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“What sort of person am I? Where are my loyalties? And who will I remember when I grow up?”

An interesting note on which to end September. I meant to get through so much more of this book… post some kebab and baklava recipes, and really get into Middle Eastern cooking. I felt a bit like a failure, to be honest. But then I realized as I was rereading this passage in The Language of Baklava what Diana Abu-Jaber wanted us to understand: food is not just nourishment. Not just food for the sake of food. Food is about the rest of your life. Which brings me to this quote.

It’s a scary thing to have to think about. What kind of person am I, really? I project an outward image… I can’t think of anyone who would think of me as a bad person, per se, but I know that there are bad things I do, and more importantly, bad things I think that no one will ever know about but me.

Sometimes I start thinking about choices I’ve made along the way, friends lost but not forgotten. So it’s for them that I post these sambusik cookies. To Diana Abu-Jaber, this is what they meant. I’m hoping they can mean the same for me and for you.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Stir together one cup of clarified butter and half a cup of sugar. Add 3/4 cup of milk at room temperature. Add 4 cups of flour in small batches and knead the dough by hand until it is smooth. Roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thick and cut with a 2-inch cookie cutter. Combine 1 1/2 cups of ground walnuts, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and a grating of nutmeg for the filling. Place a good mounded teaspoon of the filling on each round, fold it over, pinch the edges closed, and form into a crescent shape. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned. Remove from the oven and sprinkle liberally with confectioner’s sugar.

“For my first night back, we’re having chicken fatteh–a layered dish of toasted bread, chicken, onion, spices, and pine nuts covered with a velvety yogurt sauce. It’s so lush and lovely, I eat recklessly, like an amnesiac with no awareness of anything but the table, the sweet sadness of return, an the moon hanging like a sigh just beyond the long dark fields.”

Read. This. Book. If not for the recipes, then for the style. Diana Abu-Jaber is a lovely writer, and she knows exactly how to evoke the sentiment in the reader. When I read this sentence, I think of my own homecoming foods, remembering my days at boarding school when I couldn’t cook for myself. I would call my mother weeks before coming home, asking her what they were having for dinner, pressing the phone hard to my ear as though listening hard enough would bring me back to roast beef and yorkshire pudding, to spaghetti and meatballs, to rotisserie chicken and oven-roasted potatoes. When I finally arrived home, she would cook as I commanded: always lasagna, beef in tarragon mustard sauce, and swordfish with watermelon salad. I was a nomad, faded from my home. My sister barely remembered when I lived there. When I was gone, I was a ghost, a few books and an empty bed to suggest that I used to belong. Eating was coming home, and as I filled my belly with warm food, I stopped fading and became real again.

For Diana, the food that does this is this fatteh, and I can see how. Even not having grown up with it, there is something comforting about the warmly spiced, steamed chicken, the creamy yogurt sauce, the sweet bite of onion. I served the dish with roasted vegetables and tried to imagine my own homecoming, which now seems so far away…

“I used to hate magloubeh, but Gram instructed me never to say ‘hate,’ so now I just don’t care for it instead.”

Diana Abu-Jaber may not care for magloubeh, but I’m certainly glad she still included the recipe in her book, because I love it. This is the first recipe I tried from The Language of Baklava. I had considered progressing through the chapters in an organized manner, sampling each recipe. But the first recipe was shish kabob, and I don’t think my little Paris kitchen has room for that. Besides, the story doesn’t really go in chronological order anyway, so why should I? Instead, I paged through the book until I found a recipe that interested me. The one I found included eggplant and chicken, both of which I had on hand.

Magloubeh, as Abu-Jaber explains, means upside down in Jordanian. This part had me a little bit worried… I was supposed to turn out the huge dutch oven onto a plate at the end. But she cautioned that her version was not supposed to stand up like a timbale, so that was good enough for me.

The recipe started out simply… sauté some onions, fry cauliflower and eggplant… but pretty soon I had several different dishes waiting to be combined. My tiny kitchen almost couldn’t handle it, but I managed (it involved balancing things on the edge of the counter and in the sink), and I’m so glad I did.

The final product had to steam for 40 minutes, and then another 10 after I added the couscous (I replaced the rice in her recipe. I don’t like rice. I don’t keep it in my kitchen. I don’t eat it.) I could barely keep from lifting the lid… the smells of cinnamon, black pepper, and allspice wafted through the house. (Note: Allspice is called “4 spice” in French… wish I had known that. I stood like an idiot in front of the spice rack at the supermarket before picking up vaguely brown bottles at random and inspecting the ingredient lists).

When I finally turned out the pot, a little bit of the chicken stuck to the bottom, but I had no problem dishing it out and placing it on top. Not perfect, but I’m learning. Abu-Jaber suggests serving this with yogurt. Her version also includes sumac, which I couldn’t find… but the last time I bought it I used it once and then the rest sat around forever, so maybe I tried not to find it. She also says you can use either lamb or chicken. Maybe next time… this time I was so entranced by the spices that I couldn’t think of adding a thing.

Magloubeh

In a heavy saucepan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil. Add one large onion, chopped, and sauté until soft and browned. Add 8 ounces of boneless chicken, cut into chunks. Cook, stirring, until evenly browned. Add 1/8 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ground coriander, and ground cumin, and 1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice. Add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add one and a half cups of water (note… she suggests broth, but the only broth I could find in the store had MSG, to which I am highly allergic. If you can find broth, I suggest it, although the dish did not suffer with the water), and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for one hour, until the meat is tender.

In a frying pan, fry one half of an eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch half circles, and one half of a small cauliflower, cut in half and then into 1/2 inch pieces, in olive oil. Remove and set on paper towels to drain excess oil. Coat the bottom of a large dutch oven with olive oil (about 2 teaspoons). Arrange the meat in an even layer in the pot. Cover with the eggplant, then 1/2 cup of couscous, then the cauliflower. Pour the broth from the meat over the entire thing. Cover the pot and simmer until the couscous is cooked.

Meanwhile, saute 1/8 cup of pine nuts in butter until lightly browned.

When the meat and rice are done cooking, invert the pot over a serving dish. Top the meat with the pine nuts.