beautifully caramelized. You can cook the chicken until just done, as it will continue cooking slightly in the pot.

Build the maqlubeh

Wash the rice thoroughly until the water runs mostly clear.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, begin building your layers:

Chicken on the bottom
Eggplant over the chicken
Cauliflower over the eggplant
Rice over everything

Pour in your stock. We used a ratio of 2 cups rice to 4 cups liquid.

Bring the pot to a gentle boil on the stovetop, then reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook slowly until the rice is tender and the liquid has been absorbed.

And now comes the hard part: Don’t peek.

Resist the urge to stir, prod, or rearrange. Let the layers do their work.

The flip

When the rice is fully cooked, remove the pot from the heat and allow it to rest for a few minutes.

Place a large serving platter upside down over the opening of the pot.

Hold the pot and platter firmly together.

Take a breath.

And flip.

Slowly lift the pot and let the maqlubeh reveal itself.

If the layers hold, you have a beautiful upside-down mountain of chicken, eggplant, cauliflower and rice.

If they don’t?

Well, it will still be delicious.

A little reminder that emunah isn’t about knowing exactly how things will turn out. It’s about doing your part, and then trusting enough to let go.