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kaif naqul 'hipster' bil'arabiya?
Jul. 7th, 2011 08:36 pmNormally, I am very much in favor of traditional foodways, calling dishes what they are, and being authentic, or reasonably so, in my making of dishes. I think there's a lot of playing fast-and-loose with the names of traditional foods, particularly traditional foods that belong to groups who don't have high social status, and this strikes me as a real problem of representation for minority communities. Without giving in to the idea that there is one "right" way to prepare a dish--think of any "traditional" dish you know and the level of infighting that goes on whenever two cooks discuss it--I do think that dishes have a certain shape, and deviating too much from that shape results in doing a discredit to the original dish.
This leads to my problem with fava beans.
Fava beans (broad beans in British English, as Jamie Oliver taught me) are a staple food in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Egyptian falafel is made with both fava beans and chickpeas, unlike Levantine falafel. And the quintessential Egyptian dish (maybe tied with koshary) is fuul mudammas, a fava bean puree served for breakfast. There are a million iterations, though this is the one you're most likely to encounter abroad, and is probably the 'meta' recipe. (I've written about fuul here before.) I love fuul, and frequently order it when I go out to Arab restaurants with other people who eat Arab food (I do find a plate of it to myself a bit much, but if I can mix it up with other things--fried cauliflower! baba ghanouj! falafel!--I'm set). In fact, I even own a magnet that says "foul addict," even though that is my least favorite transliteration of the word fuul.
Anyway, the point is, fuul are awesome. And confusing, because when we get fava beans in the US, we get this:
And that's not what you put in fuul. (Wikipedia tells me these are fuul akhdar, green fuul, in Arabic; I'll rely on those more knowledgeable than me to confirm or deny this in comments!) The only places I've found where you can get dried brown fuul are Arab grocery stores. (These are the type I mean; these are a fine substitute, just bigger.)
But I'm a locavore and a seasonable eater--OK, I'm an overeducated urban hipster, okay? So nowadays, the fresh fava beans are at the market, taunting me with their skins. Today I bought a fistful of them. After I peeled, blanched, and peeled them (fresh favas are annoying to cook!), I wracked my brain to come up with a way to prepare them, especially since I had less than a cup.
Hey, I though: why don't I pretend they're fuul?
( cut for photos and recipe details )
Of course, this got me thinking about Egyptian food, which reminded me I had a full pitcher of cold, unsweetened karkade in the fridge. Karkade is a tea made with hibiscus flowers; if you've ever had jamaica in a Mexican restaurant, it's the same thing. (Here is a great video of it being made, with a transcript available on the page if you don't want to/can't listen to the video.) Karkade is traditionally served tooth-meltingly sweet in Egypt, but I usually leave it just barely sweetened, or, er, forget to put sugar in until after it's gotten cold, at which point it's just not worth the trouble.
Mmm, red.
I knew that karkade had alcoholic possibilities, but lacked the tequila for making the margaritas. So, looking around my sad, pathetic liquor stash, I decided to play around. I settled on the peach schnapps--what? Stop laughing! Peach schnapps is delicious and I will not have you tell me otherwise! I don't care that it tastes like cough syrup! Anyway, it doesn't, it tastes like those gummy peach rings I can't eat any more since I'm a vegetarian, OKAY, SO LET ME JUST DRINK MY CHILDISH BOOZE.
Ahem. Anyway. Here's the thing: peach schnapps and karkade is freakin' amazing. It's like drinking red fruit punch made by angels. It might be the most delicious alcoholic beverage I've ever consumed. I stopped myself from fixing a second one, because, you know, I had things to do tonight. But I think that's going to be the signature cocktail for the party I'm making the fresh fuul salad for.
These are highly, highly untraditional uses of traditional ingredients. And I don't want to present them as traditional ways of making these dishes. Karkade is not, usually, made with alcohol. Fuul mudammas should be made with little brown favas, not monstrous green ones. This, sayyidun wa sayyidat, is what happen when hipsters cook.
But putting little twists on these dishes is certainly interesting cooking--and, just like when we are transforming ideas in academia, as long as we cite our sources and indicate our deviations, I don't think the problems here are insurmountable.
This leads to my problem with fava beans.
Fava beans (broad beans in British English, as Jamie Oliver taught me) are a staple food in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Egyptian falafel is made with both fava beans and chickpeas, unlike Levantine falafel. And the quintessential Egyptian dish (maybe tied with koshary) is fuul mudammas, a fava bean puree served for breakfast. There are a million iterations, though this is the one you're most likely to encounter abroad, and is probably the 'meta' recipe. (I've written about fuul here before.) I love fuul, and frequently order it when I go out to Arab restaurants with other people who eat Arab food (I do find a plate of it to myself a bit much, but if I can mix it up with other things--fried cauliflower! baba ghanouj! falafel!--I'm set). In fact, I even own a magnet that says "foul addict," even though that is my least favorite transliteration of the word fuul.
Anyway, the point is, fuul are awesome. And confusing, because when we get fava beans in the US, we get this:
And that's not what you put in fuul. (Wikipedia tells me these are fuul akhdar, green fuul, in Arabic; I'll rely on those more knowledgeable than me to confirm or deny this in comments!) The only places I've found where you can get dried brown fuul are Arab grocery stores. (These are the type I mean; these are a fine substitute, just bigger.)
But I'm a locavore and a seasonable eater--OK, I'm an overeducated urban hipster, okay? So nowadays, the fresh fava beans are at the market, taunting me with their skins. Today I bought a fistful of them. After I peeled, blanched, and peeled them (fresh favas are annoying to cook!), I wracked my brain to come up with a way to prepare them, especially since I had less than a cup.
Hey, I though: why don't I pretend they're fuul?
( cut for photos and recipe details )
Of course, this got me thinking about Egyptian food, which reminded me I had a full pitcher of cold, unsweetened karkade in the fridge. Karkade is a tea made with hibiscus flowers; if you've ever had jamaica in a Mexican restaurant, it's the same thing. (Here is a great video of it being made, with a transcript available on the page if you don't want to/can't listen to the video.) Karkade is traditionally served tooth-meltingly sweet in Egypt, but I usually leave it just barely sweetened, or, er, forget to put sugar in until after it's gotten cold, at which point it's just not worth the trouble.
Mmm, red.
I knew that karkade had alcoholic possibilities, but lacked the tequila for making the margaritas. So, looking around my sad, pathetic liquor stash, I decided to play around. I settled on the peach schnapps--what? Stop laughing! Peach schnapps is delicious and I will not have you tell me otherwise! I don't care that it tastes like cough syrup! Anyway, it doesn't, it tastes like those gummy peach rings I can't eat any more since I'm a vegetarian, OKAY, SO LET ME JUST DRINK MY CHILDISH BOOZE.
Ahem. Anyway. Here's the thing: peach schnapps and karkade is freakin' amazing. It's like drinking red fruit punch made by angels. It might be the most delicious alcoholic beverage I've ever consumed. I stopped myself from fixing a second one, because, you know, I had things to do tonight. But I think that's going to be the signature cocktail for the party I'm making the fresh fuul salad for.
These are highly, highly untraditional uses of traditional ingredients. And I don't want to present them as traditional ways of making these dishes. Karkade is not, usually, made with alcohol. Fuul mudammas should be made with little brown favas, not monstrous green ones. This, sayyidun wa sayyidat, is what happen when hipsters cook.
But putting little twists on these dishes is certainly interesting cooking--and, just like when we are transforming ideas in academia, as long as we cite our sources and indicate our deviations, I don't think the problems here are insurmountable.
