Relationships Made With Food

 

As I’ve previously mentioned in a prior blog post, I’ve consistently been considered to be a fine chef in my family circle. While I’ve only shared a little bit about my cooking exploits thus far, I feel as though I should provide a little bit of context behind how I got to be a comfortable chef, along with giving credit where credit is due to the person (or rather, people) who helped me learn how to appreciate this practice. While many of the middle eastern recipes I know by heart have predominantly come from the kitchen of my late grandmother, she had passed away before she could complete teaching me how to make certain more complex dishes from our family history/heritage. With this having been said though, the annual family reunion that is held in Slater park every year allowed me to meet (and get to know) another elderly member of my clan who is highly knowledgeable in our family’s traditional recipes.  This individual, who I believe is a third cousin of mine, goes by the name Shirley. Throughout my time going to the Slater Park reunions, Shirley, my cousin Val and my Mema have always carried the burden of making certain dishes for people to feast upon while we all chat. Due to the loss of my grandma, Shirley and Val really had to step up cooking food for the family gathering(s). Given that we were in mourning of Mema for quite some time, Shirley started to pay special attention to the members of the family who were particularly close to my grandma; it was during moments like this when this individual and I started to become more acquainted. I distinctly remember one reunion where Shirley decided to bring a large batch of maamoul to the gathering. Due to the fact I was being particularly anti-social (and kind of down) that day, Shirley strutted over to me first with her container of cookies and gave me a plate full of them. Due to this kind gesture, we started chatting more often during different events after that particular day.

Eventually, our off-hand conversing (often about food) led to Shirley inviting my mom and me to her home to learn how to make some family dishes we had never attempted to create for ourselves. For instance, one of the first times we visited her home had happened during a time when I was particularly addicted to the taste(s) of maamoul and sfeeha (aka. flat meat pies). When I had voiced my want to learn how to create these two food items, Shirley didn’t hesitate to play the role of an instructor. Starting with the sfeeha, my new-found teacher began by revealing dough she had made the night before our meeting to be broken up into smaller pieces and rolled out. Once she had shown me a few times how small of a portion of dough should be used for each pie along with how to roll it out into little circles, she asked that I shape the majority of the rest of the sfeeha bottoms by myself (while she watched over my shoulder). When I would make errors, she would jump in to give me verbal instructions on how to better my technique. Once we had a few trays of fillingless sfeeha bottoms ready, Shirley began showing me how to spice and cook the meat lining. This process was by far the hardest, believe it or not, as I hadn’t quite gotten used to the heavy handedness required for spicing these ethnic foods in satisfying manners. After having pushed through her critiques on my spicing abilities, Shirley asked that I cook the meat up a bit on her stovetop before adding it to the raw dough. Due to the fact that I wasn’t used to working at a stovetop at the time (as I was kind of on the younger side), I was particularly nervous about this step. However, just as she had done before in the previous steps, Shirley talked me through how to go about doing things. Once my cousin approved of the color of the lamb meat, we began adding said filling to the raw dough circles, along with putting them in the oven to better cook both components. 

While we awaited our finished sfeeha, Shirley began to teach me how to make maamoul. We started by combining all the components of the dough together then we moved on to coating whole (small) dates in a butter mixture. Immediately after this step, the fun part of the maamoul making activity using a molding spoon presented itself. During this moment, Shirley had shown me how to compact pieces of the cookie dough into the molding spoon along with adding the dates and covering said inner components up. To describe what I remember took place a little bit more in depth, after Shirley had covered up the inner filling of the maamoul, she proceed to slam the spoon down on one of her counters to ensure that the dough held its shape as a whole (along with guaranteeing that the design on the inner part of said cooking utensil would show up on the end products of the cookies); I have a great video somewhere on my phone of her slamming down the molding spoon with the force of ten men, but I’m unfortunately unable to find it. Without her having given me a whole bunch of maamoul cookies that one specific family reunion, I doubt I would have made as much of an effort to get to know her better in the long run. With this in mind, I want to circle back to a book by Elizabeth Pérez. When reading the earlier chapters of Religion in the Kitchen, there had been one particular passage that stood out to me the most. At one point, the author elaborated upon the intended purpose behind practitioners giving orishas food offerings. By using a metaphor to clarify their point, Pérez stated: 

“When Caroline’s admirer complies with her wishes, the oxtails serve as not only proof of his devotion, but also a gateway to knowledge about her. His trip to the cleaners might well have yielded the brand of cigarette Caroline smokes and the radio station she plays. This information would have paved the way for further interaction and the possibility of an ongoing relationship, assuming that the oxtails hit the spot. By offering food in addimú to the orishas, whether on festive occasions or somber ones, practitioners today attempt to cross the divide thought to separate divine other from human self. The food does not merely communicate a desire to build a relationship with the gods, it ‘can be held to constitute objects of devotion.’  Practitioners come to recognize the orishas through learning their preferences” (Pérez 56–57).

As I’ve stated above, if not for the gift of food my third cousin had given me on a day where I was particularly down, it seems unlikely that I would have made any effort to talk to her in the future. Through her past (direct) offering of food to me, we have built a lasting relationship with each other which is still ongoing in present times; one could say that her offering of maamoul to me was a “gateway to knowledge” about my person (Pérez 56–57). With the recipes I’ve learned from Shirley, I’ve continuously been able to expand my cooking repertoire along with strengthening my belief in my ability to cook for myself. Whenever I recreate one of the dishes she taught me how to make, I always make sure to send her a picture of me in the cooking process (along with sometimes setting aside parts of any given dish for her to taste test at a later date); she gets verbally excited when she sees me practicing cooking our family dishes on my own. By taking the extra step to bring her foods I’ve made by myself (based off of her recipes), I hope to continue to build our relationship in general and show Shirley my appreciation for her sage guidance.

Here's a picture of my making maamoul for the first time without any assistance from Shirley; this had been for the presentation on "taste" for last class.