FTE Kibbeh

 Note to higher-ed colleagues: by FTE I mean First Time Ever, not Full-time Equivalent

I have seen a few comments recently about food blogs, suggesting (strongly) that bloggers should skip the context-setting stories and go right to the cooking instructions. Regular readers will know that for me there is always a story, and often a complicated one, on the way to the recipe. And often there is a bit of an additional story following the food. For my very first kibbeh, this is going to be even more true than usual.

The story begins long ago and far away, with two friends who operate a restaurant in London and who had lived parallel lives in Jerusalem long before they met. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi grew up on opposite sides of the Jewish/Palestinian divide in that most divided of cities, yet as adults were connected as friends and professionals by food. For them, the cuisine of Jerusalem is one of connection, not isolation, and so they came to write Jerusalem: A Cookbook, whose simple title belies the richness of its flavors, images, and ... stories.

I know that I learned of the book from an interview on public radio, but I am not sure which one. A quick search of NPR reveals more than a dozen possibilities, mostly on a program (Salt) that is not familiar to me. So I believe it was Yotam Ottolenghi's 2015 discussion of food and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Robin Young that got my attention. (Writing paused while I listen again.)

In addition to the Robin Young interview, I recommend the Good Reads review by user Petra-X as an introduction to this popular volume. I also recommend the review by user Carol Smith. As Robin Young mentions, many people have become Jerusalem completists who cook, eat, and/or blog their way through the entire volume. Although Smith has not done that so far, she does include reviews (and photos) of many specific recipes. She has a personal policy of not posting a review of a cookbook until she can post 10 recipe reviews. In the spirit of this Nueva Receta blog, she avers that a cookbook should be removed from the shelf if the owner does not prepare at least 10 dishes from it.

All of this was in the back of my mind last week, when I realized I would have a couple of days without a lot of Zooming scheduled, and that I could reward myself by tackling a new recipe. I thumbed through Jerusalem, looking for only a modest challenge. I found it on page 160 in a recipe for "open kibbeh," described as a very nontraditional variation on kibbeh itself. True to form for Ottolenghi and co-author Sami Tamimi, the recipe is preceded by a full page entitled "The capital of kibbeh" that describes this food as a perfect exemplar of a food that crosses boundaries. I learned that I am far from alone in not knowing what kibbeh actually is -- or in being uncertain about its spelling: kibbeh, kubbbeh, and kobeba are offered as options.

The open kebbeh is a dramatic departure in form, as traditional kibbeh is a deep-fried ball of ground meat, bulgur wheat, and spices, and this was to be a pie made with similar ingredients. The recipe calls for a springform pan, but ours was in the wrong house, and I decided that since the ancient Israelites had no springform pans, I could do without one as well. Of course, they would not have made this as a pie, but still ... I oiled one of our indispensable cast-iron pans and got to work preparing the bottom crust. 

This was the simplest of crusts -- I soaked one cup of fine bulger in one cup of water while I prepared the rest of the dish. I mixed in a little salt, pepper, white flour and water and then pressed this thin dough into the bottom of the pan. Because it was a little wet, I actually put it in the oven (400F) for a few minutes before adding the meat mixture.

The recipe calls for lamb, but I used free-range ground turkey from Vermont that was delivered by our local dairy. I cooked onions, garlic and a hot pepper in olive oil until very soft -- in another indispensable cast-iron skillet, of course -- and then removed them to a bowl so that I could brown the turkey in the same pan. I then returned the aromatics to the pan and added pine nuts, cinnamon, coriander, allspice (except I did not really, because again, wrong house), and cilantro. Once this was nicely melded, I spooned it onto the crust and baked for 20 minutes.

While it was baking, I whisked together tahini paste, water, and lemon juice to make a thin sauce that is a sesame equivalent of almond butter. I had never cooked with tahini sauce, and in fact had done an image search before shopping so that I would have a better chance of finding it at the local grocery -- this proved to be an essential, step, as it was fairly well hidden. I removed the kibbeh from the oven and smoothed the sauce over top. I sprinkled it with more pine nuts and parsley and baked for another 12 minutes. I then turned the heat down to keep the dish warm until Pam was ready to join me for dinner. 

Open Kibbeh

We pronounced the result to be as delicious as it was nutritious. I look forward to cooking more. I was reminded of the excellent food we enjoyed in Jordan while visiting our partner university at Tafila -- well within the realm of Jerusalem's influence -- during our brief 2017 visit. In just a few days, the emphasis on healthy oils, lean meats, and grains had left me feeling as vigorous as our hosts were generous and amiable.

Coincidences 

It turns out that I prepared this dish on a rather ignoble day for the region from which it comes to us. During the last gasps of his term as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo visited the West Bank with a disruptive mission. He became the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit one of the contentious -- and internationally scorned -- settlement, where he was feted with wine bearing his name on the label, to celebrate his role in providing cover for the illegal occupation of the land from which it was produced.

This visit was in stark contrast with the work my geography students were doing, as they studied the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of The Lemon Tree, a novel based on a true story of friendship across that bitter divide. Although the book was published in 2007 and I started using it in my teaching in 2012 -- when the author visited our campus -- I continue to assign it every semester because at this point in the semester I start to receive the student papers, and invariably some of the students actually thank me for assigning it. In a similar vein, I recommend the story of Assel Street in East Jerusalem.

Lagniappe

I cannot think of kibbeh without thinking of my late friend Khalil, who introduced me to it -- in the Brazilian Amazon of all places. During my first visit to Rondônia in 1996 -- and my only extended stay so far -- I frequently visited his family. His wife was a professor in the Department of Letters that was my academic home, and they lived near the house where I rented a room from one of the other professors. 

Our visits involved learning to dance with the three generations of fabulous dancers in that family, and learning about food from Khalil. He did not dance, but he cooked. He had come to Brazil from Lebanon in a prior generation, and was a sometime Middle Eastern grocer. He delighted in making me kibbe (see - yet another spelling) and other dishes from the Levant; and he knew that inviting me to prepare food would be a way for me not just to return the favor, but to share something of myself. I still remember the discussion as we planned a dinner of spaghetti and chicken -- which ultimately made me a minor celebrity for a while. I had not yet cooked or been to a proper grocery store, and had no idea what I would be able to find. One by one, I asked about ingredients I had not seen anybody use during my stay. In answer to each one, he would nod solemnly and proclaim, "têm" -- "they have it" -- stretching the short word to almost three syllables. 

At Casa Hayes-Boh, that is how we declare the availability of ingredients to this day: têm!