Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
2.3 Iraqi Cuisine from Mesopotamia to Mosul with Nawal Nasrallah
114 Plays3 years ago
On episode 3, Taif Alkhudary speaks with Nawal Nasrallah about the history and development of Iraqi cuisine from Mesopotamia to modern day through her own cookbook 'Delights from the Garden of Eden' and her translation of the medieval Arabic cookbook 'Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens', an annotated translation of the tenth-century, Abbasid-era cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq.
Nawal is an award-winning food historian of the Arab world, and translator of major medieval Arabic cookbooks hailing from Baghdad, Egypt, and Al-Andalus.
Taif is a Research Assistant on the LSE Middle East Centre project 'Managing Religious Diversity in the Middle East: The Muhasasa Ta'ifia in Iraq, 2003–2018'.
All artwork by Rawand Issa: www.instagram.com/rawand.issa_
Recommended
Transcript
Poetic Introduction to Zalabia
00:00:00
Speaker
A poem on Zalabia. I saw him at the crack of dawn frying Zalabia, looking like tubes of reed, delicate and thin. The oil I saw boiling in his pan was like the hiller to elusive alchemy. The matter he threw into the pan, looking like silver, would instantly transform into lattices of gold.
Nawal Nasrallah on Arab Culinary History
00:00:26
Speaker
This is Nawal Nasrallah reciting a poem by the Abbasid-Ira poet Ibn Rumi on the sugar he treats the labia. Nawal is an award-winning food historian of the Arab world and translator of major medieval Arabic cookbooks hailing from Baghdad, Egypt and Al-Andalus. On season two of Instant Coffee, we are exploring everything related to food in the Middle East, which is why we wanted to speak to Nawal. Amri Balslem and Haydar
00:00:54
Speaker
And I'm Nadine Almanaski, and together we want to understand how food is shaping people's writing, thinking and organizing in the region. Every episode we bring you a conversation between a guest and a colleague of ours at the center.
Exploration of Iraqi Cuisine
00:01:06
Speaker
On this episode, Taif al-Qudayri had a conversation with Nawal about her historical research into Iraqi cooking from the time of the Babylonians until now, and how food has changed but also more importantly in some ways remain the same.
00:01:19
Speaker
Naif is a research assistant at the LSE Middle East Center. She works on the post-2003 political system in Iraq.
00:01:27
Speaker
Hi, Noel. Thanks for joining us today. I'm very excited to speak to you about your books and your work on Middle Eastern cuisine. So first of all, I wanted to talk about your book, Delights from the Garden of Eden. So in this book, you talk a lot about the cultures that surrounded you and the food that you grew up with in Iraq. So I was wondering if you could maybe tell us a little bit more about this. Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to join your group.
00:01:57
Speaker
for this discussion of my favorite subject. You asked about the food I grew up in Baghdad, and I can tell you that it was a rich, we had a rich menu varied. Of course, the main dishes were rice and stew, that was the daily staple, and which might sound boring when you first know that we have it every day, but variety comes with the
00:02:28
Speaker
the kinds of vegetables we use, kind of cuts of meat, kinds of rice, et cetera. And then in addition to those daily staples, we also had a lot of dishes that require more work, such as the stuffed, the rolled,
00:02:45
Speaker
We didn't have them every day, but we were treated to them like once a week or something.
Culinary Influences in Iraq
00:02:51
Speaker
In the book, you talk about your neighbors who are of different faiths. So you talk about your Jewish neighbors and your Christian neighbors and the kind of food that they introduced you to. So could you talk a little bit about this as well? Well, you know, I grew up in Baghdad, which is a kind of multi-ethnic society.
00:03:12
Speaker
On our street, I remember that we had some Jewish neighbors from whom we were introduced to the Tibet dish, a very traditional dish. From our Kurdish neighbors, I learned about the parta palau, which is a very nice dish of rice, spicy rice with meat enclosed in a crust of bread. We also learned from our neighbors from Mosul,
00:03:41
Speaker
I have to make the bulgur kupa. We learned, I mean, we also, my family comes from Basra, which is famous for its spicy food. So my mother always used to treat us with those spicy foods like mushroom, like fish. Living in Baghdad, I got acquainted with all those influences on the Iraqi cuisine. And we enjoyed the bounties of, you know,
00:04:09
Speaker
what is there in our country and how do these memories and experiences, how have they influenced the kind of work that you've done now? I really, you know, started to become aware of so many dishes that are being cooked outside my family.
00:04:30
Speaker
which enabled me to give a well-rounded picture of cooking in Iraq in general from the north to the south. Because as you know, Iraq geographically is different from the mountainous north, the flat middle, and of course we have the Basra, which is in the south, the seaport, which is from ancient times it was
00:04:56
Speaker
an important port for the transportation of spices, of goods. So with all this variety, of course, we have a wonderful cuisine.
Ancient to Modern Iraqi Cuisine
00:05:08
Speaker
And also a really big theme in your work is the kind of continuities and the differences between sort of Mesopotamian dishes and more sort of recent Iraqi cuisine. So I wonder whether you could also talk a little bit about this. When I started writing my book,
00:05:26
Speaker
It was just about a regular cookbook about the cooking I know. But when I started my research, I became aware of a long tradition that goes all the way back to Mesopotamian times. And first of all, I discovered the Babylonian tablets. And then I discovered two Baghdadi cookbooks from the Abbasid period.
00:05:54
Speaker
And I was really amazed. I was in a very unique situation where I can see my cuisine developing and evolving from ancient times to the present. And when I examined those resources, I was really surprised at the things that remained, the things that did not change.
00:06:20
Speaker
And the aspects, of course, that changed with the coming of the new crops from the new world. From ancient times, of course, the three Babylonian tablets, I discovered that, like in ancient times, their staple was this too. For fat, it's interesting that they were fond of the fat-tailed sheep. They take from the...
00:06:49
Speaker
Middle Eastern, it was a famous Middle Eastern breed of sheep. They were famous for their large tails, all chunks of fat, you know, pure fat. To the extent that when Herodotus visited Babylonia, he was impressed by the huge size of the tails of the sheep there. And of course, you know, Herodotus, he exaggerated, so sometimes exaggerates. So he said,
00:07:19
Speaker
They were so large that they had to tie them to carriages so that the sheep would pull. It was easy for the sheep to pull his tail being hold on this carriage. Not only that, not only these tools. There's also a Babylonian tablet
00:07:40
Speaker
which gives us recipes for bird pies. Like a pie, it has the bottom crust. It has the top crust. In between, there is a flavorful, like Mecha Mela sauce. We make Mecha Mela sauce. It's white sauce with the birds. And the recipe says you take the pie as it is covered to the diners.
00:08:05
Speaker
And it is my expectation that when they dine, they will uncover the top crust. And to their surprise, they would find this beautiful, you know, those beautiful birds in this swimming, in this flavorful, bechamel-like sauce. When I started digging into the medieval cookbooks, I was also surprised at how much survived from those, from this ancient cooking. It was these two as
00:08:35
Speaker
in ancient times, and they had their own elaborate dishes. So I realized that showmanship that we have today in Iraq, they are deeply rooted in our culinary traditions from ancient times. There was a pride in what they cooked. What I also found that survived is the vinag for
00:09:03
Speaker
mixing our spices, mixing our herbs. It's not only one spice, it's not only black pepper or something, but a combination of spices and herbs. I can see this in the Babylonian recipes, in the two surviving magnetic cocoa books, and in our cooking today. And also the importance of the bread.
00:09:31
Speaker
Bread, I was, I'm really amazed at how little bread changed. Like what, how many centuries ago they baked bread, simple bread, flour, water, and of course some yeast, and they cooked it and they baked them in the tanur, which is the domed clay oven. In the two medieval cookbooks, they also used the tanur,
00:10:01
Speaker
They called it Tanur. And there is even a recipe in Alwarah's 10th century cookbook, Baghdadi 10th century cookbook, which is called Qubzilma, which is water bread, because it is so simple, you know, just the basic ingredients. And the recipe describes the way the dough is made, the way it is baked, and it is exactly like the way we cook our bread.
00:10:30
Speaker
today in Iraq, we also call it Khobzilma. So there are things that do not change, do not need to change. But also, of course, I saw some changes because, of course, with the discovery of the new world, they brought the potatoes. And what's more importantly, they brought the tomatoes. In the 19th century, the Middle Eastern region started to cook with the tomatoes.
00:10:58
Speaker
And this changed the look of our stews. I mean, essentially, the stew remained the same, but the looks of it changed. It's red now. They used to sour their stews with lemon juice, pomegranate juice, all kinds of food. Sometimes they add vinegar. They used to add also something which is called murri.
00:11:23
Speaker
which is a kind of fermented liquid sauce, something like soy sauce. Tomatoes also have this kind of umami taste. So instead of the mori, they added, of course, now we have the tomato, which, you know, plays the same role. And they used to color, they used to love to color their stews with saffron. They love the color yellow, you know, golden yellow in their stews.
00:11:47
Speaker
Now, of course, it is red with the tomatoes. So without Maury and without Saffron, now we have ours too. It looks different, but essentially, basically, it's the same. I wanted to ask you one more question before we move on to your second book. So you said that you came across these tablets.
00:12:08
Speaker
that had recipes on them. So I was wondering what language were these tablets in and how did you go about reading them? The three of them, they are clay tablets, they are fired clay tablets and there are inscriptions of them that is called Akkadian, which is the language of the ancient Babylonians and the Sumerians. I cannot read Akkadian, but they were deciphered and
00:12:37
Speaker
That's how I was able to know the contents of these cuneiform tablets. The tablets of course now are at the Babylonian collection at Yale University. And I had the pleasure of going there and holding them in my hands. I went there and the curator took one of the tablets out of the cupboard
00:13:02
Speaker
And she gave it to me. I held it in my hand. It was so nice to touch thousands of years, a culinary document. It was so smooth with all those inscriptions. But of course, I couldn't read them, but I know what they are about. I know that sounds like an amazing experience. It was indeed. It was like a dream came
Significance of Ibn Sayyar al-Warak's Cookbook
00:13:23
Speaker
true.
00:13:24
Speaker
Yeah, no, it sounds really beautiful. And also that you actually got to hold them. I assume that usually this isn't allowed. And this links nicely to your other book, which is called Annals of the Khalifa's Kitchens, which is a translation of Ibn Sayyar al-Warak's 10th century Bardadi cookbook. So can you tell us a little bit about
00:13:52
Speaker
and what his intention was through putting this cookbook together. Yeah, first of all, this book is the first and the first book that has come down to us worldwide from the medieval times. It's really an important book and it is very impressive. It's a huge volume. It has 132 chapters, different varieties of foods, not only food, but he touches on all things. He touches on
00:14:21
Speaker
rules of, you know, dietetic rules, he touches on properties of foods. The first chapters in the book, they are not about recipes, they are about like a regimen of, you know, a healthy regimen of having foods, getting to know the properties of foods,
00:14:43
Speaker
This was because, I mean, this caused that the book was not recognized as a cookbook when it was first cataloged. They thought it was a book on medicine because it was dealing with all those subjects. And then, of course, we come to a series of chapters on the actual recipes. At the end of the book, there is a chapter on, of course, after you eat,
00:15:13
Speaker
you wash your hands called Ushnan, Mahle, Bunk, several preparations to remove the greasy odors of foods from your hands. Because as we know, they used to use the fingers, the three fingers of the hand to eat the dishes. Eating was a communal experience. So they had to share large bowls of food. And of course, this gave rise to certain regulations, certain etiquettes,
00:15:41
Speaker
When you share a meal with a group of people, you have to pay attention to what you do when you eat. There's this chapter about etiquette of food. There's the caution that the eaters should not unfasten their belts. That is to make room for what they eat. And then, of course, the last chapter is about sleeping. It's about sleeping because after they
00:16:08
Speaker
Apparently after they had their meals, of course, they enjoyed the nap. So when is the proper time to enjoy the nap?
00:16:17
Speaker
On what side should you sleep when you, when so that after, after a meal, et cetera? Yeah, it sounds very indulgent, this, this book. It is, it is indeed. And also I wanted to ask you a little bit about where this name Alwarak comes from and why these kinds of cookbooks or books about food and the etiquette around food were so popular at the time. His name is Alwarak.
00:16:46
Speaker
It is derived from Morak, which is paper. Alwar Rakht, this nickname, tells us that he used to deal with the paper business. There were special marketplaces for dealing with the stationery, with the bookstores. They were called Sukh Loraqeen.
00:17:08
Speaker
where you find, you know, where you can buy books, but not only buying them, you can hire, you can hire an entire library for yourself. You stay there for days and you read all the books you like. And, you know, that's how they gained knowledge. So I imagine that Alwarrak, we know nothing about him. Everything is, what we say about him is based on internal evidence and on his name.
00:17:39
Speaker
His name indicates that he used to deal with these kinds. He might have been a copyist, a scribe. He might have, as we know from the book, he used to compile books. Why he wrote this book? Well, we know this from internal evidence. In his introduction, we learn that he was commissioned to write it.
00:18:05
Speaker
an important person commissioned him to write the book. He wanted him to write a cookbook about caliphs, what the prince is, important people ate at the time, and put them together in a book. From the book, we learned that Alwar-Raq, indeed, he anthologized for us
00:18:29
Speaker
the Abbasidic cuisine of his time, the 10th century, not only his time, but also he goes back to the 9th century. So he did us really a great favor by preserving these books for us. He mentioned in name about 20 books. He mentions 100 names of people who participated in these activities, either writing cookbooks or cookbooks were written for them. It's really a wonderful window
00:18:59
Speaker
into the Abbasid world during this period, which is peopled with all those interesting people, anecdotes, poems, all these things. It is alive with all sorts of information. It's really an understatement to say that it is a cookbook.
00:19:23
Speaker
It is not that. It is beyond a
Engagement and Farewell
00:19:26
Speaker
book book. Thank you so much, Noelle. I really enjoyed speaking to you and learning about your work. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks so much. Thank you for tuning into Instant Coffee. This is brought to you by the LSE Middle East Centre and is produced by me, Nadine Elmanasvi, and me, Ribas de Manjaidar. Join us every other Tuesday for a new episode of Instant Coffee. To learn more about Noelle's work, follow the links in the podcast description.
00:19:54
Speaker
Don't forget to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our channel wherever you get your podcasts. Please make sure to like, comment and give us five stars. You know we deserve it.