We hope it's mish, mish

Given that it is one of the great feats of culinary alchemy, it seems strange to me that mish is not a better known dish. How long can it be, I wonder, before one wanders past the supermarket salads and sees endless varieties of mish aside the coleslaw and the cheese and chives dip. Perhaps it is because it is Sudanese that the dish has never really made the 'Arab canon' in the way that felafel and babaghanoush have, for it certainly has nothing to do with its taste, for, for those in the know, mish is perhaps the greatest of all mezze. The alchemical element comes from the fact that the dish needs to be made about 24 hours in advance and stored in a fridge so that its constituent parts might meld together to make gold. I presume that storing it for even longer would be no bad thing but cannot imagine that anyone would allow it to sit in the fridge for more than a day. The ingredients which really need time are the fenugreek and black onion seeds, which soften as they begin to sit together with the yoghurt, feta, green chillis and chilli powder. The final flavour, best appreciated on toast, is hard to describe other than to say that it adds up to much, much more than the sum of its parts. Three key flavours are its creaminess, sourness and hotness. Goddamit, there are at least eight hours before I can start snaffling the big pot that's waiting in my fridge!