LEAVING FOR KURDISTAN WITH A SKILLET CAKE RECIPE TOO

I’m late posting this, and I’m under the gun, because I leave in a few hours to catch a plane to Istanbul, and then a connection on to Erbil, in (Iraqi) Kurdistan. I am so pleased to be able to go. It’s part of the research for my Persian World book.

I had hoped to travel to Azerbaijan for the book, leaving in late March, and then to go to Kurdistan. But the Azeri visa application process just got more and more complicated. I felt as if the embassy people were moving the goalposts, asking for more and more documents from the friend (a generous-minded American woman who is working in Baku) who had invited me. The Azeri visa process has been famously difficult for a long time, the government being paranoid, they say. 

But with current events, who can blame them? Azerbaijan, like Georgia, is a small country which borders on Russia. The events in Crimea were unfolding as I was applying for my visa…. And so I withdrew my application (rather than risk having it refused).

It’s always good to remember that we do not have the “right” to travel to other countries. It is a privilege. And so I am feeling very privileged to be setting out on this trip. I am due to land in Erbil, and then I will head to Sulaimaniya and Halabja. I don’t like racing around, so I don’t expect I’ll get further north to Dohuk and the region near the Turkish border. I’m just hoping to get a glimpse of home-cooking, and some glimmers of understanding about Kurdish and Assyrian food traditions.

A good friend here in Toronto spent time in Kurdistan two years ago and has passed along the names and info of some of her contacts. She was talking to women about their lives… I am grateful to have my passage eased. And a friend of hers who lives here, who is Kurdish, has also connected me with a couple of people, including his mother and sisters. I can’t wait!

Meantime, after a long delay, spring has truly sprung today, just as I am leaving. On Sunday too it was sunny and mild. A bunch of us who do shape-note singing got together to sing out of the Northern Harmony book. We were at my place, with the back doors open and the sun streaming in, just glorious.

I had a little food for singers to snack on, including bread from Woodlot, hummous from Evelyn’s Crackers, cheese from Cheese Magic and some pate from Sanagan’s. But I’d also put a little effort of my own into the food: I’d made skillet cake, a medium and a small one, using my usual somewhat casual approach. But the cake has evolved, as all recipes tend to do. I now use all whole wheat flour: Red Fife with a little La Milanaise whole wheat pastry flour, and my toppings in this season of little fruit are usally frozen cranberries, or other frozen berries (raspberries and/or blueberries).

Because some of the singers asked for the recipe, I’m putting recipe notes here, so everyone can have access:

You’ll want to have two bowls for mixing, and a ten- or eleven- inch cast-iron or other heavy skillet, or two smaller ones (I use an 8 and a 6) or you can use a cakepan that gives about the same area – about 80 square inches.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

And heat the skillet on the stove-top, add oil and spread it well. Remove from heat. Make sure your butter is at room temp.

The proportions are simple:

In one bowl put 1 ½ cups whole wheat red fife flour, and ½ cup whole wheat pastry flour; or all Red Fife; or use all-purpose and pastry flour 50-50, as you please. Add 1 teaspoon baking powder and ½ teaspoon baking soda, and a ¼ teaspoon salt.

Spices I use are cinnamon, cloves, dried ginger… you could try a little nutmeg…

In the other bowl cream ¼ pound butter and 1 cup (I use brown) sugar, and then add 1 cup full fat plain yogurt. Add ½ teaspoon good vanilla if you wish. Whisk 4 eggs briefly and add them and mix well, then add the wets to the dries.

Stir just enough to mix them so that the flour is all wet.

Pour the heavy gloopy batter into the ready skillet(s)

Sprinkle on cranberries or other frozen fruit, or sliced apple or whatever pleases you. I sprinkle on a little extra sugar if using cranberries.

Bake at 400 (in the middle of the oven) for 15 minutes then lower heat to 385 until done (a skewer comes out clean), about another 30 minutes.

Let stand for five minutes to let the starches firm up, then turn onto a plate, (fruit side will be down) then place another plate on the under side and flip it back so it’s fruit side up.

Cake is better the day after it’s baked, but usually no-one waits around to test that assertion!

I hope this becomes an easy-to-remember staple in your house, just as it is in mine.

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.

NOVEMBER THOUGHTS IN WINE COUNTRY

We're in Day of the Dead season: Today is November 1, All Saints Day to Christians, with All Souls tomorrow. And last night was Hallowe'en. It's a huge holiday in France and other parts of Europe, and also of course in Mexico, where the Aztec period of honouring the dead (which apparently fell sometime in early August) was moved to fall into the Christian calendar. But I'm far from most of that, here in St Helena in the Napa Valley, carved no pumpkins, gave out no treats....

It’s still dark here at nearly 6.30 in the morning, as I start writing this. Once daylight saving ends (this coming Saturday night) that will change, I guess, but by then I’ll be gone. I’ll be back home in Toronto, with only a memory of the golden-leafed vines in the valley that stand in rows like soldiers on parade. Their uniformity really struck me as I was driving up two days ago, via the Golden Gate Bridge (once again mist-wreathed) and Corte Madera (for a stop in to graze in the used book section of Book Passage), and past the edge of the Sonoma Valley. 

In Sonoma, as the lines of vine curve up the hills, emphasizing the contours of the ladscape, the human control they represent is strikingly apparent. The contrast is with soft green pastures where black beef cattle graze in random-looking patterns, and barns are weathered and aged. The vines and the wineries, on the other hand, are tidy, exact, clean-edged, and almost unreal in their orderliness, like a stage-set laid over Mother Nature.

Not sure why I was so struck this time. Perhaps it’s because the vines looked to me like children holding their hands up in the air, arms outstretched, which can be one form of schoolroom punishment. Once I saw them in this way, I couldn’t get my head to switch back to appreciating their colour and the overall vineyard landscape. The sense of coercion dominated.

Orderliness has its beauty, for sure. Perhaps it’s the scale of the orderliness here in wine country that becomes overwhelming. 

The road northbound out of St Helena, right by the Beringer winery, is flanked by a long honour guard of mature beautiful trees whose branches make a canopy overhead. Their orderliness doesn’t trouble me at all. In fact I always find passing through them almost heart-stoppingly beautiful, no matter how many times I drive that stretch of road. 

Just after the tree passage is the entrance to Greystone, the huge ex-winery that is the home of the Culinary Institute of America’s west coast campus. This week there are no classes though, for it’s time for the annual (this is the 15th annual) Worlds of Flavor conference. The place is humming with complex rhythms and patterns as staff and volunteers do prep, and visitors like me, who are presenting talks or doing demonstrations of some kind, hover around, trying to be useful, and trying to make sure that everything is ready.

In my experience, we needn’t worry, for by now people at Greystone have Worlds of Flavor down to a fine art. There are always last minute glitches, such as foreign speakers whose visas don’t come through in time, or this year the Frankenstorm Sandy, which has kept some speakers from coming, because they have flooded restaurants to deal with or no flight available that will get them here in time. We’ll be thinking of them dealing with their losses and doing the awful grunt work that is needed to clean up after a flood.

Meantime though there is work to do and there are people to meet, always the biggest treat at these conferences. This year there’s a large contingent from Turkey. I sat with some of them at lunch yesterday, and we talked again yesterday evening. It made me want to head straight to Turkey, where I haven’t been for decades. Robyn Eckhardt and David Hagerman have a Turkey project on the go. I’ve been wanting to spend a little time with them there. This may just be the push I need. 

One of the things that’s going on in Turkey and elsewhere is the retrieval of traditional cooking wisdom, the home cooking and country cooking that tends to get swept away and undervalued as a country modernises. It happens everywhere, from the US to Europe to Thailand, that period of disregarding and tossing out the old, the traditional, the unmodern.

And then with luck one or more people try to reverse the process. They begin to gather knowledge from grandmothers and country people. They work to preserve and honour food traditions. With any luck they are able to shift attention back to long-held knowledge before it vanishes. It’s happened in Italy (think of the Slow Food movement, as well as all the cookbooks documenting traditional country foodways), in France (think of Poilane’s championing of bread traditions for example), and in many other places, including Mexico.  

This Sunday I’ll have the pleasure of talking with a long-time fierce champion of traditional Mexican foodways, Diana Kennedy. She’s a delver into the plant wisdom and kitchen knowledge of cooks from all over that huge country. She’s been writing and teaching about these things for over forty years. And she’ll be in Toronto, at Harbourfront, as part of a Day of the Dead (Dias de los Muertos in Mexico) celebrations. We’re lucky to have this chance to hear her.