Miami Cubans Get a Taste of Pakistani Haleem

Mukhtar Yusaf knows about patience. For 18 years he has worked as a waiter, explaining menus and specials to customers night after night. He is from Pakistan, where patience is a way of life, especially when it comes to cooking.

"There are no shortcuts to flavor,'' Yusaf says, brandishing a wooden ladle in his small, impeccably clean kitchen in a Little Havana apartment complex. When he makes haleem, a time-consuming, traditional potage of whole wheat kernels, split chickpeas and pulverized meat, his mainly Cuban neighbors crowd outside the door hoping for a taste, and he always obliges.

Appropriately enough, haleem means ''patience.'' According to legend, the dish was invented by a sixth century Persian king and adopted by the Muslim conquerors a century later. It became popular as a winter porridge, stirred through the night and served at dawn with crusty bread, and as a meal to break religious fasts.

The dish eventually spread throughout the Middle East, where it is variously known as harees, harisah and harissa (not to be confused with the North African chile paste of the same name), terms derived from habb, the Arabic word for wheat…

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