Israel - At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala

At the Table: Food and Family around the World - Ken Albala (2016)

Israel

Jennifer Shutek

IFTĀR IN ARRABA: BREAKING THE RAMADAN FAST IN NORTHERN ISRAEL

Ramadan in northern Israel is one of the most vibrant, delicious, and almost claustrophobically intense times imaginable. Jennifer spent two days and one night with the family of a friend, Farah. Jennifer met her while spending the summer in Jerusalem. Farah’s family lives in Arraba, a small, predominantly Muslim-Arab council in the Lower Galilee. She kindly invited Jennifer to travel north with her for a few days and join her family for iftār. Usually Jennifer would have been invited to have dinner with them, but she would be visiting during July, which this year meant visiting during Ramadan. This is an Islamic month during which Muslims fast for the daylight hours and break their fast with a large meal after sunset; the word iftār is derived from the same Arabic root as the verb “to break fast,” or eat breakfast.

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The family sits around the table, waiting to break the fast; the window overlooks their garden and the Arab council of Arraba in the Lower Galilee. (Courtesy of Fatina Dahli Photography)

Jennifer was lucky enough to share two iftār meals with them. Each meal was unique, and in many ways her experiences throughout the two days that she spent with Farah’s family were really stories of two different iftār meals, each with its own menu, location, rituals, and ambience.

During most of the year, the preparation and consumption of food occupies an important place in many Palestinian Israeli families. Somewhat paradoxically, however, food becomes almost an obsession during the monthlong fasting of Ramadan. Not only does abstention from foods, beverages, and smoking from sunrise to sunset heighten the attention paid to eating, but each iftār meal is also a feast, requiring hours of planning, shopping, and preparation. Appreciating the significance of food during Ramadan requires discussing almost all aspects of the day, since most of people’s waking hours are spent purchasing, cleaning, and cooking food.

Food takes on heightened importance for a number of reasons. Not only is it essential for survival, but it is also a source of aesthetic pleasure, an aspect of religious practice (through the consumption of only halal foods and the abstention from alcohol), an integral part of national identity, and a key facet of Palestinian hospitality. This last factor is evident in Arab households throughout Israel, as people invite new acquaintances over for coffee nearly as soon as they have met them. It would be unthinkable to have guests visit—even briefly—without offering Arabic coffee, tea, sweets, or nuts and dried fruits.

Similarly, guests should reciprocate the hospitality when possible by bringing a gift. Jennifer’s iftārs in Arraba, then, began in Jerusalem. The hospitality of Farah’s family required a gift, a thank-you for their generosity and trust—by allowing her into their home, showing her how they prepared their meal, and having her at their dinner table, they were welcoming her into their family.

The day before they set out on the journey to Arraba, Jennifer paid a visit to Jerusalem’s Mehane Yehuda market, a bustling, vibrant cacophony of colors, smells, and sounds. She had spoken to other Palestinian Israeli friends about an appropriate gift, and they had instructed her to buy dried fruits, nuts, and, if possible, dried watermelon seeds, which were especially popular snacks. After 15 minutes in the narrow, crowded corridors of the market filled with overflowing stalls of halvah, fish, bagels, manaqeesh, spices, sweets, and olives, Jennifer settled on one of the many dried fruit and nut vendors. She bought bags of soft amber-colored dried apricots, tart rings of dried pineapple, sweet fresh dates, rich walnuts, and cream-colored cashews, which she carried on the three-hour journey from Jerusalem to Arraba.

Upon arriving at the family’s house, a white building with a sloping yard containing several olive trees and large picture windows overlooking houses, agricultural land, and a mosque, Jennifer was introduced to Farah’s family. Her two younger brothers and youngest sister, Amina, lived at home with her mother, Samar, and her father, Nasim. To Samar’s chagrin, Jennifer confirmed what Farah had told her: Jennifer is a vegetarian and would not be eating meat that evening. Three other sisters, all married, lived in nearby councils with their husbands and children and would join the family later in the evening. A newcomer and a guest, Jennifer was not privy to the dinner preparation to any great extent during the first evening. During the early evening, the family took a ride into town and then talked in the downstairs living room while Samar continued to prepare iftār. As the sun began to descend toward the horizon, the sleepy house sprang into action. The women hurried to arrange the numerous plates of food on the table set up on the second floor in time for sunset.

The adhān, or call to prayer, emerged from the minaret’s loudspeaker and fell over Arraba, signaling the oncoming sunset. A cannon sounded as the evening darkened, indicating that the fast could be broken. Samar and her daughters rushed to finish laying the table, watched impatiently by Nasim, Farah’s brothers, and two of Farah’s brothers-in-law. The eagerness with which the family watched the last few dishes adorn the table was evident. Their hunger and anticipation were clear in their attentiveness to the food before them and their irritation at any delay in eating.

The table was full of the results of Samar’s hours in the kitchen. A deep metal tray of grilled chicken sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by platters of vermicelli-laced cinnamon-scented rice topped with steaming pieces of pan-fried beef, bowls full of creamy hummus drenched in fragrant olive oil, saucières of thin sour yogurt, and a huge pan of kefta (a meatball or meatloaf, in this case made with beef, tomatoes, parsley, and potatoes). Bowls of Arabic salad, made of finely diced tomatoes, bell peppers, parsley, mint, pickles, and kernels of sweet corn, sat beside dishes of corn, mayonnaise, and dill salad, the latter being the only dish on the table that was purchased. Jennifer was also introduced to a green viscous Palestinian soup called mloukhiya. This is traditionally made using chicken broth and jute leaves, which are fibrous leaves that give a thick, gelatinous texture to the broth. At the end of the table were two-liter bottles of Coca-Cola, with white Hebrew letters scrawled across the cherry-red labels. Water, a lemon soda drink, tamarind juice, or Coca-Cola, according to each person’s preference, was poured into tiny disposable plastic cups. At each setting, the younger women and the children placed a plate decorated with floral patterns, a fork, and a spoon. On top of each plate was placed a bowl of steaming vegetable soup, and large pieces of thick pita and charred taboon bread were strewn throughout the dishes.

In theory, those observing Ramadan should break the fast by eating an odd number of dates, as this was reportedly how the Prophet Muhammad broke his fast. Dates hold culinary, cultural, and religious importance for Palestinians and are also said to provide an abundance of energy. Muslims are advised to drink some water with their dates, perhaps eat a small bowl of soup, and wait for half an hour before consuming their main meal of the day. Many will perform their evening prayer between the breaking of the fast and their iftār meal. The realities of iftār, however, can diverge from these prescriptions, as was the case during that evening’s meal.

After hastily inhaling a date, pausing only to quickly remove the pit, everyone at the table ate frantically, a long, hot day of fasting behind them. The men served themselves first, taking huge pieces of chicken with their hands and using a combination of their personal cutlery and chunks of hand-torn pita to scoop rice, salad, beef, and hummus onto their plates, as the matriarch doled out pieces of kefta. The women and children ate their soup and then served themselves from the communal plates once Nasim and the other men had filled their plates. Several of the men smoked as they devoured their food and talked energetically in between mouthfuls, and tobacco-scented clouds drifted out of the wide window that overlooked the family’s small olive grove, the neighboring houses, and, in the stretching distance, a red and purple-streaked sunset.

Fasting

Almost all cultures practice some formal variety of fasting, which may mean very different things in various religions. In Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, it usually means avoiding meat at the Friday evening meal. In Judaism there are special days of atonement, the most important of which is Yom Kippur, when no food is eaten. In Islam the devout abstain from food during the day for the entire month of Ramadan, eating only in the evening. Other cultures have special individual fasts to attain spiritual purity or to promote health and longevity. In all cases these serve to punctuate and divide regular meals in a ritually prescribed fashion, drawing the family and community closer together.

Farah observed Jennifer watching her family members eating ravenously and said, “This is why we all have a kirsch [belly]—we eat so quickly!” Indeed, the entire meal was done in less than 20 minutes, and the men and Samar abruptly left the table as soon as they were finished eating. They descended to the first floor to pray and then smoke and talk over tiny cups of aromatic Arabic coffee, made by pouring scalding water over finely ground coffee beans flavored with cardamom. The women and children lingered slightly longer to finish up their meals before taking on the daunting task of cleaning up after a feast for some 10 people.

Shortly after Samar and the men had left, the women and children cleared the table, emptying all of the scant leftovers, except for the hummus and yogurt, into a large trash bin along with the disposable cups. The sisters divided up the tasks: one continued to clear the table, another stacked chairs and dismantled the table with the help of some of the children, and Jennifer helped a third wash and dry the dishes. Another sister arrived as the cleanup neared completion, and we all moved furniture back into the room, as it had been removed to set up the dining table. The sisters sat in the erstwhile dining room, now a sitting room, while the younger children flitted in and out throughout the evening. One of Farah’s nieces came around with plates of succulent watermelon and serving forks. The women lifted pieces of the fruit onto napkins and ate them with their fingers. The eating stretched into the night. Nasim brought in boxes of sweet syrup-soaked pastries from the family’s bakery, including qatayef, and the traditional Palestinian dessert knafeh, both cheese-filled phyllo pastry desserts that were eaten by hand.

As the night wore on, those sisters who were married and living nearby retired to their own homes, while Farah and one of her brothers watched the National Geographic and Discovery channels, both in Arabic, while snacking on ice cream, milk chocolate, grape juice, and seconds and thirds from the box of Nasim’s sweets. The last ones to go to bed turned in by 2:00 a.m. While Farah’s family did not take this meal, many Muslims will eat suhoor, a small meal taken before sunrise and often including many of the same foods as iftār but in smaller quantities.

The first evening’s iftār appeared as if by magic on the table, while the second day’s iftār revealed the mechanism behind the illusion. While Jennifer had been a more formal guest during the first meal, by the second morning she was family and was taken on a culinary tour of the council.

Jennifer woke relatively early and crept downstairs at 9:00 a.m. to find Nasim and Samar in the living room. During a two-hour conversation in Arabic and English, Samar told Jennifer, “You cannot understand Arabs if you do not understand their food.” The previous night’s meal and the ensuing day certainly illustrated food’s significance in Palestinian Israeli culture. Fasting and feasting created a sense of community, solidarity, and religious cohesion, while sharing food facilitated close ties between family members even as they married and moved into houses of their own. Offering meals to guests such as Jennifer was a warm way in which Samar welcomed guests into her home, providing them with a meal, something universally familiar and comforting. Understanding Palestinian Israeli food, then, meant acknowledging and understanding the density of human life among Palestinian Israeli communities and seeing them as individuals within but also beyond the images of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that occupies so much space in popular media coverage of the region.

Once the other children had woken up, Jennifer was taken to a dilapidated hut in the backyard that housed a small cement dome, or taboon, an oven used to bake thin circular sheets of bread by laying them on fire-heated stones. Taboon bread is covered in char marks and infused with an enticing flavor of smoke and is consumed by Palestinians throughout Israel. Nasim proudly told me that this was where his mother used to bake the bread for their family but that it was no longer in use.

Jennifer was then bundled into the family car alongside Farah, Amina, and one of her brothers. Some 10 minutes later, Nasim parked the car outside of a building and led the way to the back, where four women wearing aprons sat around a low table, talking in Palestinian Arabic. Each woman balanced a large bowl filled with akkawiy cheese, cinnamon, and powdered nuts on her lap and had stacks of palm-sized thin yeast pancakes in front of her. As they talked, the women deftly took a pancake in one hand, expertly pinched the perfect amount of cheese mixture with the other, and placed it in the center of the pancake, then used both fingers to crimp it shut to form a soft, plump half-moon dumpling that was then placed onto a massive rectangular baking sheet. These dumplings, or qatayef, were snugly placed so that each slightly overlapped the one above it until the pan was entirely full. Inside of the bakery, which was owned by Nasim, these pans were carefully slipped into industrial-size ovens and baked at a high temperature. For the final touch, qatayef are boiled in syrup before serving.

After chatting in Arabic with Nasim for several minutes, one of the women approached Jennifer. She slipped an apron over her head, handed her a bowl of akkawiy, nudged a small stack of the pancakes toward her, and motioned for her to begin churning out the pastries herself, which she did for the next quarter of an hour.

Once two trays had been filled, the tour continued. Nasim’s brother, who co-owned the bakery, demonstrated with dexterity how he rolled out six-foot-long ropes of phyllo straws filled with cheese, cutting them into the small delicate cylinders that would eventually be sprinkled with finely chopped bright green pistachios and consumed as knafeh. All the sweets were baked in a massive fire-burning oven and then either sold or taken home and enjoyed by the family after iftār.

The next stop was a spacious outdoor market where the family purchased much of its produce. Finally, the children brought Jennifer to a taboon bakery, where thousands of rounds of taboon bread were placed on a conveyer belt, passed for 30 seconds through an intensely hot oven, and pulled out, steaming, to be cooled and then sold.

Back at home they found Samar in the kitchen, where she had been working throughout the afternoon to cut potatoes into wedges for deep-frying, boil and season rice and freekeh, and prepare lentil soup, which was simmering over a low flame in an old dented pot. She said that she needed a head of lettuce for the salads, which Amina went to purchase at a nearby produce stand. Meanwhile, Samar continued to cook, chopping mint, bell peppers, tomatoes, and onions to make two bowls of multicolored salad, one dressed with lemon, olive oil, and pungent ground cumin and the other made with mint and jarjīr. Pointing to the chopped leafy green, Farah grinned and said that it was particularly helpful “for men,” eliciting a laugh from her mother. It turned out that the green was arugula, which is believed to help with fertility.

Samar had been working on iftār since midday, and the food was nearly complete at around 7:30 p.m. Farah, Amina, and Jennifer helped, sharing the main knife that was used to prepare all of the food and taking turns chopping the vegetables and herbs for the salads on brightly colored plastic chopping boards.

A small table covered in a burgundy tablecloth had been set up downstairs in the kitchen, and places for five were set. This iftār had a relaxed and casual air, and Samar was more talkative as she finished up the food preparation. The group fell into near silence as sunset approached while finishing up the remaining food preparation and washing several of the cooking utensils before the adhān.

With the call to prayer and the cannon signaling the end to another day of fasting, the four of us worked in comfortable silence to put out the remaining dishes and pour drinks. The two salads, homemade potato fries, a Chinese dish that the family simply calls “chicken,” and freekeh sat before the group, a huge spread for four people. Freekeh, a hallmark of Palestinian home cooking, is toasted green wheat that is cooked like rice. Samar always prepared it with chicken but had omitted the poultry in Jennifer’s honor (although she several times expressed discomfort at this omission, as meat is seen as essential for nutrition in many Palestinian Israeli families). Small individual bowls of vegetable and lentil soup sat at each person’s place. Dates, fresh taboon bread, and bottles of water, Coca-Cola, lemon soft drink, and Thousand Island dressing finished off the impressive array of dishes. A place was set for Nasim, though he was at the bakery and would not arrive home until after everyone else had finished eating. “Hāthā asghar wa lākin ahsan,” Samar said, referring to the smaller meal in comparison to the previous night’s more ceremonial table setting: “this is smaller but better.”

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One of the family’s daughters sits with her husband. The husband is dipping taboon bread into a plate of hummus topped with olive oil. (Courtesy of Fatina Dahli Photography)

Mlukhiya (Jute Leaf Soup)*

2 packages frozen minced mlukhiya (jute leaves)

4 cups hot broth (typically chicken broth, either fresh or from a stock cube, paste, or powder; vegetable stock can also be substituted)

2 tablespoon butter or olive oil

10 cloves garlic, halved or quartered

2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds

Salt to taste

1.Remove mlukhiya from freezer several hours prior to cooking; thaw.

2.Sauté garlic in butter or olive oil in a small pan until garlic becomes golden brown; add coriander seeds and cook for another minute.

3.In a large pot over medium-high heat, place the defrosted jute leaves and add broth one cup at a time, stirring to incorporate the broth into the leaves before adding an additional cup. Stir well, bringing to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.

4.Add the garlic and coriander mixture to the soup (which should be thick), then season with salt to taste.

5.Serve with a piece of taboon bread, hummus, and chopped vegetable salads.

*Recipe compiled in consultation with Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt’s The Gaza Kitchen, several Middle Eastern food blogs, and the host family with which I ate iftār in the Lower Galilee in northern Israel.

FURTHER READING

Bourdain, Anthony. “Parts Unknown—Jerusalem.” Season 2, Episode 1, CNN, September 2013.

Friedlander, Marty. “Tourist Tip #287: ‘Ramadan Kareem.’“ Ha’aretz, July 15, 2013, www.haaretz.com/travel-in-israel/tourist-tip-of-the-day/.premium-1.535812.

Gvion, Liora. Beyond Hummus and Falafel: Social and Political Aspects of Palestinian Food in Israel. Translated by David Wesley and Elana Wesley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Vered, Ronit. “Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi Talk Jerusalem, Recipes and Passports.” Ha’aretz, January 12, 2013, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/pleasure-hunting/yotam-ottolenghi-and-sami-tamimi-talk-jerusalem-recipes-and-passports.premium-1.493199.