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Beirut in my soul

Beirut in my soul

There have been enough words.  What happened in Beirut was like the full force of a nightmare we had only glimpsed in flashes through all the decades of violence, instability and loss suddenly shaking itself fully to life and sheering up phantasmagorically above the sea to wreak its curse across the city.   Out of such horror it can only be hoped that something positive can emerge.  Long odds on…

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Comfort food is needed in uncomfortable times.  Being confined to my house during the pandemic returned me to the teenager I once was when war made stepping outside too dangerous.  Now – just as then – I took refuge in sweet, simple food – recipes that puzzled me even as the best way to enjoy them was just to go to the shops and buy them readymade.  I am talking about basics – bread, hummus, za’atar, syrupy sweets and even Turkish delight.  These are all the very essence of Beirut – its scents, its sounds, its true identity.  But with untold hours on my hands here in London, I set about trying to deconstruct and then create my versions of these everyday treats that you would normally buy at a market or a patisserie – even in the worst times in Beirut.  That’s how I first began to cook anyway – experimenting without a second thought. Then my guinea pig was my younger sister, now it’s my husband.  So it was hardly a voyage of discovery, more a rummaging around in the attic of memory and tradition, trying on random leftovers from another time and place. 

 And you can’t get any more basic in Beirut than Ka’ak – sold from bicycles and stands on the Corniche for those who don’t have the patience to make it to the next cafe.  My husband was surprised at how soft the version I made was – I told him that’s because it goes stale as it’s left all day in bunches before it’s sold.  But when you have it fresh from the bakery in the morning, it is something else – far more inviting.

The obvious next step was to make Lebanese flat bread.  This was harder than I thought.  I struggled to get it to lift and to have the right consistency inside.  But I persevered – and finally cracked it. 

After a few days, I had to stop as I just couldn’t resist eating my home made bread with everything.  But not before I had finally been persuaded by my husband to make hummus the proper way – by taking the skin off the chickpeas first.  I let him do it as a punishment – in any case hummus has never been one of my favourites. But the smoother, creamier consistency was an instant success with my daughter, who is an aficionado and will eat if from pretty much anywhere.

All of this I was concentrating on as the world appeared to be falling down around us – but with such unreality that it was hard to comprehend.  The gorgeous weather made every day the perfect time to have a late breakfast in the garden – gathering what I had just been working on in the kitchen.   One day it would be shakshoukeh – which we Lebanese really need to reclaim – the next a bowl of za’atar in which to dip my heavenly home made bread.

And the indulgence didn’t stop there.  I’ve always had a sweet tooth, but I’ve never been particularly adept at making cakes or puddings.  So I switched my attention to some of the most luscious concoctions that ooze syrup and indulgence in equal quantities.  First up I tried my hand at kneifeh – but my first attempts veered towards creme brulee before I got the consistency right.  Once again, my greatest talent as a cook is that I keep going through failure after failure, blindly following my instinct rather than measurements or science, until I get there.  That’s actually the biggest pleasure I get from cooking – it’s a million miles from fine dining or tv chef territory, but it’s the only way that rings true for me.

Then I went for what has always seemed to me the somewhat disconsolate orphan of the selection of baklawa that you get from shops – the round hard pastry called bormeh, which usually is left till last like the toffee in a box of chocolates.  Again – thanks to the long featureless days – I spent hours on this.  Sometimes the taste was right, but the consistency was wrong or vice versa.  But what I ended up with was truly delicious – helped I think by the fact that it was softer and less crunchy than the kind you get in shops.

With the warm early summer days and the elderflower still on the trees where I live, I decided to make a refreshing drink combining east and west – by mixing elderflower and pomegranates into a cordial.   It wasn’t my greatest success, but it looked beautiful – and when you’re sitting in the sun at 11 in the morning with nothing but the sky and the nearby river to direct the rest of your day, who really cares.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the little challenges I set myself to recreate a menu of utterly everyday tastes and dishes from Lebanon.  But I’ll end with two of the most quixotic and oddly successful.  Like bormeh, another traditional sweet that I find you usually leave until there’s nothing left in the house – and then briefly it’s the best taste in the world – is halwa.  Crazy really to make it at home when it’s the kind of thing you get given whether you like it or not.  But weeks of unhurried seclusion somehow put me in the mood.  Again, I think I must have spent a whole day swearing at my efforts in the kitchen until I got somewhere close to it.  I can’t say that it was the most authentic seeming halwa I’d ever seen, but sometimes it’s the imperfections that make a thing more interesting – and in this case the texture and taste ended up better than I had anticipated in the two versions I finally came up with.

And so we come to Turkish delight – or raha as we call it in Lebanon – not that it’s a particular favourite of mine, but it struck me as perhaps the most pointless and therefore most perfect thing to make in such a time of disorientation.  And it contains some of my favourite flavours – pistachio, rosewater and pomegranate.   My first efforts were more like jelly and I never quite achieved that trick of making it both solid and yielding at the same time.  But I think I made a decent go of it – especially once it was sprinkled with sugar and flowers.

And I surprised my husband with the way we eat it in Lebanon – between two biscuits.  He said I’d just reinvented the jammy dodger.  Well, there are worse ways to spend lockdown, I guess…

Turkish Delight – or Raha – recipe (my way)

400g of granulated sugar

300ml of fresh water

2 teaspoons of lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon of citric acid or lemon crystals

170g of cornstarch

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

200ml of fresh water

2 teaspoons of rosewater

4 tablespoons of pomegranate syrup

Ground or coarsely chopped unsalted pistachio nuts

200g of icing sugar for dusting

50g of cornstarch for dusting

1/2 teaspoon of vegetable oil for your chosen plastic box

Put the granulated sugar and fresh water in a large non-stick pan and stir well until the sugar dissolves.  Put on the hob at medium heat and stir well, once the syrup starts to boil, add the lemon juice and citric acid and mix, reduce temperature to the minimum and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes or until the mixture starts to thicken.  This will take around 25 to 30 minutes.  You can use a candy thermometer and when the temperature reaches 240 degrees you remove the pan from the hob.  The syrup needs to be hot when it is mixed slowly with the cornstarch.

  In another large non-stick pot, sift the cornstarch, cream of tartar – then add water and stir well.  Put the pot on medium heat and keep stirring in one direction the whole time.  Once you see the colour of the starch starting to change, reduce temperature to minimum and keep stirring.  This will take around 5 minutes and you should get a thick paste.

  Now here it gets a bit tricky – you need to be careful handling the hot syrup.  You need to pour the syrup little by little into the cornstarch mixture while you are stirring quickly and constantly.  Get someone to help you here if possible.  Keep adding the syrup to the cornstarch slowly, stirring constantly until you finish the entire amount.  Now reduce temperature to the minimum – to just a very faint flame and keep stirring the turkish delight or raha.  This will take around one hour.  The original recipe is three hours.  Make sure the paste doesn’t burn.  You can leave it simmering and stir every five minutes or so.

  Prepare you plastic box to pour the hot mixture into and use it as a mould to determine the thickness of the raha or turkish delight.  I use a plastic box – 20 cm x 13 cm.  Put a little vegetable oil into it and cover the entire inside of the box.

  After an hour or maybe two if you prefer, remove the pot from the heat and add the rosewater and any flavour you like.  I add pomegranate syrup and some pistachio nuts.  Stir well and pour in the already prepared plastic box. Smooth the surface of the raha and leave to chill for four hours.

  Dust the top with icing sugar and remove the raha or turkish delight from the box.  Cut into pieces and dust again with a mixture of icing sugar and cornstarch.

  Best eaten – if you’re Lebanese at least – between plain biscuits and with Turkish coffee.

                    Lockdown Lebanese Essential Indulgence Comfort food is needed in uncomfortable times.  Being confined to my house during the pandemic returned me to the teenager I once was when war made stepping outside too dangerous. 

[monausher]

Mulukhia -- or Jew's Mallow -- served with Chicken, Lamb and Rice

Mulukhia — or Jew’s Mallow — served with Chicken, Lamb and Rice

  Now we are moving away from poor man’s dishes.  For me and my friends in Beirut, the idea of mulukhia is a party in itself.  I am not quite sure why, but it always seems like a big social event when we make the dish.  Perhaps it’s because of the whole rigmarole over sourcing the mulukhia leaves– which are also known as jew’s mallow — and then preparing them.  My father gets the spinach-like…

[monausher]

the green crown (stuffed courgettes)

The smell of meat is in my house — lamb shanks that are halal, the lack of blood reminding me of what put me off when I was young.  It’s the hottest day this year.  Everyone has been told to stay inside – driving through the streets that clearly isn’t the case.  Perfect timing if ever there was, my mother-in-law edging to ninety, fell in the street three weeks ago and broke her hip, putting her…

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Fakhid maa riz -- Slow roasted leg of Lamb with rice

Fakhid maa riz — Slow roasted leg of Lamb with rice

This is one of the dishes that makes you think of special occasions in Lebanon.  Eid, Al Adha — and Christmas too since we are Lebanese as much as we are muslim. This is serious stuff — for big, extended families gathering for a feast.  And it had better be a real feast or you won’t be hearing the last of it for a long time.  All the preparations for a big holiday — the new clothes, the presents…

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Freekeh maa Dajaj -- Roasted Green Wheat with Chicken and Nuts

Freekeh maa Dajaj — Roasted Green Wheat with Chicken and Nuts

 This is a dish I did not know when I lived in Lebanon, but discovered from Syrian friends here in London.  But its ingredients I know very well from the long weekends and summers I spent in the Bekaa.   I used to ramble and play in the wheat fields with cousins and friends.  Sometimes we would gather the tall stems of wheat while they were still green.  We would make a little fire and try to…

[monausher]

sheibiyat - street cries and the hill of orphans

sheibiyat – street cries and the hill of orphans

via sheibiyat – street cries and the hill of orphans

[monausher]

sheibiyat - street cries and the hill of orphans

sheibiyat – street cries and the hill of orphans

I‘m afraid this is another memory of how I have been a captive of my sweet tooth from as early as I can remember.  For all its noise and chaos, Beirut has always been a temptress to those who are weak when it comes to syrupy, sugary indulgence.

I remember just as the war was starting in the mid 1970s, my hardworking and hard-pressed parents used to deposit my sister and me during the school…

[monausher]

the itunes dictator

I have many grave concerns

That prey upon my mind

To hold firm or give way

To fail my father’s memory

  A statue of dark rectitude

Rising instead of the sun

Such unbending driven will

And me? Just temporary…

Until I can play the dark lord

As well as any teenage geek

But really pulverize the fools

Till they embrace submission

  My love am I the man I was?

They’re killing in my name

Burning it to…

[monausher]

I came late to the party in Lebanon and to the wrong address.

I was born in the 1960s when Beirut was a flourishing cosmopolitan city with an exciting touch of the exotic, but I grew up as it fell apart in the 1970s and the 1980s. Not that I would have known much about those halcyon days.

My parents and I, swiftly followed by my sister, slept in one room in a small apartment a minute’s walk away from the sea. It was in Ain Elmrisi near Hamra — in Ras Beirut, the most mixed and dynamic area in the city.  I have just returned there for the first time in decades — it’s almost a ruin – probably waiting to be torn down and replace by another highrise – worth millions if it can ever be sold…

My mother and father both came from big families that were the poor relations of rich and powerful clans.

My father wheeled and dealed — at one time he was selling wigs to nightclub singers. We only moved up in the world when he became a printer.

And then we moved up literally — to the top floor of a highly respectable apartment block on the hill directly above.

But I remember less about Beirut from when I was a little child than the countryside up in the Bekaa valley.

Those memories mix a sense of utter boredom and entrapment in my grandmother’s village with the pleasure of picking fruits and vegetables in the fields.

My first lessons in cooking came from watching my grandmother make stews and soups.

It must have made a big impression on me as I have always felt almost a moral compulsion to keep my cooking simple.

The other major influence on my cooking from my childhood was very different.

As a big treat, my father would walk with me the short distance downtown to one of the old colonial squares that would not so much later be rendered out of bounds and then destroyed by the fighting.

We would go to Bab Idriss, Souk Ayass, to a little shop called Intably. Ask anyone who knew Beirut back then and they will rhapsodize about it.

Intably made luscious versions of traditional Lebanese puddings that both my father and I loved, like Mughli and Mhalabieh.

I can still see us both standing there in the little kiosk. I would have a bowl of Mughli and he would have Lebanese rice pudding.

That was the height of happiness for me — my little bowl with all the nuts and coconut shavings and sneaking a taste of my father’s cinnamon-tinged pudding.

I hold on to that old memory of me walking through the exciting confusion and brightness of the city and the souks — the dust and chaos reduced now to just a fountain without water and a small sign to commemorate Intably’s existence in that spot so many years ago.

Years after the war, they finally rebuilt the area and it is very posh and clean, but of course it’s lost its magic for me.

At home, I would secretly experiment when my parents were out — which was most of the time. I’d try to recreate the puddings I had downtown, adding my own twists — and usually failing.

A pudding known as Mfatka was my greatest challenge. How many times I struggled to produce the ultimate version. Now I realise why it was so hard. I didn’t have a scale so the measurements were never anywhere near right.

So, while Beirut and Byblos were apparently caught up in a jetset whirl of Marlons and Sophias, I was gaining a sweet tooth and an abiding loyalty to simple recipes.

I didn’t know it of course, but a third key component of my later life was in Beirut at the time — an English boy staying the summer with his grandparents who had moved to Beirut as part of that cosmopolitan churn.

He was staying in the neighboring district to mine — Raouche.

His memories include standing in a storm as the sea raged on the corniche, driving high into the mountains for lunch beside a stream and his grandmother’s dalmatian running through overgrown vacant lots — with the taste that defined Lebanon for him back then being mountain bread.

His parents lived the 1960s Beirut experience to some extent, with his father an advertising executive with a healthy expense account.

So I suppose I can say I have a small connection to it, by proxy, although it played no part in my growing up.

But I suppose everyone who was in Beirut then and has lived or visited there since unconsciously clings to a taste, a scent, an image that can fleetingly conjure up a fragment of what the city was – a place, not just a time, that is irretrievably lost.

That must play a part in the dishes and recipes that I have brought with me everywhere I have been since — those childhood puddings, whose sweetness nothing since can ever quite match, the simple, fresh dishes my grandmother made on endless days in the Bekaa as well as the elaborate — and to me then as good as imaginary —

feasts that the international movers and shakers would be served beside rooftop pools or gazing out at the bay from the St Georges or the Phoenicia…

    you can’t go home again – 1960s Lebanon I came late to the party in Lebanon and to the wrong address. I was born in the 1960s when Beirut was a flourishing cosmopolitan city with an exciting touch of the exotic, but I grew up as it fell apart in the 1970s and the 1980s.

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An intimate lunch on the edge of #Richmond #Park discussing #Life #family #puppies and #food

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Making rose water syrup ready for my #kounafeh #breakfast #lebanese #lebanon #food #samaracuisine #instagood

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A quick instruction on how to make homemade #baklava #baking #healthy #lebanese #samaracuisine

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The first Lebanese Cooking Class for 2018 #lebanese #shawarma #fatoush #tarator #baklava #samaracuisine

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The first Lebanese Cooking Class for 2018 and what a great guests all eager to learn #lebanese #shawarma #fatoush #tarator #baklava #samaracuisine

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When you receive these as a gift you know you are in real trouble #petitfours #sweets #chocolate #lebanese