The Greatest Mystery of All

There's this middle eastern restaurant by my place. They have some realy good food (And, believe me, I've spent enough time in Dearborn to know from good Middle Eastern cuisine) but the best thing they make is called a Raspberry Bread Pudding. I love the stuff and I've been trying in vain to figure out the recipe ever since I first had it. It was a special treat, made by the owner's mother and only available on Fridays and Saturdays when she'd bring in tray after tray. But never enough because, trust me, people snapped this stuff up quickly. She's a sweet little old lady and I tried to charm the recipe out of her many a time.

Anyhow, I went to th place tonight because I hadn't been there in a while and I suddenly had a craving for that bread pudding. Turns out they've done some renovations and menu alterations. The bread pudding's a bit different, too, mostly because it's available all week round instead of being a highly prized weekend treat. And it only had two layers of bread instead of being a triffle-like stacking of layers. It didn't come with a few little whole raspberries on the side like it used to, either. But the important bits were just as I remembered.

It is quite simply the most raspberry tasting thing I have ever had the pleasure to put in my mouth. You could cram a fistful of the berries into your mouth and not come anywhere near the tartly concentrated raspberry taste. Throw on some whipped cream and you have this creamy, sour flavor that just kicks you in the taste buds with its intensity.

My current theory is that it's masticated raspberries in some kind of syrupy sauce – I had been trying some raspberry liqueurs but I've come to the conclusion that there's no alcohol – sandwiched between some kind of sweetened, doughy flatbread which is left refrigerated to soak up the liquid. Despite searching through the interwebs, cookbooks, and my own quickly devoured samples, I haven't been able to come up with the answer. Oh, I've come close and made some damn fine bread puddings along the way but just haven't been able to come close enough to that taste.