Returning to the Old (Arab) Ways: Why I Ferment Food

I have been asked many questions recently about traditional foods, and particularly why I chose to follow so closely to the traditional food methods of preparations.  So, this is the first in a series of posts in which I will attempt to talk about a few topics related to traditional foods and health. 

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I grew up in a pretty dirty part of the world.  We lived in Cairo when I was in elementary school and as much as I loved it (and I was pretty passionate about defending its beauty), I have to say that it was dirty.

Did I say dirty?  I meant filthy. 

The air pollution was so bad that when my father had a physical exam after he returned to the States, the doctor said that his health was fine, but that he really needed to lay off of the cigarettes.  That's right.  My father isn't a smoker. 

It wasn't just that the air was dirty.  We had to be very careful about drinking water and food.  We had to worry about hepatitis, parasites, amoebic dysentery.  My mother was extremely diligent and went to great lengths to keep our water and food safe, and all without the help of little bottles of antibacterial soap or wipes.  Yet, we all stayed healthy (although others who traveled with us were not as fortunate), and when we moved away, we left in good health. 

Now, I wonder:  did my time in Egypt actually improve my health?  After all, when I travel abroad now, even though others are often stricken with various, ahem, gastro-intestinal issues from the food or the water, I am fine.  This makes me wonder what those years in Egypt did for me. 

Love from Palestine: Rhoda's Real-Food Care Package

 It's a bittersweet sort of day - a cool, rainy, gray Friday, when it should be a brilliant and run-and-jump-and-play time of year.  And, today, for the last time, we gathered up my daughter's preschool bag from the little hook with her name printed over it.  Good bye, good bye, friends, we said.  Good bye.   I lingered at the door, even while my daughter bounded through it.  Today, it doesn't quite feel like we are saying hello to summer.

But I said hello to the mail carrier who pounded urgently on my door this afternoon.  He had a surprise to deliver - a box postmarked from Jerusalem.  Imagine my delight when I opened up this: 

 

Am I a "Beginner Arab" and Other Questions of Cultural Identity

A few weeks ago, my five-year-old daughter was comparing the color of my skin to hers and noticed that mine is slightly darker.

Mommy, she said, my skin is lighter than yours, because I am just a beginner Arab.

Later, she added: You are a middle Arab and Teta is an advanced Arab.

I laughed, and we have joked about it since then. But I can't stop thinking about it. I am haunted by this sentence: I am a beginner Arab.


Teaching my daughter to roll out Arabic bread.

 

Lamb in Yogurt Sauce, or Mansaf for Beginners

Palestinian mansaf is not humble food, served just to your family, like mujjadara and fasoulia and shorabat addas.  This is celebratory food, kill-the-fatted-lamb food, the centerpiece of a feast, and often served at weddings, graduations, or prepared for an honored guest.

And this meal is as ancient as the land.  It tells a story of the land and how people used to eat long ago, how they preserved and cared for their foods.

Mansaf is boiled lamb, served in a rich sauce made of yogurt.  Today, it is served over a bed of rice, but since rice is a relative newcomer to the Middle East, it was probably originally served with bread.  It is often eaten by hand, served from a communal dish.  What makes this dish distinctive is the sauce in which the lamb is simmered, a sauce made from a traditionally prepared hardened yogurt. 

"Banana Swirl" - A Two-Ingredient Cultured Ice Cream

I have to credit my daughter for this one. 

She enjoys the PBS Kids show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and last week, a recipe for blended frozen banana puree was featured on the website.  She was so excited about it that she had to write it down.  (Maybe we have a little foodie-in-training?)

But on our first attempt at Banana Swirl, we didn't follow the recipe exactly, so a new recipe was born. First, I left the bananas in the freezer overnight instead of twenty minutes.  That meant that the bananas were so frozen that we could not blend them by themselves, as the original recipe called for. Usually, I would add milk or yogurt or cream in a situation like this, but this time, I reached for my jar of cultured cream.  I added a few large spoonfuls, until I could process the bananas.  To our delight, the result was:  ice cream!  Creamy, rich, gently sweet, without any added sweeteners - and full of the goodness of cultured cream - a perfectly nourishing treat!

Can you tell that I'm a little bit excited? 

Cultured Cream, or My Approximated Shemenet

One of the first foods that I fell in love with, when I was three years old, was fromage blanc.  Fromage blanc is a French white cheese. It's a soft, spoonable cheese, a little like sour cream, a little like cream cheese.   I remember it as creamy and decadent, and that I couldn't stop eating it.  This was exciting for my mother, because I was a poor eater, one of those children who just can't be bothered to eat.  But this, I ate. 

Then we moved to Egypt, and I wept for my fromage blanc.

Later on, we moved to Jerusalem, and there my mother found another dairy product that was similar to  fromage blanc.  Rich, creamy and slightly tart, we bought this yogurt-like cultured cream from the Jewish side, and it was sold in small plastic cups, right next to the yogurt.  It was called shemenet.   It was so thick that when we inserted a spoon into the cup, the spoon could stand straight up.  Shement came in several varieties, with higher fat versions (30 percent or higher), and lower fat versions, (I think 18%).  My mother used it as a substitue for sour cream and stirred it into sauces and spread it on top of her cheesecakes.  While we did sometimes eat it straight, it was so rich that we usually only had a few tablespoons at a time, and would spoon it over fruit, or mix it up with a little jam for a special treat. 

And now that I no longer live in Jerusalem, I miss my shemenet.

Last summer, while in the midst of one of my shemenet laments, my mother said to me, you know, you can make shemenet.  Just turn cream into yogurt.  So, I tried it. I simply cultured some cream with a little yogurt.   And it is so, so good.  If I had known how easy this was to make, I would have started making this years and years ago. 

Is this shemenet?  I am not sure.  I can't seem to find any information on what shemenet actually is.  But it tastes similar to shemenet, creamy and full bodied, just a little less tangy, possibly due to the difference in the yogurt culture.  Still, I'll take it. 

 

Musakhan: Roasted Chicken with Carmelized Onions and Olive-Oil Drenched Bread

Put away your forks and knives, friends.  This is finger food. 

 

Now, this is a favorite Palestinian feast.  Tender chicken pieces, seasoned with lemony sumac, roasted with loads of sweet caramelized onions and olive oil, baked onto soft bread that absorbs the juices of the chicken, and topped with buttery pine nuts . . . I think of it as the Palestinian version of fried chicken, because of the generous amounts of olive oil used here, which soak into everything and transform a simple chicken and onion dish into a rich, melt-in-your-mouth experience.  Plus, this meal is traditionally eaten with your hands. 

A New Cookbook on Traditional Palestinian Cuisine: The Gaza Kitchen

Please excuse me while I curl up with a cup of tea and a new cookbook.  

I just got this in the mail, and it was just like Christmas. But I am dragging myself away from it in order to share it with you, because it's just too good to keep to myself. An old friend of mine (thank you, Jeanette!) told me about this cookbook and I was immediately intrigued. This is a brand-new book that just came out a month ago! The Gaza Kitchen was written by two women, Laila el-Haddad and Maggie Smith, and published by Just World Books.

As the name suggests, this book is an in-depth exploration of Gazan food, and it is so much more than a cookbook. It does what I love best, and weaves together story, history, and recipes. Well-written, and beautifully photographed, it captures the spirit of Gaza. Every few pages you turn, the authors take you into another Gaza kitchen, as they focus on one person or family. You hear the story of that person's life, and feel like you watch her prepare her signature dish. There are snippets of information scattered through out- which show the dynamic relationship between the political situation and the food that people live on. I quickly become lost in this world, as I bounced between the current world - fishing limits and food aid and malnourished children - and the past world - descriptions of clay ovens, and rendering fat from sheep tails, and foraging for wild greens. In a word, this book is rich.