Soul Nourishing?

[Baklava Jenny]

I am by no means an expert in middle eastern cooking, nor have I tried all things middle eastern, however much I love this cuisine.

What I do know is how it affected me since I was a little girl. There is a strength and pride to middle eastern food that I've internalized. A sort of heartiness that embraces a tart tang that comes from either lemons or yogurt, the earthiness of lentils or chickpeas, and the all invasive sense of health by the sheer number of vegetables consumed in one meal.

There's a sigh that comes to my soul when I enter a store and start seeing labels and ingredients that symbolize my childhood. I long to sift through red lentils when I see them on the shelves. Tahini causes my tongue to do that sticky - stuck to the top of the roof of your mouth thing that peanut butter does. And the smell of arabic coffee and lemons reminds me of the 2 hour rides home from Los Angeles in the back of a VW van surrounded by the fragrance.

And finally, when I was a homesick pregnant woman...I cried in my shawarma sandwich at the middle eastern deli counter and soaked in the language I didn't understand, but heard the sound of warmth and loved ones.

How does middle eastern food nourish your soul?

[lalala]

I don't cook Persian food at home, but when I walk into my my parents house and smell something like polo or a khoresht I become sad. I don't know why I don't cook more Persian food, I make elaborate ethnic foods up the ying yang, but for some reason, I find Persian food too time consuming.

I am having my mom start writing down her recipes and talking me through silly things like rice making so that I get it down.

However, here is my list...

noone-panjereh (window cookies -rosettes)

noone-nokhodechi (chickpea cookies)

tah-cheen with barberries and really tangy yogurt

my mom's noodle/lemon and carrot soup

really good lavashak from Iran or homemade lavashak from someone's

plum tree (fruit leather)

my mom's kufte tabrizi (tabriz meatballs)....

lalala

[Baklava Jenny]

I steal or "borrow" my mom's cookbooks for a while so that I can make the same smells and tastes come from my kitchen that she made come from her's. She was committed to embracing my father's culture and learning.

It's good that you get them written down...it is something to pass on to others.

I don't cook Persian food at home, but when I walk into my my parents house and smell something like polo or a khoresht I become sad. I don't know why I don't cook more Persian food, I make elaborate ethnic foods up the ying yang, but for some reason, I find Persian food too time consuming.

I am having my mom start writing down  her recipes and talking me through silly things like rice making so that I get it down.

However, here is my list...

noone-panjereh (window cookies -rosettes)

noone-nokhodechi (chickpea cookies)

tah-cheen with barberries and really tangy yogurt

my mom's noodle/lemon and carrot soup

really good lavashak from Iran or homemade lavashak from someone's

plum tree (fruit leather)

my mom's kufte tabrizi (tabriz meatballs)....

lalala

←

[Rebecca263]

Yebra makes me feel like I'm home, and m'jeddrah is my all time comfort food, so satisfying, with a dollop of yogurt, or a stream of buttermilk atop the crunchy onions and the lentils and rice.

I HAD to buy a splatterware covered roaster years ago, just for one recipe: my Mommy's chicken and spaghetti . A lot of Syrians make this dish- spaghetti with an allspice tomato sauce, baked with chicken pieces, until the spaghetti is crusty on the bottom of the roaster and rich with the fat from the skin of the chicken. I can't really eat this dish anymore, I think that in the past 7 years I've made it 4 times. But, I lug the roaster with me, from home to home, because it reminds me of Mommy's. And, when things get really unbearable, I make a batch of chicken and spaghetti, in the splatterware roaster, just like Mommy's. The aroma fills my head with memories of sitting at the kitchen table AFTER dinner, sharing the crunchy bits of pasta in the bottom of the roaster, with my sister, father, and, of course, Mommy, who always let everyone else have the best bits, even though this was one of her favorite dishes.

[ayana]

I don't cook Persian food at home, but when I walk into my my parents house and smell something like polo or a khoresht I become sad. I don't know why I don't cook more Persian food, I make elaborate ethnic foods up the ying yang, but for some reason, I find Persian food too time consuming.

I am having my mom start writing down  her recipes and talking me through silly things like rice making so that I get it down.

However, here is my list...

noone-panjereh (window cookies -rosettes)

noone-nokhodechi (chickpea cookies)

tah-cheen with barberries and really tangy yogurt

my mom's noodle/lemon and carrot soup

really good lavashak from Iran or homemade lavashak from someone's

plum tree (fruit leather)

my mom's kufte tabrizi (tabriz meatballs)....

lalala

←

any chance you could post recipes of the noodle-lemon-carrot soup and the kufte tabrizi? yum!

[lalala]

Let me talk to my mom tonight and get some recipes or proportions for you.

lalala

[FoodMan]

Let me talk to my mom tonight and get some recipes or proportions for you.

lalala

←

If at all possible please post them in RecipeGullet.

[Verjuice]

When my Lebanese grandmother left her husband behind in their tiny village in the Bekaa Valley and emigrated to Massachusetts, she supported her young family by working two jobs as a chef. She cooked for everyone on the street that she lived on for thirty years, and everyone in town thought her name was 'Situ' because that's what her fourteen grandchildren called her (it means 'grandma').

She pronounced 'celery' as though it were spelled 'saturday'.

The night before her quadruple bypass surgery, my aunt Salime walked into her house unnanounced. My grandmother was, as usual, pottering about in the kitchen. As my aunt approached the kitchen, she heard the oven slam shut. She walked in to find my grandmother guarding the stove, hands turned heavenward. "What! I wasn't doing anything!" Inside the oven was a 22 ounce raw steak, which my grandmother, who was supposed to be fasting in preparation for surgery, had planned on savoring for dinner.

A couple of days later, once she'd been buried, we went back into her house and found that she'd liquidated her bank account and tied the cash in a hankerchief. She had taken all of her jewelry out the safe and set it aside, and she'd donated all of her clother to goodwill. When my aunt realized that Situ had intuited that her hours were numbered, she fell to pieces as she recalled the steak that she'd wrestled away from her mother the evening before she passed away.

Situ had never learned to read or write, and her recipes were laid to rest with her soul. My greatest regret is that I never spent more time with her in her domain; her bright, warm kitchen. I bake a totally inferior version of spinach fatayer every once in a while just to keep the legacy alive, but frankly, it doesn't hold a candle to the memories of the dishes that I'll never taste again.

[Nicolai]

What a beautiful story.

I wish you happy memories of Situ....always.