Saudi Arabia.

The defining technique is broth-cooked grain. A cook simmers lamb or chicken with onion, whole spices and pierced dried limes until the meat is tender and the water has become something worth cooking in, then lifts the meat out, measures the broth, and cooks long-grain rice directly in it. The meat goes back on top of the finished rice — browned under a grill, or in the case of mandi, hung above it in a sealed oven so its fat drips down through the grains. Nothing is wasted and nothing is seasoned twice. Get the broth right and the rice needs almost nothing else; get it wrong and no amount of spice at the end will rescue the plate.

The spice cabinet is narrow and used with confidence. Green cardamom is the signature aroma of the region, in coffee as much as in rice. Cinnamon sticks, cloves, bay and black lime handle the savoury pots; a ground blend variously called kabsa spice or baharat — cumin, coriander, black pepper, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and dried lime powder — does the heavy lifting. Saffron and rose water tilt dishes sweet or ceremonial. Loomi deserves special mention: limes boiled in brine and dried in the sun until they are hollow and black inside, pierced and dropped whole into the pot, where they release a sour, slightly fermented perfume that fresh citrus cannot copy.

Dairy is drunk more than it is cooked. Laban — thin, salted, cultured buttermilk — is the standard mealtime drink and also the souring agent that turns cracked wheat into jareesh. Ghee is the finishing fat, poured hot over a bowl of porridge or a mound of milk rice. Fresh yoghurt, cucumber and mint appear as the cooling salad beside anything rich. Meat is overwhelmingly lamb and chicken, with camel eaten in the interior and on special occasions, and shellfish and reef fish along both coasts.

Bread has its own economy. Tamees, the wide soft disc slapped onto a tandoor wall, is baked around the clock by Afghan-run bakeries in every Saudi city and sold hot for breakfast with cream cheese and honey. Khubz arabi, the pocket flatbread, gets torn into scoops. Older desert breads survive in the countryside: qursan, dried wheat discs softened in broth, and marqooq, rolled paper-thin over a domed metal plate.

Regional difference is real and people are proud of it. The Hejaz on the Red Sea coast absorbed centuries of pilgrimage traffic and eats accordingly — Indonesian, Indian, Turkish, Egyptian and Yemeni influence is visible in mutabbaq, saleeg and the sweet-savoury breakfast bowls of Jeddah. The Najd plateau in the interior is the Bedouin heartland and its food is grain-heavy and plain in the best sense: jareesh, qursan, margoog. The Eastern Province looks across the Gulf toward Iran and India, with more fish, more rice, and machboos-style spicing. The southern Asir highlands, wetter and cooler, grow coffee and eat more sorghum, honey and chilli than anywhere else in the kingdom.