GEORGIA ON MY MIND

Of course I’m referring to Georgia in the Caucasus, remarkable country of great history, distinctive cuisine, rich agricultural and vinicultural traditions, and complex linguistic and cultural roots.

Twenty-four years ago I came here for the first time to learn about flatbreads. I was very ignorant. And so I was astonished, was completely blown away, by all the rest of the food, as well as by the breads. Now at last I’m back, and able to take a few more baby steps into the wonders and mysteries of Georgia.

I’ve now been in Tbilisi, the capital city, for two days, eating and asking questions and taking photographs, and asking more questions. It’s just after mid-April, the trees are in leaf and some, like the quince I saw yesterday, and the chestnut outside my window, are in flower, but it is bone-chillingly cold, with rain and cloud and low temperatures too.  It’s hard to feel loose-limbed in a damp wind. On the other hand, there are a lot of warming winter dishes that feel exactly right for these temperatures. I’ve been eating my way through them since I arrived.

On my first day here I went with friends to visit the cathedral in Mtskheta, not far from Tbilisi. On the way we stopped at one of the restaurants that serve the very traditional Georgian dish lobio, cooked kidney beans in a clay pot, accompanied by mchadi, corn breads. It sounds like plain fare, and it is, delicious, satisfying, and warming.

We had cheese with our mchadi and lobio, but many in the restaurant did not, for right now it’s Lent here. Most Georguan Christians are Orthodox, and Easter for the Eastern rite this year is Sunday May 5. Many people fast during Lent. In the Orthodox tradition that means not eating meat, fish, milk products of any kind, or eggs. The Ethiopians, whose church is also part of the Orthodox tradition, have the same approach to fasting. In Orthodox Christianity, for those who are strict, there are oveer 200 fasting days in the year.

I know of many of the Ethiopian dishes that inventive cooks have come up with for the fasting days. But I hadn’t really thought much about the Georgian approach to fasting, and which dishes might have resulted. Now I’m learning, little by little.

The basics are easy, for Georgia is rich in wheat and nuts, and fruit too. A person can go a long way on various combinations of those, perhaps helped by a little honey. A small agriculture- and food-focussed Georgian NGO called Elkana that started in 1994 has published a booklet of recipes of traditional foods, using traditional ingredients. Many of them turn out to be fasting dishes. They start with wheat berries, for example, toast them, or soak them, or just boil them until soft, with a variety of flavorings. Almond milk is permittd, and so it has a big role, as do walnuts, a Georgian staple. They’re both a delicious and satisfying alternative to cheese and milk or yogurt.

Other of the recipes in the booklet use lentils or other dried peas – old staples, many of which are no longer easilly available here - as a base and add oil, aromatics, nuts, and vegetables. Elkana is interested in promoting traditional crops, many of them what Elkana calls "forgotten crops" - to help with agricultural sustainability as well as cultural rebuilding (years of Russian occupation, as well as revolution and war, have had destructive effects on many deep-rooted Geeorgian traditions). Religion was of course discouraged under the Soviets. It has experienced a resurgence, especially among the people of the “lost generation” (now aged 50 to 70). 

But many who are now fasting for Lent are not relying on traditional recipes and foods but instead on manufactured “fasting foods”. The grocery stores are full of substitutes for butter and cream, all made with oils. It’s rather like vegetarians buying “vegetarian hotdogs” I suppose, but a little sadder in a way, for it’s a loss of traditional attitude as well as of knowledge.

After all, there is a notion in fasting, surely, that it’s about deprivation leading to mindfulness. You live and eat more plainly for the fasting period. But now in modern Georgia, with more properity and a more open society, people are of course making new choices. They are fasting, but in a modern way, buying cakes and other treats made specially for Lent that resemble in looks and texture the cakes of the rest of the year.

And this drives traditionalists a little crazy, I gather.

Yesterday I spent a late afternoon with a remarkable woman in her mid-eighties named Eteri. She had a distinguished career in chemical engineering and is also a fabulous thoughtful cook who has deep roots in Khaketi, a food-rich region of Eastern Georgia. Every year she makes a huge array of preserves and sauces, fortified wines, fruit juices, and more, all put up in jars and stored in her cold room. It was in talking with her that I realised how aggravating the new “fasting foods” are for those who care about Georgian traditions.

My time with her, tasting (her adjika, tkhemali sauce, fresh tomato sauce, quince juice, wine, cognac, lobio, and more) and talking, as well as my conversations with wonderful food-focussed Tamar, with whom I’m staying, are immediate reminders of just how rich and inventive the Georgian culinary culture is. I am just beginning to get a glimpse of what’s here… 

AN AFTERWARD:
A day after I posted this, I now have a clearer sense of Elkana, for I spent a good part of the early afternoon with the plant scientist who now heads it, and man named Taiul Berishvili. He told me about Dika and Sori wheat, both of them endemic to, or landraces of Georgia, and he gave me a small sample of each. I'd like to take them to Steve Jones at the University of Washington, when I go to the Kneading Conference West, just in case he isn't familiar with them. 

It is extraordinary to be this close to the "cradle of civilization", the place where wheat evolved from simple einkorn and emmer into durum and also varieties of triticum aestivum. Georgia has a lot of food heritage to protect and nourish. The country has already had a fight with Monsanto...

Today I also met a remarkable cheese-maker. But I'll write about her in another post. She has already sent a link to my Facebook page, a short video that shows the amazing process of making the local strong cheese, a treasure she is reviving.

LATE MARCH THOUGHTS OF FUTURE PROJECTS & HOPES

Late again with an update. My apologies. Blame it on spring, the equinox, nu-roz (Persian new year; I made sabzi pulao for friends, and lots of green veg, as well as grilled chicken and grilled pork), a lot to get done... Anyway, here I am at last. This last week was my aunt Pen's 90th birthday (March 22); she has dementia, so any love or wishes are kind of without weight for her. Still even those with dementia can surely feel the warmth in the air, the singing of the birds, the feeling of optimism in the air....

Now we're back in some cold weather, crisp and bracing. It's just enough to make us grateful for the warmth that's promised in the next few days. In the back yard the earth got warmed last week, the rye I'd planted as a cover crop, and the clover, are both flourishingly green. So is the flat-leafed parsley that made it through the winter, and the garlic chives, already thrusting up their flat blades.

I had some of the chives, and the parsley, as well as some young dandelion, chopped into the pan a couple of days ago, flavouring some olive oil . The occasion was the visit of Lillian from Grey County. Just before leaving she'd checked her mushroom logs and, astonishingly, there was an early flush of shiitakes. This is a full month earlier than ever before. So she brought some down, moist and full of promise in a brown paper bag. I chopped them coarsely, tossed them in on top of the greens, and then once they'd softened and given off a little moisture, in went four whisked fresh orange-yolked large eggs from a farmer not far away. What a feast. We ate slowly, contemplatively, looking at the promising dark soil in the back yard and getting caught up on each other's news and thoughts and imaginings.

Now I feel that spring really has arrived.

On Saturday afternoon the biting cold wind was a good excuse to head into the warmth and watch a movie, not just any movie, but the brilliant Wim Wenders doc PINA. It’s in 3-D, and if you haven’t seen it, well, keep an eye open and grab a chance when you get it. The film is about the dance of Pina Bausch, a legendary choreographer and dancer, who died just before the film was made, and about the dancers in her company. I’ve now seen it twice (the first time was in January) and would happily go again. Thrilling is the best word for it.

Now the week has started; I should be doing taxes, but have been preparing my talk for the IACP (Int Assoc of Culinary Professionals), where I am giving two small sessions on food and travel. Should be fun. It’s always interesting to hear where people are coming from, what their questions and issues are. My job is to talk, but also to listen; I guess that’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but still very true and important to remember.

My kid Dom says people don’t remember much from talks (or lectures, he says, and he’s doing a PhD, so has some ground for knowing). He says the important thing is to have a basic message or theme that you can keep coming back to…the stories and examples are then embroideries and illustrations, all supporting the basic message. hmm I had thought to show slides (old language for images via power point). There may not be the necessary equipment, and in one way I’d be happy with no images. They can be a distraction when we’re there to talk about ideas.

On the other hand, I love to give people fresh windows for imagining the world, and photographs of daily life in other places are a great way to do that.

It’s in the lap of the gods, the image question. I’m ready for either scenario.

And I’m looking forward to seeing people I haven’t had time with for a long time, all of them coming to NYC for the conference itself and also to take advantage of the gathering of food people from all over.

And on the subject of food, I’ve just finished Empires of Food, by Fraser and Rimaz (published by Counterpoint Press in 2010). It takes a line through history that focusses on the food limits that various empires and societies have hit, and that we are heading for in our turn. The cycle is roughly that a food innovation leads to higher production, population growth etc, but eventually the society hits a ceiling, and then things fall apart or crumble. The first example is Mesopotamia, and it moves forward from there, often gracefully and in interesting ways. But it’s not a dreary march through bad news, it’s somehow fresh and undoctrinaire. Highly recommended.

It’s useful grist for my mill, that these days needs to be grinding through food history (with help also from Charles Mann’s 1493 and other books, and from blogs such as Rachel Laudan’s) to produce six two hour classes in May-June. I’m teaching a course called Foods that Changed the World at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. Here's the link. I’ve heard that the students at these courses are an interesting and varied group, so I’m looking forward to it all. I’m hoping to be able to do some tastings with the class. If you know anyone who might be interested, do let them know about the course.

Meantime the BURMA book gets closer and closer. There's a blad that's been designed, (stands for book layout and design, a kind of booklet that gives a feel for the look and content of the book) and the book itself will soon be in second galleys, hurrah! I'll have them sometime next week probably, to correct, and also to annotate with, for example, captions for the photos. And then before the end of April it wings off to the printer.

This project may be close to done, but of course life in Burma continues to unfold in all its complexity. The by-elections are taking place this coming Sunday, April 1, and after that presumably Aung San Suu Kyi will have a seat in parliament. I feel so committed to the place, after these three years of work and paying close attention. It's been extreme immersion, and I am reluctant to step out of it, want to continue my engagement with Burma and the geopolitics as well as the food and culture.

Now we all hope that recent progress continues in establishing real rights and freedoms for the people of Burma and negotiating real settlements with the Karen and Kachin and Mon and Chin and Wa and Shan, etc. It needs to happen. There needs to be a new Panglong-type agreement, to make real and strong the idea that Aung San Suu Kyi's father worked toward and achieved just before his death, of a consensual federation of Burma. Fifty years ago that ideal fell with the coup, in March 1962. Let's hope this really is a new era.

FIngers crossed. And happy spring everyone...

SPRINGTIME HAPPINESS AND FEASTING

It's a cloudy Easter Sunday here in Toronto. I'm just back in from my run, a longer leisurely one that's left me sweaty and happy. Funny how getting the blood moving usually gets the happiness current, the emotional qi, flowing too.

We had a celebratory supper last night, early because there was a small person E with us. The guys lit the Weber and we grilled bavette and then lamb, each drizzled with fish sauce and a little olive oil first. The lamb was in "steaks", cut from a leg, so there was a round of bone in the centre. It's a great cut, recommended to me by Dawnthebaker and her partner Ed. I'd also bought merguez from Sanagan's Meats. Those went on the grill and then we cut them up and dressed them with lime juice, fish sauce, and chopped shallots, making a kind of Thai salad, with mint leaves too, for colour and freshness.

I can imagine you thinking "that's a lot of meat!" Well, yes. Some of us like all of it; my kids don't love lamb, so the beef was aimed at them; and one friend can't eat chiles, so she had to skip the merguez. But we all had appetite.

As for the other elements: There was sticky rice, some black mixed in with the white so it was a lovely purplish handful, handy for scooping up a slice of lamb or beef or a piece of merguez with shallot. We oven-roasted beets and served them coarsely chopped, unpeeled. Jerusalem artichokes from QUebec roasted up quickly, and went out plain, looking like oddly shaped small potatoes. I made a sprout etc stir-fry, a made-up dish of chopped potato fried in mustard seed and turmeric oil and then joined by shiitake mushrooms from Ontario, and sprouted chickpeas and a new kind of sprouted seed combo now on the market here: fenugreek, lentils, and something else. It's a wonderful blend of soft (spud) and chewy, with great depth of flavour, especially when heightened with a splash of wine near the end.

At the sweet end, a friend D brought a chocolate pound cake she'd made with creme fraiche, that went quickly, thanks to the four twenty-somethings at the feast. Dawn had made a tart, a cross between cheesecake and custard, with ricotta, mascarpone? I think, and eggs. Delish. She put out a jar of poached apricots and we just balanced the fruit on the slice we were eating, each of us. It felt very sunny and Easter-renewal-ish that tart, and indeed the whole meal.

New sprouts, eggs, lamb, garlic chives from the garden that I chopped into a kumquat chutney, all these symbols of new life and springtime are heartening. But they'd have been a little sad and lonely if the weather had stayed as grim and chilly as it's been for most of April.

We got lucky yesterday though, with bright sun and temperatures at 19 or 20, T-shirt weather! I gardened in the back, cleaning up leaves and branches and packing them into recycle bags. It was too hot out there for clothing, so I worked in my jogging bra and pants, feeling the intense April sun beaming into me. Yes yes I need to be careful about UV on my skin, mustn't overdo it and all that. But oh the tonic of spring sun!

No wonder we had appetite last night for a good meal with friends and long discussions into the night. The other end of the evening came after midnight, when the Russian orthodox church down the street had its annual Easter Saturday procession: candles, priests in golden vestments, a huge crowd of people walking past carrying candles and icons and singing in Russian.. We stood by the edge of the road watching as they walked by, children and grandparents and everyone in between. Another year, another marker...

One of my kids asked me if I ever wished I believed so that I could take part in rituals like the one we were witnessing. "Not at all!" was my answer. It's remarkable to see people acting in concert, with an apparently common mind, but it is also at some level disturbing, don't you find? The coercion of the crowd is powerful and potentially very oppressive.

So, no thanks!

But a huge "YES" to spring and birdsong and short sleeves and bicycling, and children playing in the park, and strolling people chatting late at night in soft warmth.

Bring it on!

ODDMENTS AND THOUGHTS ON SPRING AND TRADITION

I'm a little late posting this week.  My apologies.  This business of re-entry is quite distracting, is one excuse I can give.  But the truth is that it is easy to lose track of the days.  The young people in the house, Dom and Tashi and Ian, have papers due and exams coming up, so they are extremely aware of each day and the obligations that face them.  I on the other hand have taxes and paperwork kinds of things, and images to send off to a magazine, but no fixed schedule, so I tend to lose track... And perhaps the changing weather of spring with its cold and warm and sun and rain, makes it tempting to just live day to day?

There's an update on my last post:  Chris our neighbour went and checked the house and pipes: no leaks he says, and the pump room was warm, but the pump seems to have lost its prime.  Now I've called Sandy Hamilton, the guy who knows all about plumbing, and he will get the pump primed and check the pipes, etc.  I can't wait to be up at the farm seeing it emerge with its winter-faded colours,and with the warm hints of fresh life colouring the trees, especially the dark red of the scrub willows in the wet patches.

And on the general subject of neighbourliness, another gift came my way this week: My cousin Jennifer, who takes on technology with intentness and intelligence, and knows all about digital photography (if you've been to immersethrough.com you'll have seen her name mentioned with gratitude), has offered to drive to Toronto to help set up digital photo files and help generally get the digital photo library organised.  I am so grateful!  She arrives tomorrow.  Wish her luck, please, because I tend to get impatient with the technology.  I think the impatience is my way of dealing with feeling intimidated and out of my depth!  I have promised my kids that I will be calm...

Heading into this next week, with its load of significance for western Christians and for Jews, I wonder at that weight of the yearly religious cycle.  Some people are sustained or held together by it - by the certainty? the sense of identity and community? the continuity?  Others are oppressed by the weight of organised religion, and the sense of received thought and the bigotry and entrenched ideas of good and evil, insiders and outsiders, that seem an inevitable part of religion, especially in the west.  

Speaking of ritual and tradition, it's the time of year for Easter music.  And this year Taffelmusik, the wonderful baroque orchestra that my friend Dina enticed me into subscribing to almost ten years ago, performed Bach's St Matthew's Passion. We heard it on Thursday evening, a stunning performance. There was the orchestra and then a small (nine only) group of singers that together call themselves Les Voix Baroques.  Who needs a choir? we felt by the end, when such a wonderful balance is possible, and extraordinary suppleness too.  

On another subject entirely: I finally sent in the last article I owed for the Oxford Companion to Southeast Asian Food: highlanders and forest peoples.  It was difficult to do, for I am not used to working from anything but primary sources and my own experience.  Books are useful to confirm or help explain, but I am not used to relying on other people's writing for basic information.  But here I had to, for though I have spent a fair amount of time paying attention to local food and agriculture in various parts of southeast Asia, I still have huge gaps.  The trick was to find an organisation that felt comfortable and clear, and then to feel confident enough about what I  was saying.  And the other trick was to make the entry readable rather than stiff and didactic.  Roger Owen gave it a deft little edit, and now it's done and I am relieved!  He and Sri Owen have taken on a huge task in editing the Companion.  We are now all eager to see it published... I think in 2010.

Made crackers, and non-shmura (= not kosher for Passover) matzo with Dawnthebaker yesterday afternoon.  They're all crisp now and ready to be delivered to good friends, for their First Night seder on Wednesday.  Rolling out the doughs and cutting them into crackers, bending to the oven, to put them in and take them out - over and over, for crackers are repetitive labour - felt like bending to tradition. 

So here I am (having turned in circles in this post) back at the subjects of tradition and continuity, though with a twist.  These are far from traditional matzo as people think of them. We used whole Red Fife flour for one batch, spelt flour for another, a blend of barley and spelt for another, etc etc.. You get the idea.  We even made a spectacular sweetened-with-maple-syrup version that is aromatic with ginger.  Some will be offended by the novelty; others will enjoy exploring new possibilities for an ancient tradition.  And that's the idea, right?