As many of you know, I am a foodie of sorts-some (*ahem* Yassine) would call me a slow-food activist. I am particularly interested in the connections between food, culture, and politics and have written a lot about the foods of Gaza in specific and Palestine in general. Here is a short video I made using my flip of my mom (who is still visiting us in the US) demonstrating how to cook Rummaniya, an unusual Gazan vegetarian dish made from the unlikely combination of sour pomegranates, eggplants and lentils. In the process, she gets a little homesick and emotional. FYI: the poem she recites in the end is attributed to a Imam Shafi’i, a Muslim jurist whose teaching eventually led to the Shafi’i school of fiqh named after him. It is said he was born and raised in Gaza and missed it so much after leaving that he wrote this poem.
Rummaniya is a seasonal dish, made just before pomegranates are fully ripe in the fall. It is traditionally considered a “poor man’s food” because it is meatless and consists of cheap legumes and vegetables. You would be hard-pressed to find it in any restaurant (but hey-maybe one day at cafe Laila’s! 
.
The finished product
Here is the recipe for those interested:
Rummaniya
1 cup brown lentils
3 small eggplants (if they are big, one really big one, or two medium ones, or 1/2 kg)
3 sour pomegranates if you really can’t find them anywhere, you can use a few Tablespoons of pomegranate molasses, found at most Middle Eastern grocers.
1/2 cup flour
1 small onion, diced
2 T. Tahini
3 cloves garlic
2 whole dried red chili (or dried chili flakes)
1 teaspoon caraway seed
¼ tsp ground cumin
1 T. dried dill seed
1-2 tsps salt
1. Boil lentils in water until cooked.
2. Remove pomegranate seeds, put them in a blender; puree and strain, reserving juice. Set aside.
3. Cut unpeeled eggplant into cubes.
4. In a mortar and pestle (we call them zibdiya in Gaza, basically an unglazed clay/earthen bowl; if you can’t find them, use a mini-food processor), crush salt, dill seed, garlic, and chili. Set aside.
5. Saute chopped onion in some olive oil until golden brown; add eggplant until wilted and soft; add lentils; boil for a few minutes until well-mixed.
6. Mix pomegranate juice (or pomegranate molasses diluted in a few T. water) with flour until well-mixed, then slowly add to stew on stove-top while mixing.
7. Add crushed spices to stew and mix well until thickened.
8. When thickened, add Tahini, mix through for 5 minutes, and turn off heat. Pour into bowls and allow to cool before putting in fridge.
Top with extra-virgin olive oil, and garnish with pomegranate seeds if available. Serve with Kmaj/Arabic bread.
Closed Zone
You Are NOT here
A while ago, I blogged about a meta-tourism project created by my friend, media artist Mushon Zer Aviv, called You Are Not Here (YANH), a play on the directional “You are HERE” found on maps everywhere.
YANH is an urban tourism mash-up. It takes place in the streets of one city and invites participants to become meta-tourists of another city. The way it works is : You download a map, take your phone with you and go tour Gaza through the streets of Tel Aviv or Baghdad through the streets of New York. It started as a tour of Baghdad through the streets of NY, a project dreamed up by Mushon and some of his colleagues while a graduate student at NYU’s ITP program.
I collaborated with Mushon on the Gaza iteration of the project, writing and recording the locations in Gaza City. The project was presented in many an exhibit, including Rotterdam’s Digital Electronic Art Festival and Istanbul’s Akbank Gallery. During the past few months, we updated the sites and recordings to reflect the current reality, and re-launched the tour for a theater exhibition at the (first) ArtTLV biennial in Tel Aviv.
Reuters, Haaretz, and the Abu Dhabi National and the Dutch NOSJOURNAAL (use google translate for this piece) among others covered the re-launch (links below).
Re-recording the locations was a very strange, very emotional experience, something that is mirrored in the tour itself. Its been a while since I’ve been able to return to Gaza, and so much has changed that I feel like a stranger-one that is nevertheless intimately familiar-with this city, this place I call home. So relying on my own personal knowledge and experience, and filling in the details with the help of my parents, Wikimapia, and some research of our own, we pieced together the most accurate descriptions we could. I tried to make the recordings as intimate and as colorful as possible-I really wanted to disorient the listener/walker, challenge their commonly held perceptions and their relationship to Gaza, all while reflecting the current reality.
As we made clear to all media outlets we spoke with: this is NOT a normalization initiative (if you didn’t catch it, notice the deliberately broken beach umbrella in the project’s logo above, created by our colleague Dan Phiffer). As one of the journalists covering the project put it, the tour serves to “create an association in the mind of the listener-to momentarily disorient the tourist and then reorient them with a new perspective—one that includes Gaza as part of their consciousness.”
You can read more about our thoughts in the articles above. I’ve also provided a sample recordings below. If they are not working, you can also access that at the YANH website itself. Enjoy!
Tunnel Trade wins Noor Award for best short doc!
We have just learned that Tunnel Trade, the film I co-directed with my friend and colleague Saeed Farouky of Tourist with a Typewriter Ltd, in 2007, has won a Noor Award for Outstanding Short Documentary at the Arab Film Festival in San Francisco.
Our trophy, send to the Tourist team in London via Fedex
Michel Shehadeh, executive director of of the AFF, says of the Festival: “Each year [it] offers inspiring stories and images through films that illuminate Arab lives and present authentic narratives as well as provide insights into the beauty, talent and diversity of Arab culture. The Noor Awards shine a special light on filmmakers from the Arab world and from the Arab diaspora who break new artistic and cultural grounds. This award recognizes their artistic excellence and their work at building cultural, artistic and human bridges. These are filmmakers who receive little visibility in the United States.”
We finished shooting the film in early June, amidst heavy Palestinian infighting that paralyzed Gaza City for days at a time, only a few short days before the Hamas-Fateh riff came to its ugly conclusion; as Saeed and I like to point out, we filmed the tunnels at a time when filming tunnels was “real”-when even talking about the tunnels was still a very dangerous business. In fact, we had our tapes and gear confiscated on two separate occasions, and Saeed got a gun to his head once (had it not been for the quick thinking, adept skills of our driver & occasional security adviser Maher, and our dear Friend and consultant on the film Fida, one of us surely would have been at least injured, and the film non-existent) all while I was pregnant with Noor (I guess that makes the award all the more appropriate!). People trusted no one in tunnel territory-not their neighbors, not the tunnel diggers, not the Israelis, not the Palestinian security, and certainly not two random Palestinian filmmakers from abroad.
Nowadays, filming tunnels (or facilitating the filming of tunnels) is as profitable a business as digging them; hand any Ahmed a few greenbacks and your good to go (of course the higher up the ranks in the system, the more they ask especially if you are CNN or BBC, as we kept getting asked). The tunnels themselves have since also become a necessary trade route what with the ongoing siege, transporting everything from sheep to deconstructed cars and even plastic chairs (before, the two most profitable and transported items were cigarettes and spark plugs, with processed cheeses a distant third).
Other winners included:
Eye of the Sun (full length fiction, Egypt 2008) by Ibrahim El Batout was selected as the Noor Award winner for outstanding fiction feature.
CasaNegra (Morocco, 2008) by Nour-Eddine Lakhmari received an honorable mention for fiction feature.
In the best short fiction category Fatenah (Palestine, 2009) directed by Ahmad Habash was selected.
The honorable mention was presented to This Palestinian Life (Palestine, 2008) directed by my friend Philip Rizk.
Tea on the Axis of Evil (Syria, 2009) by Jean Marie Offenbacher, was selected as the Noor Award winner for outstanding documentary.
On extremists, moderates, and us
Event: Israel/Palestine Blogger Panel, Washington DC
Ramadan Recipes: Meatless Baqla Stew with Chickpeas
Purslane, also known as Baqla (Bagla in Gazan colloquial) is considered one of the most nutritious wild greens on the planet, boasting an impressive 300 to 400 mg of alpha-linolenic acid (more than any other leafy plant) per cup, according to Wikipedia. It is also an excellent source of calcium, potassium, and Vitamin A.
Considered an old-world, drought-resistant green, it grows in the wild in Palestine between rocky shrubs though it can also be found rooting extensively near pools of water. It is much more difficult to find in the U.S., so you will probably have to do some gathering (I once found a hearty bunch next to a tree near the Vienna/Nutley metro in Northern VA.). Most people here consider it a pesky and resilient weed and will be more than happy to have someone uproot it from their gardens. Ask around your local farmer’s market.
Baqla is most commonly eaten raw, roughly minced and added to Fattoush, the popular Levantian Ramadan bread salad.
Ever the naturalist, my father sought new ways to cook Baqla. So he consulted the falla7a he buys his baladi (organic) eggs, chickens, pigeons, and herbs from in the Nusseirat refugee camp Tuesday Market in Central Gaza. What follows is her orally transmitted recipe, again with some of our own modifications. Simple vegetarian recipes such as these utilizing wild green and legumes have a rich culinary history amongst the falla7een in Palestinian cuisine.
Fresh Baqla Stew made with some Baqla I picked from a friend's garden
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch Purslane, washed and roughly chopped (discard tough stems only; keep soft stems)
4 cloves garlic, ground/mashed with 1 tsp salt in mortar and pestle or mini-food processor
2 medium tomatoes, finely diced
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 T. fresh cilantro, minced
Red pepper flakes to taste
Olive Oil
Sautee onion until tender and yellow in 2 T. olive oil.
Add Purslane until just wilted.
Add crushed garlic-salt mixture and stir.
Stir in tomatoes and chickpeas and simmer for 5 minutes.
Stir in cilantro, pinch of pepper flakes, and serve warm with Kmaj. Adjust seasonings to taste
On strange encounters with the other side
Ramadan Recipes: Atayif
Qatayif, or as they are pronounced in colloquial Arabic, Atayif, are a confection that make their welcome presence in the Holy month of Ramadan. Though they are not unique to Gaza, any Ramadan recipes collection would be incomplete without them.
In most of the Middle East, the pancake dough for the Atayif can be purchased ready-made in almost any confectionery store (in fact you will be hard pressed to find someone who makes them at home). In Gaza, street vendors pop up all over the place around maghrib time (sunset), selling everything you need to make Atayif: the pancakes (already cooked), the stuffing, and if you are in a rush-they even sell them pre-fried or stuffed. They are quite the experts at mixing and pouring out the batter out of conical containers that create the perfect consistency.
I got this recipe from one such vendor in Khanyounis several years ago, with some adjustments. True Atayif should be made with extra fine semolina flour, but this is almost impossible to find in the US (if one uses what is available, the resulting pancake will break apart once you try to stuff it).
3 1/2 cups flour
3 cups warm water
1/2 cup powdered milk
1 T. yeast
2 T. sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp mistka* (mastic gum), crushed in a mortar and pestle (optional)
1/8 tsp ground mahlab* (optional)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup warm water
* These items can be found at any Middle Eastern grocer
Mix all ingredients EXCEPT baking soda and 1/2 cup warm water in a blender until smooth. You should have a medium batter, a littler thinner than pancake batter. Let rise for one hour or until doubled in volume. Stir with spoon to deflate. Mix baking soda and water, and stir into batter at this point. Batter should resemble crepe batter more than it does pancake batter at this point.
Warm griddle (or good quality frying pan with thick base, such as a cast-iron skillet, if you don’t have a griddle) to medium heat.
Pour about 2 T. worth of batter onto the griddle and quickly spread out evenly with base of spoon.
Once little bubbles form and began to pop and the top of the pancake dries out (doesn’t need to dry out 100%) remove and set aside to cool on a kitchen towel.
Try a couple of test ones first. If Atayif seem too thick, add 1-2 T. warm water and mix.
Makes roughly 30 pancakes.
Tips:
* Do not put too much better or the pancake will be too think and you will have a hard time folding it when stuffing time comes
* Spreading out the batter on the griddle helps make sure it will be thin and pliable enough to fold and stuff. But make sure it is not too thin or the pancake won’t close when you fold it.
*Make sure they don’t cook too quickly or they will be too hard from the bottom and uncooked from the top.
*Do NOT use cooking spray on the frying pan (if it is non-stick) or the atayif will be really hard to close
The ideal Atayif should be pale, pliable, and about half a cm in thickness. It should NOT be heavily browned or thick.
Stuff immediately. Traditional stuffings in Palestine are either sweetened Nabusli goat cheese or crushed walnuts. My grandfather, rest his soul, used to prefer a cooked custard stuffing (muhallabia). You can experiment with different kinds of sweet cheeses and stuffings of your own.
Cheese stuffing
Crumble together with a fork or your hand:
1 cup sweet white cheese, such as Nabusli (if salted, de-salt by soakign in warm water), or a mixture of shredded mozzarella and ricotta cheeses;
2 T. sugar
1 T. rosewater or orange blossom water (maward or mazahir)
Nut stuffing
Mix together in food processor until medium-coarse:
2 cups walnuts
3 T. sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 T. rosewater or orange blossom water
Mix in by hand:
3 T. raisins, or as desired
To stuff:
Fold together either end of the pancake and pinch closed with thumb and forefinger. Continue to close about 1/3 of the pancake together. Spoon in about 1 tsp of the stuffing, depending on the size of the pancake, then close completely and firmly, making sure it is properly sealed. Do NOT over stuff, particularly if using cheese stuffing.
To cook:
*Qatayif are traditionally deep-fired, but I prefer to bake them. Feel free to fry a few if you have the stomach for it!
Melt 2 Tablespoons butter. Add 1 T. canola oil. Brush each Atayif with the butter-oil mixture and place in a non-stick pan (or baking sheet coated with cooking spray). Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes or until well browned. Broil last 5 minutes if not browned from top.
Serve with honey or the traditional way, by plopping each Atayif into a bowl of cold syrup (recipe follows) immediately when they come out of the oven to ensure proper absorption.
Syrup (Qatir)
Bring to boil then simmer for 5 minutes in saucepan:
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tsp. lemon juice
Take off heat and add:
1 tsp rosewater or orange blossom water (I like to add both).
Allow to cool completely, or even refrigerate.
Street vendors making Atayif in Palestine
Ramadan Recipe #1: Palestinian kmaj/bread
I promised (on my twitter…which if you’re not following-well, shame on you! do it now!) that i would be supplying a recipe a day in honor of Ramadan, with a focus on the unusual and oft-overlooked cuisine of Gaza. Its more likely to be every few days, and though I said I’d start with Meatless Wild Baqla Stew, today I’m just going to begin with kmaj, كماج or خبز عربي freshly baked Arabic bread. It differs from its Lebanese variant in both texture and content (Lebanese bread is paper thin and traditionally made from white flour).
We (meaning my mother and father-who have successfully made it through Rafah Crossing and here to the U.S.-I’ll save that story for another post-, and myself who usually bake it together) like to give it an Egyptian twist (for those who haven’t had subsidized Egypt wheat bread-delic) by baking it on a generous layer of wheat bran.
We also make it in the traditional (pre-industrialization) Palestinian method-with whole spring wheat (a softer grain of wheat that is most commonly used in Europe and the Middle East) or a mixture of whole wheat and white flours (”white bread”, when it first made its debut in Gaza, according to my father, was considered a decadent treat eaten as a dessert would. Sadly, it has come to replace the more nutritious and filling whole wheat flour as the grain of choice due its refined and sweeter taste).
Freshly baked Kmaj we made last week
The true mark of success when baking kmaj is what I call the “puff factor”-when the bread puffs up, creating the trademark “pocket”. We have experimented for years with the best method to achieve this in Western ovens, and finally have come up with a fool-proof way adapted from a woman who bakes bread for my mother in Gaza. It involves first heating the dough on a griddle as one would a chapati and then placing it in the oven.
I don’t generally use strict measurements in my cooking, particularly when it comes to making bread, but I will give it a try. Let your senses guide you if something doesn’t go according to plan!
Measure and whisk together in a bowl either:
5 cups whole white wheat flour or spring wheat (the softer wheat grain traditionally used in the Middle East, which you can find sold as a 5lb package by Arthur’s or in the bulk section of natural food stores, which label it “organic spring flour” or “organic bread flour”; look for the “spring wheat” in the ingredients list).
Have a bowl of wheat bran (also found in said natural food stores bulk sections) ready handy and set aside for now.
Add:
1 T. yeast
1 T. sugar
1 T. salt
3 T. Olive oil
Gradually mix in, a little bit at a time and starting with just 1 cup and adding more only if necessary:
2-3 cups warm water
Start by mixing dough by hand, then kneading with the palm of your hand or your knuckle, turning the dough over, and kneading again. Continue kneading until the dough forms a ball (i.e. does not stick to the sides of the bowl anymore). Do not over-knead. Pat top of dough with some olive oil.
Leave to rise in draft-free place for one hour or until doubled in volume. Punch dough down, knead gently for one minute and form into a ball; let rest for twenty minutes.
Form palm sized balls from the dough and pinch ends; place on well-floured surface-or a surface sprinkled with a generous layer of wheat bran*- and let rest for 10-20 minutes. Roll dough balls out to about 1/2 cm thickness. Cover and let rest for at least 20 minutes and up to overnight (this is the way they traditionally do it in Palestine-they let the flattened dough at this stage to rest overnight to allow a more complex flavor to develop).
Pre-heat conventional oven to 500 degrees or highest available setting. At the same time, preheat an electric or stove-top griddle to medium-high heat.
Prepare baking sheets (baking stones if you have them!) by sprinkling them with bran to prevent sticking.
Begin baking by placing rolled doughs on top of griddle. Wait a few minutes-or until small sore-like “craters” begin to form, then quickly remove half-baked breads and move to baking sheets. Quickly place in pre-heated oven and bake for a few minutes or until bread puffs up.
Take bread out and cover with a towel or sheet to prevent the moisture from building up. Tip : nothing like warm kmaj with olive oil and zaatar!
Bil hanna wil shiffa/With Joy and Good Health !
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