To some cooking is a mundane but necessary chore, to others it is a skill to be honed and perfected. To my wife, however, cooking is a selfless and seemingly effortless act of love.
These acts started early in our relationship as she plied me with her delicious tarte aux fraises (excuse my French, but she is Lebanese after all!). You may say that getting to a man’s heart through his stomach is the oldest trick in the book, but as much as my taste buds were seduced by the tartes, it is the love that went into making them that got to me. After all, Beirut is full of excellent patisseries and she could have just as easily bought me something. That our relationship dates back to 1982 is testimony that it was more than about strawberry pie. That is not to say that, in our Syrian-Lebanese marriage, we have not had our differences ... about food. Some of those differences were substantive, like whether the Lebanese or Syrian way of preparing mloukieh was better, but most have been semantic. She calls stuffed grapes leaves warak enab and I call it warak dawali; watermelon was battiskh ahmar for her and jabass for me.
Few people are as particular about their food as are Levantines, but no one I know beats my mother-in-law's fussiness with food. The rice has to have that perfect sheen, the tart crust has to crunch just so and only home-made roub rummane (pomegranate concentrate) will do. It is because of this finicky lineage that our house overflows with some thirty cookbooks in different languages, several notebooks of handwritten recipes and twelve years' worth of cooking magazines. Medical journals in our house are discarded a couple of days after they are received but I dare not suggest that we discard a single copy of her old cooking magazines.
So my wife can cook with the best of them from the most intricate nouvelle cuisine to the humblest Middle Eastern dishes. It is the latter though, that give her the most satisfaction. These are the dishes that trigger the deepest of memories, extracting from the brain's limbic system not only smells and tastes of home but also remembrances of particular times and places. With these memories come feelings of warmth, of nostalgia; for a few moments, she is again in the protective embrace of childhood. These emotions are all the more acute because of the distance that separates her from family and homeland. When she cooks for our children, it is not only a labor of love, but also of building memories. She is not only passing on a personal heritage but also a cultural heritage to children born far from the land of our birth. The recipes of traditional Middle Eastern dishes are the product of the collective memory of a people and its ingredients a reflection of the land.
Friends and new acquaintances are also recipients of her culinary generosity. Some of it is just ingrained Arab hospitality, but it is also more than that. The more she likes you, the more she’ll cook for you. When our close friends adopted a one year old girl, my wife went into overdrive. Horrified at the prospect that this infant may be eating bland commercial baby food, she cooked up several batches of tasty homemade baby food for her. To this day, she will drop everything to spend some time with this girl, now three, and cook for her.
One may get the impression from all of what I said that my wife is a frumpy, plump, "tante" tinkering around the kitchen all day long. Far from it, she is a hard-working physician, a very good one at that, but she is never happier than when, after preparing a meal of mujaddarah and fattoush our kids tell her how delicious it was.
These acts started early in our relationship as she plied me with her delicious tarte aux fraises (excuse my French, but she is Lebanese after all!). You may say that getting to a man’s heart through his stomach is the oldest trick in the book, but as much as my taste buds were seduced by the tartes, it is the love that went into making them that got to me. After all, Beirut is full of excellent patisseries and she could have just as easily bought me something. That our relationship dates back to 1982 is testimony that it was more than about strawberry pie. That is not to say that, in our Syrian-Lebanese marriage, we have not had our differences ... about food. Some of those differences were substantive, like whether the Lebanese or Syrian way of preparing mloukieh was better, but most have been semantic. She calls stuffed grapes leaves warak enab and I call it warak dawali; watermelon was battiskh ahmar for her and jabass for me.
Few people are as particular about their food as are Levantines, but no one I know beats my mother-in-law's fussiness with food. The rice has to have that perfect sheen, the tart crust has to crunch just so and only home-made roub rummane (pomegranate concentrate) will do. It is because of this finicky lineage that our house overflows with some thirty cookbooks in different languages, several notebooks of handwritten recipes and twelve years' worth of cooking magazines. Medical journals in our house are discarded a couple of days after they are received but I dare not suggest that we discard a single copy of her old cooking magazines.
So my wife can cook with the best of them from the most intricate nouvelle cuisine to the humblest Middle Eastern dishes. It is the latter though, that give her the most satisfaction. These are the dishes that trigger the deepest of memories, extracting from the brain's limbic system not only smells and tastes of home but also remembrances of particular times and places. With these memories come feelings of warmth, of nostalgia; for a few moments, she is again in the protective embrace of childhood. These emotions are all the more acute because of the distance that separates her from family and homeland. When she cooks for our children, it is not only a labor of love, but also of building memories. She is not only passing on a personal heritage but also a cultural heritage to children born far from the land of our birth. The recipes of traditional Middle Eastern dishes are the product of the collective memory of a people and its ingredients a reflection of the land.
Friends and new acquaintances are also recipients of her culinary generosity. Some of it is just ingrained Arab hospitality, but it is also more than that. The more she likes you, the more she’ll cook for you. When our close friends adopted a one year old girl, my wife went into overdrive. Horrified at the prospect that this infant may be eating bland commercial baby food, she cooked up several batches of tasty homemade baby food for her. To this day, she will drop everything to spend some time with this girl, now three, and cook for her.
One may get the impression from all of what I said that my wife is a frumpy, plump, "tante" tinkering around the kitchen all day long. Far from it, she is a hard-working physician, a very good one at that, but she is never happier than when, after preparing a meal of mujaddarah and fattoush our kids tell her how delicious it was.
(Photo: borrowed picture, photoshop enhanced by AK)
6 comments:
Great piece of writing reflecting definetely the superb culinary gift of Dr. Om Kareem.
Eating "home" cooking away from the "original" home is a precious experience.
You and your family are indeed very lucky.
Thank you for sharing.
Abu Fares,
I must say that this piece is partially inspired by your many delicious posts.
More evidence to how much we have in common, my friend.. The appreciation of good food, the blessing of having a wife who cooks with love and skill, and the sheer enjoyment of sampling their fabulous productions.. (you may have seen the reference I made to my wife's cooking in a recent post (http://syrianbrit.blogspot.com/2006/11/salute-to-abu-fares.html))
What I also find intriguing is how this 'labour of love' and 'building of memories' as you call it, actually helps our children appreciate their heritage and strengthen their sense of belonging..
Thank you for a very tasty post!..
My family and I are blessed to have been at your table so often.
All of us, not only our daughter, have been adopted by you.
Through making and sharing the food of your homeland with friends, you and your wife seem most at peace.
Southern Man.
Your wife knows that it is through her food that she will transmit their levantine heritage to your children. I applaud her!
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