FOOD!

Most of you know that I love all things food. Eating it, making it, talking about it, etc. So it was only a matter of time before I started writing about it. Part of this entry is self-serving, because I have been treated to the most incredible meals over the course of my time here and don’t want to forget what they were or how to make them. And, why not do that while making you all insanely envious?

I should note that I’m sitting in our kitchen with the smell of cinnamon, oats, honey and nuts wafting around. I’m undertaking my first attempt to make homemade granola, emulating my mom’s delicious granola with a few substitutions. Judging by the smell, I’m not too worried that it won’t be delicious. I’m also having some lunch which is a bowl of plain yogurt (totally different from the plain yogurt in the states, which is so sugared up) with sliced banana and apple, some cardamom and honey. Yum! The yogurt here is one thing that I usually miss soon after I go home to the states. That and the plentiful, cheap spices and fresh herbs here. A whole bunch of fresh mint for 15 cents? Parsley or cilantro for 10 cents? Wonderful! I also just discovered that at our supermarket nearby, when you order ground meat, you can request parsley, onion, salt and pepper added to it for free. Is this a regular thing in the states and I just missed it? Needless to say, I’m very excited and our dinner last night was dramatically improved because of that super-spiced meat.

Anyway, back to the real purpose of this post. Over the last few months, my research has evolved into a very pleasant routine. My good friend and “partner,” we’ll call her Um Osama (mother of Osama—the name of her oldest son), is the Iraqi volunteer whom I wrote about in an earlier post, and we have continued working together. We have gotten very close over the course of these past 15 interviews, which have happened over about 8-9 visits I’ve made to her neighborhood or nearby areas. These days, I generally head over to her neighborhood, Abu Alanda, on Saturdays around noon. It’s about a half hour taxi ride to the outskirts of Amman which costs me approximately $3.25 (VERY expensive for Amman). Um Osama has explained the bus routes to me a million times but I always say that the hour and a half I save is absolutely worth the $3.25.

Once I arrive at her apartment, I sit with her husband and three kids and relax for a few minutes with a cup of coffee as Um Osama gets dressed and ready to go out. Then we head out to an apartment in the neighborhood and she briefs me on the woman/family whom I am going to meet. We carry out the interview, say our goodbyes, and then head to a second location where we repeat the process. Ideally, the interviews take about an hour each. Usually by about halfway through the second interview Um Osama’s phone begins ringing constantly because her husband is calling. This means lunch is ready. I think the pace of the second half of the second interview is generally noticeably faster, because we are both hungry and anticipating the delicious meal we are about to enjoy.

We enter the apartment and Um Osama and I usually go straight to the kitchen to check out the final product. Abu Osama has put the finishing touches on the meal that Um Osama started hours before, which might be making a pot of white rice, or boiling beans. I go and take my customary seat on the cushions on the floor in the living room, and the kids one by one carry in all the various items from the kitchen. It starts with an orange plastic tarp/cloth that goes on the floor to protect the carpet. There’s always a large main dish that is rice on the bottom with some sort of meat and other ingredients on top. That gets displayed on a large metal circular tray and is quite grand looking. There are also little individual bowls of salad, which include chopped cucumbers and tomatoes in a lemony dressing. There is usually also a bowl of olives, pickled vegetables or hot peppers. A bag of bread follows, and one or two other side dishes, depending on the meal.

Um Osama brings me a plate and spreads a towel on my lap (yes, I’m the only one. Even her 4 year-old daughter does not need a towel on her lap. Sad). Then we all dig in. Um Osama serves me and it is 100% guaranteed to be more than I would ideally want. What used to happen was I would eat what I had been given and as I struggled to reach the end of what was on my plate, I would turn away for a minute to the television and when I looked back, suddenly there would be more food on my plate. Um Osama would be sneakily giggling next to me. This is guaranteed to happen at least three times over the course of a meal, but I have since learned a few strategies to combat her attempts: a) my bowl stays on my lap and I don’t put it down in front of me; b) I watch her closely and whenever she reaches for more food I figure out if it is meant for me or her and pre-empt her move; c) when I want to turn away from her or look at the television, I pull my bowl closer to my chest or even lift it up so she can’t reach it. The family thinks this is pretty hilarious.

This might sound a bit ridiculous, and you might be thinking “What’s the big deal, just eat the food if it’s so delicious, it’s not like it’s life or death here.” Which is true. But really, it’s rude to leave food on my plate, especially when I know that this family pulled together such an elaborate meal on my behalf, one which they cannot necessarily afford. So at a certain point I have to really ensure that she doesn’t give me more food because I am utterly sure I cannot eat another bite. This becomes a true contest of wills because Um Osama’s goal is to get me to eat as much as possible, to fatten me up (her words), whereas my goal is to stop eating when I am full. It’s become a pretty funny, well-acknowledged joke at these meals by this point. At a recent interview, Um Osama had said she didn’t want any coffee from our host but the woman brought her a small cup anyway. Um Osama made sure to drink the whole cup but, lo and behold, when she turned her head, the host poured more coffee from her own cup into Um Osama’s cup. I watched this happen and began laughing hysterically, and Um Osama and I had a great moment in our private joke as I made a face to her that said “Now you know how it feels!!”

This last week at lunch I met Um Osama’s mother for the first time. She usually lives with Um Osama’s family but had spent the last few months with another daughter in a different area of Amman. I was slightly relieved when she sat next to me at lunch and I thought I would be safe from Um Osama’s advances. How silly of me. Um Osama hopped up from her spot next to her mother and came to sit on my other side. Now, not only did I still have Um Osama on one side, but I had her mother on my other side, who, you will not be surprised to hear, is exactly the same! Of course, like mother like daughter. It was pretty hysterical, with food magically appearing on my plate from both sides.

After the main course the kids carry all of the dishes into the kitchen, wrap up the tablecloth, and clear everything away. Tea is brought out a few minutes later. Um Osama learned soon after we became friends that I like only one teaspoon of sugar in my tea, unlike her and most Iraqis, who fill the (tiny) cup at least a third of the way with sugar. All that sugar does make it quite delicious, but it’s a bit much for me. What follows is a stream of various sweets and fruits. I never really know when the supply will end, and once it included juice, soda, cookies, oranges, and salted nuts. All this after the huge meal! Um Osama always peels the oranges and hands them to me, which is a perfect tactic to make me eat them because how could I refuse and make her waste them? She also insists on how healthy they are and the fact that it’s really nothing to eat, no need to worry. She’s good. This last week with Um Osama’s mother as a new addition, she was the one supplying all the goodies. It was hilarious because she apparently had a stash hidden away in the corner and every minute just kept pulling out a new plastic bag, slowly and noisily untying it, and putting it in front of me. Um Osama joked that her mother practically had a whole convenience store tucked away behind her.

So many sweets!

By this point in the day it’s usually about six o’clock and I am exhausted. They always offer for me to stay over and try to convince me to sleep there, but I refuse and head out within an hour or so back to my apartment. Quite a day!

I just want to qualify that while some of the above descriptions may be somewhat sarcastic or seem negative, they are definitely not. I am so appreciative of this family’s hospitality, the way that they have taken me in and, despite their incredibly strained economic circumstances, shown me such generosity. They will not accept anything from me, not reimbursement for transportation for the project, not contribution of groceries for the meals, not an invitation to dinner with me at a restaurant. This can be frustrating because I so want to reciprocate their generosity, and I know that I have the means to do so. I usually buy something on my way to their house under the pretense of it being for the kids, so that Um Osama will accept it. She feigns anger when she sees that I am carrying shopping bags (I know that it’s not real anger because I saw the real thing when I once managed to pay for our shared taxi—I don’t dare try that one again) but then takes them and puts them away. I started buying little snack foods that I saw the kids love to eat. Even though I absolutely don’t want to encourage them to eat these gross packaged sweets and snacks, I know that it’s something they want and are going to eat, and they are also relatively expensive. So, if I can save the family a few JD per week and save Um Osama the moment of when her kids ask for chips and she doesn’t have the cash for them, then at least it’s something.

I got myself a bit off track there describing our funny Saturday routine, but I am determined to actually talk a bit about the food. Iraqi food is becoming my favorite of the Arab cuisines, beating out Egyptian and Jordanian for sure, and currently in a tie with Lebanese and Syrian. So far I have eaten a number of different dishes at Um Osama or other Iraqi friends’ houses: dolma, biryani, kabsa, kebab, lentil soup, another soup with a name I can never remember—shulgum hamud?, lubia, fetta, and some others that I know I am forgetting

A recent dish that Um Osama made was yellow rice, chicken that had been boiled and then pan-fried, and then peanuts and raisins that had been pan-fried. It was spectacular.

Rice, chicken and pan-fried peanuts and raisins, served with salad, yogurt, and fetta (bread soaked in chicken broth)

Others use red rice, which is rice cooked with some tomato paste to give it the red color and more flavor. Last week she cooked up rice with little noodles (like you might find in chicken soup) that we ate with a pseudo-stew with tomatoes and tomato paste, potatoes, garlic, and ground beef.

Abu Osama’s favorite dish is very simple but amazingly delicious: a special type of beans (they’re small and white, with a little black spot on the end) that you boil in water; when they are cooked, you take torn up pita bread and soak it in the leftover water. Put the bread as a base on a tray, pour the cooked beans on top, drizzle the whole thing with lemon juice, and garnish with quartered raw onions. You eat it with your hands, using either the soaked bread or slices of the onion as a tool to pick up the beans (I was made fun of the whole meal as I struggled to eat with my hands). It’s delicious!

white beans boiled then served over bread with onions and lemon, served with rice with noodles, salads, and a tomato stew/soup with potatoes and ground beef

One of my first meals with Um Osama she made a dish (I think it’s dolma) that had a base of rice with stuffed vegetables on top. She had cored eggplants, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and eggplants and filled them with rice and seasonings, and then cooked the whole business with rice.

Stuffed eggplants, tomatoes, zucchinis, onions over rice with side salads, white rice, pickled vegetables, fried meat dumplings, and a tomato stew with meat

Another dish is made by layering on the bottom of a pot eggplant, potatoes, and tomatoes, and then filling the top with rice and special biryani spices. You fill it with water and let it cook slowly for hours, and by the end everything has cooked through and the rice has expanded beautifully. This is a one fun to watch being made because as a last step, the chef (Um Osama) takes this huge pot, puts the large metal tray on top of it, and flips them over. When she removes the pot, if everything worked out, then you have a gorgeous cylindrical creation with all the vegetables right on top. (Not pictured)

There is a soup that I have had a couple of times now that I just love. The base is water and tomatoes, with potatoes and turnips and a green leafy vegetable just like spinach. Then, there are these delicious dumpling-like things that have ground beef on the inside surrounded by a coating of bulgur cracked-wheat. They are almost like a dumpling/meatball but quite healthy. The soup is delicious and they say very good for your health. When one of my other good Iraqi friends heard that I had a bad cold last month, she made a batch of the soup for me and ordered me to pick it up on my way home. I protested and only accepted when she insisted, but secretly I was delighted.

There is another dish that I have had a couple of times now called bamia. It also has a base of water and tomatoes, and then boiled ochra and chicken, seasoned with garlic and lemon. I actually tried making it here and while it was quite different from all the bamias I’ve had that were made by Iraqis, I was proud that at least I had turned this creepy vegetable, fresh ochra (if you haven’t ever cut one open, try it. They are filled with slime) into something edible and even yummy. The funny thing about Iraqi food is that if you eat it it is incredibly delicious, and if you hear how to make it, it sounds incredibly simple. But beware, it’s never actually that simple.

Time to take my granola out of the oven!