The Arabesque Kitchen: Recipes and Heritage
By: Khelil Bouarrouj/Arab America Contributing Writer
Introduction and Background:
Reem Kassis is quickly becoming the doyen of Arab gastronomy, and what makes her journey so endearing is that she’s gone from London-based McKinsey consultant to the queen of the Arab kitchen without stopping over for a culinary degree. Kassis is a home cook’s cook. If the trend in avant-garde restaurants is toward the spectacle — the olive-shaped jelly that tastes like raspberries — Kassis brings cooking back to its most intimate corners.
Her rootedness in family and nature makes me want to forgo all the conveniences of the supermarket, bid farewell to late-stage capitalism, and pluck myself in a rural cottage where I can grow my planets, fruits, and vegetables, and cook in the truest sense farm to table. The Palestinian Kassis relates, for instance, traveling with her family to the mountains surrounding Jerusalem and picking Za’atar leaves. They’d later dry them and preserve them for use throughout the year. No character has shaped Kassis’s cooking more than perhaps her grandmother, a true woman of the Galilee, who treated her crops with the same care most people reserve for their children. She would tend to them every morning and knew when an eggplant had ripened perfectly so as not to absorb too much olive oil. This type of intimate knowledge of the land is the greatest testament to a cook’s love of ingredients and the ineffable skills that the best cooks bring to their dishes. (Some might call it Nafas.)
It is these memories that color Kassis’s book and make her recipes so approachable: related memories of watching her grandmother hand-rolling maftoul (couscous) disarm whatever insecurities you might have about attempting to make your maftoul. This is no daunting cookbook but, rather, one that approaches its recipes with humility and friendly guides. It is this approach, I think, that has quickly made Kassis such a favorite among home cooks.
History of Arab Food and Creating Memories:
The Arabesque Table brings more than just a plethora of recipes but puts forth the history that has shaped what Arabs eat today. Here are a few things I learned:
Artichokes are native to the Mediterranean (probably Sicily or Tunisia) and were first cultivated for food by Arabs, who gave it its name: al-qarshuf. The word passed into the Old Spanish as alcarchofa and then onto Italian as articiocco and from there into English.
Pistachio is fistuk halabi or “nut of Aleppo” cuz pistachio is believed to have originated in Syria.
Tomatoes are so dominant in modern Arabic cooking but the planet is native to Mexico and South American and made its way to the Arab world between the 16th and 19th centuries probably by way of Italy to Egypt (the Arabic banadura is similar to the Italian pomodoro; although in modern Egyptian colloquial tomato is ouuta). Before its arrival, Arabs used nuts, juices, and saffron for their thickening, souring, and coloring of stews. The recipes before the tomato’s arrival are vastly different from the ones that came after. Today, it is hard to imagine Arab cuisine without the humble tomato.
Za’atar is probably the most well-known Middle Eastern seasoning in the West, and also the most misunderstood. Many assume it is a mixture of herbs and spices (and on Western shelves, it is often mixed with sumac and sesame seeds) but it is a plant native to the Levant most closely related to oregano.
Sumar is another ingredient associated with the region but sumac is also native to North America and has long been put to multiple uses by indigenous peoples. For Arabs, summaqiyat used to constitute a whole category of stews made with sumac although interests in these staples have died down except for cuisine in Gaza. Sumar is used to flavor chicken, lamb, and is a great substitute for pomegranate molasses or lemon juice. It is a flowering plant whose berries are dried, ground, and then sifted. The final product is a beautifully rich crimson color with a sour flavor. Be care of store-bought brands that mix sumac with salt or add citric acid and food coloring.
And then there’s ka’ak. What chips are to Americans ka’ak is to Arabs. This is the quintessential Arab cracker whose recipes date to Medieval Arabic cookbooks (which, incidentally, include the first recipe for bagels, the process of firing before baking bread). Kassis features an easy ka’ak recipe with za’atar and nigella seeds.
Around the 10th century, rice cultivation commenced in the Arab world, and it was Arabs who spread its cultivation to Europe and as far as Russia and East Africa. But the rice wasn’t a staple food; it was associated with the foods eaten in palaces hence the Arab saying “el iz lal riz” (rice is for splendor). It wasn’t until recent decades that rice became a common dish. Legumes are one of the healthiest foods in the Arab diet but are associated with poverty. Kassis relates her mother-in-law shooting down a caterer’s proposed lentil dish for her wedding by saying, “We can’t disrespect our guests; no lentils at the wedding!”
Arab Food and the World:
Perfumes and distilled floral waters feature prominently in Medieval Arabic cookbooks both for their taste and perceived medicinal benefits, and the fact that Arabs traditionally ate with their hands and scents were used to mask the smell of food after the meal. In ancient Arab and Persian cooking, topping off a dish with rose water was the way to go, but today floral waters are mainly reserved for desserts.
But it is not all classic Arabic dishes. One of the great things about this cookbook is that Kassis not only relays traditional recipes but adopts an Arab spin on classic Western recipes such as her spiced pavlova with orange blossom cream and berries, her Arab take on the New Zealand/Australian favorite.
Kassis captures how food is more than just the proverbial breaking of bread. It is the sharing of cultures across borders and, simultaneously, what binds us to a place. The preparation, the fragrance, the taste of what we eat evoke memories that always take us back to that familiar place that feels like home.
Efforts to stamp a national identity on a gastronomic heritage might be a response to globalization and an attempt to erect cultural parameters but the Arabesque Table does away with those boundaries and celebrates the long history of fusion in Arabic cuisine. Ingredients travel across continents and different cultures have remarkably similar recipes. Spanish tapas rely heavily on fried foods but it was the Moors in the Middle Ages who introduced deep-frying. Tomatoes, cacao, and chilies spread from the Americas to Europe and Asia after the Spanish colonization. And we think of shawarma as unique to the Middle East but so many cultures have a similar dish from Chinese baos to Italian strombolis.
And against all the recent debates about labeling this or that Arab or Israeli, Kassis argues that food “is a regional and ethnic artifact, often more closely tied to language and religion than it is to an arbitrary political boundary.” Arabs, for instance, live around the world but we still eat the same dishes. We carry recipes in our language and culture and not in our passport.
Conclusion:
Taking her title from the ornamental Arabesque designs, Kassis vividly portrays the interlacing regional and global ingredients and recipes that flourish on the Arabesque table. The gastronomic history of the Arab world is shaped by many threads that have formed a rich tapestry of what Arabs cook today. Kassis also uses Arabesque so as not to claim an Arab monopoly on these dishes, but to suggest both their essential (but not exclusive) nature to modern Arab cuisine and how they’re shaped by traditional Arab techniques and ingredients. This is one book that’s bound to become a classic for all Arab cooks and lovers of Arabesque food. It already is for me.
Khelil Bouarrouj is a writer and editor in the Washington, DC specializing in Middle Eastern affairs. His favorite dish is couscous.
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