The famous mosques and historical palaces lining the Bosphorus elicit little more than polite interest from the boat's passengers. But as a luxurious waterfront villa comes into view, crowds swarm to the side of the boat. Cameras appear suddenly from the enveloping folds of black chadors.
Forget Topkapi Palace, this is where the Turkish soap opera Noor was filmed.
With its glamorous cast and extreme plotlines, Noor has become a phenomenon across the Middle East, sparking a tourism boom to Turkey that drew 105,000 visitors from Arab countries in May alone this year – an increase of about 33% on last year. First airing on the Saudi MBC satellite channel in early 2008, its final episode was seen by nearly 80 million viewers from Palestine to Morocco.
Noor, starring Turkish actors Songül Öden and Kivanç Tatlitug (pictured), tells the story of a girl from the country who marries into a wealthy Istanbul family – a modern day Cinderella story of sorts, albeit one that includes a lot of foreplay, an illegitimate child and some prison time for Noor herself.
Continue reading: Turkish soap opera Noor brings tourist boom to Istanbul
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Valencia: what lies beneath
It’s past midnight, and I’m in a street surrounded by a group of people chatting and laughing as the sharp smell of gunpowder from crackling fireworks wafts over us in the thick night air. A colourfully dressed woman with dark brown eyes is wandering in and out of the crowd holding a plate of delicious nut-based sweetmeats, which she offers around.
“I made them,” she says proudly.
All at once, the hubbub of guttural voices dies down as the sound of a beating drum reverberates from the pavement opposite.
Tak takka tak!
And a man nearby starts playing a high-pitched reed instrument, like a snake-charmer, with slow, whining notes. After a few moments, a woman at his side begins to sing. But this is no sweet melody; it sounds more like a chant or a cry, her voice rising and falling in strange, swooping intervals, almost like a muezzin’s call to prayer. When she finishes, everyone cheers and claps, the drum beats again, and the crowd moves on down the street for more music and sweetmeats.
Though the music, food and atmosphere might make me feel as though I’ve been transported to North Africa for a street festival, I am actually in Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, a city that has been my home for the past 10 years. The sweetmeats – indistinguishable from halva – are known as turrón, and I’m witnessing a Nit d’Albaes – a common local fiesta where satirical songs are sung late into the night – but with an obvious Moorish flavour to them.
Valencia is not the first place you tend to think of when Moorish Spain is mentioned. Andalusia, to the south, has that honour, with its magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada, the Great Mosque at Cordoba, and other picturesque sites. But historically, Valencia is as Moorish as any of these: it was ruled by Muslims for more than 500 years, until 1238, while the very last Moors in Spain, the Moriscos, were concentrated in the Valencia region when the order to expel all 300,000 of them to North Africa came in 1609. Under the Arabs, Valencia was at the centre of what was known as sharq al-andalus – the eastern region of Al-Andalus, while the city itself was known as hadiqat al-andalus – the garden of Moorish Spain, for its wonderful climate and extremely fertile soil.
Despite this heritage, however, you won’t find many mosques or ancient palaces to visit. Yet, although the region may be a less obvious tourist destination than its Andalusian counterpart, it is no less rewarding for it.
Today the city is the third-largest in Spain, a thriving Mediterranean seaport which recently hosted the America’s Cup and has staged two Formula One Grands Prix. From being an oft-overlooked corner of the country, it has arrived as a tourist destination in the past few years with the opening of the spectacularly modern City of Arts and Sciences – a space-age architectural delight comprising an opera house, museums, an aquarium and more – designed by local boy Santiago Calatrava.
Source: The National, Valencia: what lies beneath
“I made them,” she says proudly.
All at once, the hubbub of guttural voices dies down as the sound of a beating drum reverberates from the pavement opposite.
Tak takka tak!
And a man nearby starts playing a high-pitched reed instrument, like a snake-charmer, with slow, whining notes. After a few moments, a woman at his side begins to sing. But this is no sweet melody; it sounds more like a chant or a cry, her voice rising and falling in strange, swooping intervals, almost like a muezzin’s call to prayer. When she finishes, everyone cheers and claps, the drum beats again, and the crowd moves on down the street for more music and sweetmeats.
Though the music, food and atmosphere might make me feel as though I’ve been transported to North Africa for a street festival, I am actually in Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, a city that has been my home for the past 10 years. The sweetmeats – indistinguishable from halva – are known as turrón, and I’m witnessing a Nit d’Albaes – a common local fiesta where satirical songs are sung late into the night – but with an obvious Moorish flavour to them.
Valencia is not the first place you tend to think of when Moorish Spain is mentioned. Andalusia, to the south, has that honour, with its magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada, the Great Mosque at Cordoba, and other picturesque sites. But historically, Valencia is as Moorish as any of these: it was ruled by Muslims for more than 500 years, until 1238, while the very last Moors in Spain, the Moriscos, were concentrated in the Valencia region when the order to expel all 300,000 of them to North Africa came in 1609. Under the Arabs, Valencia was at the centre of what was known as sharq al-andalus – the eastern region of Al-Andalus, while the city itself was known as hadiqat al-andalus – the garden of Moorish Spain, for its wonderful climate and extremely fertile soil.
Despite this heritage, however, you won’t find many mosques or ancient palaces to visit. Yet, although the region may be a less obvious tourist destination than its Andalusian counterpart, it is no less rewarding for it.
Today the city is the third-largest in Spain, a thriving Mediterranean seaport which recently hosted the America’s Cup and has staged two Formula One Grands Prix. From being an oft-overlooked corner of the country, it has arrived as a tourist destination in the past few years with the opening of the spectacularly modern City of Arts and Sciences – a space-age architectural delight comprising an opera house, museums, an aquarium and more – designed by local boy Santiago Calatrava.
Source: The National, Valencia: what lies beneath
Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
The Website ALL4SYRIA reported (in Arabic) on July 17, 2010 that private Islamist elementary schools have been proliferating in Syria. The title of the article: Secrets and Background Behind the Decision to Ban the Wearing of the Niqab in Syria’s Schools and Universities Taken by the Office of National Security.
A Summary of the ALL4SYRIA article
Islamist groups in Syria have succeeded in controlling most private elementary schools (up to sixth grade), estimated to be around 200 schools (presumably in Damascus) with approximately 25% to 30% of all elementary schools enrolment. The article revealed that teachers are all women, don the Niqab (black covering of face and body), and belong to Islamist proselytizing groups, typically led and controlled by women. ALL4SYRIA added that classroom teaching material contravenes Ministry of Education curriculum and textbooks, that young children are instructed to insist that their mothers must wear the Niqab so that they avoid burning in hell’s fire, that large amounts of money have been paid by Islamist organizers to purchase secular private schools from their owners; for example, Dar Al-Faraj, Dar Al-Na’eem, Omar bin Al-Khattab, The Arab Islamic College, Ummat Al-Majd, Al-Yaqzah…).
Significance of the article
Such a development is disconcerting. Syria must be vigilant. At the core of Islamist teaching, just like Wahhabi teaching, is indoctrination and brainwashing in fanaticism. Sunni Islamists, Syria’s included, embrace Wahhabi extremism with all their being. Their speech and actions are akin to being members of a religious cult.
It should be noted that the word "Islamist" refers only to the tiny minority among individual Muslims who are extremists in their religious fervor and beliefs; specifically, the Hanbalite Wahhabis. The word "Islamist" does not apply to the 95% of Sunnis who follow the other three schools of jurisprudence (Hanafites, Maliktes, and Shafiates). This great majority is moderate, enlightened, and tolerant. On a macro level, the word "Islamist" refers to extremist Islamic states, not to moderate Islamic countries. While Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Syria, and Turkey, for example, are Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist country.
Source: Daring Opinion, Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
A Summary of the ALL4SYRIA article
Islamist groups in Syria have succeeded in controlling most private elementary schools (up to sixth grade), estimated to be around 200 schools (presumably in Damascus) with approximately 25% to 30% of all elementary schools enrolment. The article revealed that teachers are all women, don the Niqab (black covering of face and body), and belong to Islamist proselytizing groups, typically led and controlled by women. ALL4SYRIA added that classroom teaching material contravenes Ministry of Education curriculum and textbooks, that young children are instructed to insist that their mothers must wear the Niqab so that they avoid burning in hell’s fire, that large amounts of money have been paid by Islamist organizers to purchase secular private schools from their owners; for example, Dar Al-Faraj, Dar Al-Na’eem, Omar bin Al-Khattab, The Arab Islamic College, Ummat Al-Majd, Al-Yaqzah…).
Significance of the article
Such a development is disconcerting. Syria must be vigilant. At the core of Islamist teaching, just like Wahhabi teaching, is indoctrination and brainwashing in fanaticism. Sunni Islamists, Syria’s included, embrace Wahhabi extremism with all their being. Their speech and actions are akin to being members of a religious cult.
It should be noted that the word "Islamist" refers only to the tiny minority among individual Muslims who are extremists in their religious fervor and beliefs; specifically, the Hanbalite Wahhabis. The word "Islamist" does not apply to the 95% of Sunnis who follow the other three schools of jurisprudence (Hanafites, Maliktes, and Shafiates). This great majority is moderate, enlightened, and tolerant. On a macro level, the word "Islamist" refers to extremist Islamic states, not to moderate Islamic countries. While Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Syria, and Turkey, for example, are Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist country.
Source: Daring Opinion, Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
Monday, 19 July 2010
Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Far from the heated debates of Europe, Syria has banned the niqab in classrooms, adding another layer to this complex story
Quietly, away from the fanfare that accompanied the French vote on banning the niqab in public, and calls by Philip Hollobone to impose a ban in Britain, the Syrian government has instituted its own, more limited, ban, removing teachers who wear the full face veil from teaching in public schools.
At first glance, such a move might seem puzzling: Syria, with dozens of religious sects and a nominally secular government, has managed for decades to use a light touch, at least when it comes to personal faith.
But the rise of religion among the population has shaken the leadership: with overt displays of faith on the rise and a rare terrorist attack in Damascus two years ago attributed to Islamists, the government appears to be moving against hardline religious ideas.
The niqab ban in public schools is a fairly blunt instrument but, on such a small scale, it may be intended to send a message. Egypt, too, has instigated a similarly limited ban (for university exams), a move opposed by Islamists but upheld by the courts.
Continue reading Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Source: The Guardian
Quietly, away from the fanfare that accompanied the French vote on banning the niqab in public, and calls by Philip Hollobone to impose a ban in Britain, the Syrian government has instituted its own, more limited, ban, removing teachers who wear the full face veil from teaching in public schools.
At first glance, such a move might seem puzzling: Syria, with dozens of religious sects and a nominally secular government, has managed for decades to use a light touch, at least when it comes to personal faith.
But the rise of religion among the population has shaken the leadership: with overt displays of faith on the rise and a rare terrorist attack in Damascus two years ago attributed to Islamists, the government appears to be moving against hardline religious ideas.
The niqab ban in public schools is a fairly blunt instrument but, on such a small scale, it may be intended to send a message. Egypt, too, has instigated a similarly limited ban (for university exams), a move opposed by Islamists but upheld by the courts.
Continue reading Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Source: The Guardian
Sunday, 23 May 2010
T E Lawrence: hero or mirage?
The legacy of T E Lawrence, the British intelligence officer who fought alongside Arab irregulars and was immortalised in David Lean’s film, varies markedly between the West and the Middle East. Alasdair Soussi looks at the man and myth, 75 years after his death.
The arrival of the British-led Imperial Camel Corps into the Arab camp at Aqaba was always likely to cause friction. Despite fighting as allies against the might of the Ottoman Empire in the 1916-18 Arab campaign to drive the Turks out of the Middle East, the British troopers and the Arab irregulars never made comfortable bedfellows. This particular summer’s day in 1918, at the closing stages of the Great War, was to be no different.
The army encampment, in what is today Jordan’s southernmost city, reverberated to the sound of excited cries and musket fire as the 314-strong imperial troops galloped into town. Such was the greeting afforded them by the Arabs that many in the Camel Corps thought Aqaba itself was under attack.
By nightfall, tensions had reached breaking point. Unfamiliar with the ways of the Arab camp and convinced they had been shot at while bathing in the sea earlier that day, several troopers were about to take matters into their own hands with the aid of a few grenades when a figure in white appeared.
“He stood in the middle of the square, flung back his aba, showing his white undergarment, and illuminated by the countless fires, raised his hand,” one soldier recalled. “Immediately the firing ceased, the hubbub died down and we had a peaceful night.”
That figure was Thomas Edward Lawrence. T E Lawrence, who died 75 years ago this week, and who was pivotal in the success of the Arab revolt against the Turks, was the man the world would come to know as Lawrence of Arabia, and that anecdote – almost mythical in tone, yet a documented fact – is one of hundreds that have surrounded a life that continues to provoke the debate.
David Lean’s 1962 epic, starring Peter O’Toole, was based on Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence’s memoir of the two-year campaign. The film was a global sensation, but it was not the first time that the Lawrence myth had captured the popular imagination.
Forty-three years earlier, Lowell Thomas, a US journalist, toured the world with a highly romanticised film about Lawrence shot in the desert towards the end of the war. With Allenby In Palestine And Lawrence In Arabia was an immediate hit, not least in Great Britain where Lawrence was born in 1888. Consequently, Lawrence’s role in the Arab uprising, his pursuit of victory against the Ottomans, and his complete immersion in the Arab way of life as a British intelligence officer, all contrived to create a man more otherworldly than simply flesh and bone. Michael Asher, the English-born explorer and Arabist, and author of Lawrence: The Uncrowned King Of Arabia, is one of many who readily subscribes to this view.
“When I went to Lawrence’s cottage – now a museum – at Clouds Hill in Dorset [south-west England], it felt like a church. I realised that he was seen in Britain as a secular saint. If you think about it, Lawrence was really the only ‘hero’ to emerge from the First World War, a war in which millions died – he was the man who seemed to resurrect in his person the lost dead boys of a whole generation.”
Here, in the Middle East, the arena in which Lawrence gained his reputation, there are no such memorials.
So what is his legacy in this part of the world? Like many things concerning Lawrence, the answer is far from simple.
At only 1.65m tall and with a head that looked too big for his body, this shy Welsh-born son of an Anglo-Irish father and a Scottish mother was an unremarkable-looking man. Yet, he possessed a mind that was quite brilliant. After gaining a first-class degree in modern history from Jesus College, Oxford, Lawrence became an archaeologist, and travelled across the Middle East honing his knowledge of its geography and language, both of which he would come to master.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the British intelligence service in Cairo and soon became involved in negotiations to orchestrate an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was sealed when Britain all but promised the Arabs a single unified nation should they triumph. But, while the revolt would be a major success, the European powers went back on their word. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret pact cooked up by Britain and France in 1916, carved up the Middle East into colonial spheres of influence in a post-Ottoman world, a betrayal that put paid to any Arab hopes of freedom.
Continue reading T E Lawrence: hero or mirage? Source: The National, Abu Dhabi
The arrival of the British-led Imperial Camel Corps into the Arab camp at Aqaba was always likely to cause friction. Despite fighting as allies against the might of the Ottoman Empire in the 1916-18 Arab campaign to drive the Turks out of the Middle East, the British troopers and the Arab irregulars never made comfortable bedfellows. This particular summer’s day in 1918, at the closing stages of the Great War, was to be no different.
The army encampment, in what is today Jordan’s southernmost city, reverberated to the sound of excited cries and musket fire as the 314-strong imperial troops galloped into town. Such was the greeting afforded them by the Arabs that many in the Camel Corps thought Aqaba itself was under attack.
By nightfall, tensions had reached breaking point. Unfamiliar with the ways of the Arab camp and convinced they had been shot at while bathing in the sea earlier that day, several troopers were about to take matters into their own hands with the aid of a few grenades when a figure in white appeared.
“He stood in the middle of the square, flung back his aba, showing his white undergarment, and illuminated by the countless fires, raised his hand,” one soldier recalled. “Immediately the firing ceased, the hubbub died down and we had a peaceful night.”
That figure was Thomas Edward Lawrence. T E Lawrence, who died 75 years ago this week, and who was pivotal in the success of the Arab revolt against the Turks, was the man the world would come to know as Lawrence of Arabia, and that anecdote – almost mythical in tone, yet a documented fact – is one of hundreds that have surrounded a life that continues to provoke the debate.
David Lean’s 1962 epic, starring Peter O’Toole, was based on Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence’s memoir of the two-year campaign. The film was a global sensation, but it was not the first time that the Lawrence myth had captured the popular imagination.
Forty-three years earlier, Lowell Thomas, a US journalist, toured the world with a highly romanticised film about Lawrence shot in the desert towards the end of the war. With Allenby In Palestine And Lawrence In Arabia was an immediate hit, not least in Great Britain where Lawrence was born in 1888. Consequently, Lawrence’s role in the Arab uprising, his pursuit of victory against the Ottomans, and his complete immersion in the Arab way of life as a British intelligence officer, all contrived to create a man more otherworldly than simply flesh and bone. Michael Asher, the English-born explorer and Arabist, and author of Lawrence: The Uncrowned King Of Arabia, is one of many who readily subscribes to this view.
“When I went to Lawrence’s cottage – now a museum – at Clouds Hill in Dorset [south-west England], it felt like a church. I realised that he was seen in Britain as a secular saint. If you think about it, Lawrence was really the only ‘hero’ to emerge from the First World War, a war in which millions died – he was the man who seemed to resurrect in his person the lost dead boys of a whole generation.”
Here, in the Middle East, the arena in which Lawrence gained his reputation, there are no such memorials.
So what is his legacy in this part of the world? Like many things concerning Lawrence, the answer is far from simple.
At only 1.65m tall and with a head that looked too big for his body, this shy Welsh-born son of an Anglo-Irish father and a Scottish mother was an unremarkable-looking man. Yet, he possessed a mind that was quite brilliant. After gaining a first-class degree in modern history from Jesus College, Oxford, Lawrence became an archaeologist, and travelled across the Middle East honing his knowledge of its geography and language, both of which he would come to master.
At the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the British intelligence service in Cairo and soon became involved in negotiations to orchestrate an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which was sealed when Britain all but promised the Arabs a single unified nation should they triumph. But, while the revolt would be a major success, the European powers went back on their word. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret pact cooked up by Britain and France in 1916, carved up the Middle East into colonial spheres of influence in a post-Ottoman world, a betrayal that put paid to any Arab hopes of freedom.
Continue reading T E Lawrence: hero or mirage? Source: The National, Abu Dhabi
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
An appetite for Aleppo
At an indeterminate point in Aleppo’s main market street, the Souq al-Attarine, but most likely somewhere between observing a pair of goat testicles dangling off a skinned carcass, and running into a bloody, matted camel head hanging on a large metal hook, I lose my appetite. This is a shame, because we are due to lunch at Bazar al-Charq, a restaurant known for its myriad preparations of the ground-meat dish kibbeh, itself an Aleppan speciality.
I’m trailing Anissa Helou, the London-based, Syrian-Lebanese cookbook author and docent of delicacies, on a culinary tour through Syria.
A tall, elegant woman with an attention-grabbing puff of silvery hair (small children compare her, sotto voce, to Cruella de Vil), Helou gives regular cooking classes in London and, once or twice a year, steers small groups of hungry travellers to the region’s gastronomic epicentres – Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, Istanbul and Gaziantep in Turkey – where they eat themselves to a standstill.
On this trip, the occasional cultural interludes, such as excursions to the Roman ruins of Palmyra and the Crusader castle of Krak de Chevaliers, feel like flickering film static interrupting a week-long highlight reel of Syrian cookery.
Syria has become a relatively popular tourist destination in the past five years, and not only for backpackers bouncing around the region on falafel-fuelled gap years.
A mandatory pit stop on both the Silk and the Spice Roads for hundreds of years, Aleppo’s residents (both welcome and unwelcome) have included Turkomen, French, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Chinese, Jews, Ottomans, Armenians and Kurds, all of whom bequeathed at least a trace of their cookery to the city.
Damascus, the capital, has many lovely courtyard restaurants, but it is best known for its spectacular variety of street food.
Aleppo, on the other hand, has evolved a tradition of more elegant, elaborate dining. Pierre Antaki, the co-founder and vice president of the Syrian Academy of Gastronomy, attributes this to economic factors: most Aleppans still go home for lunch, snooze a bit, then work again until evening, whereas Damascenes often work far from their homes and eat a quick bite in or near their shops or offices before finishing the day’s work.
“In Damascus, hardly anybody goes home for lunch,” says Pierre. “They work one shift, and live far outside of the city. Here, if the big fat boss doesn’t go home and eat and have his siesta, it’s not a day.”
Aleppo in particular is known for the quality of its raw ingredients; despite a brutal drought in the north-east of the country (and in neighbouring Jordan), the land surrounding the city is, and always has been, rich and green. The famous Aleppan pistachio, fistik halabi, for example, wears many hats in the local cuisine, appearing in both sweets and savouries.
We arrived just as the season kicked off, early October, and it’s difficult to turn a corner without encountering a mountain of fresh, unpeeled nuts, looking rather majestic for something the size of a nut, in their matte magenta robes.
The lush environs also nourish those higher up on the food chain; lambs are usually fed on an all-grass diet, resulting in top-quality meat that, know-how aside, sets Aleppo’s kibbeh apart. Florence Ollivry, the author of Les Secrets d’Alep: Une grande ville arabe révelée par sa cuisine, counts 58 different preparations, sculpted into various shapes, raw, baked, or fried, and served with everything from a simple drizzle of olive oil, a few mint leaves and a green onion to savoury yoghurt or tomato sauces.
At Bazar al-Charq, just outside of the old city in a 300-year-old building, we taste at least half-a-dozen of these. While two travellers recline on cushions at an empty table, recuperating from the various stomach plagues that Syria visits upon foreigners, I try to banish the testicles and hanging camel head from my mind and focus on the kibbeh carnival unfolding before me.
Bazar al-Charq has been around since 2003 and, according to Anissa, is one of Aleppo’s most underrated restaurants.
The setting – a large, basement room with vaulted stone ceilings – is slightly heavy on the Orientalist kitsch, but the kibbeh are no joke. Among those we tried were a well-seasoned kibbeh sajiyyeh (cooked on the saj, or concave grill), which was relatively light (kibbeh is more frequently encountered fried), kibbeh bi-laban (fried balls swimming in yogurt sauce, with tender bits of lamb floating alongside), kibbeh with sumac and aubergine (in a sour, dark sauce whose colour contrasted with the light, lemoniness of the sumac) and the formidable kibbeh maajouqa, a kind of quesadilla that substitutes discs of greasy meat for tortillas, with a filling of cheese and red and green peppers.
If we put all the ground meat on our table together, we could probably have assembled a small lamb.
Several of the diners are avid home cooks. What makes a perfect kibbeh?, they want to know.
“The proportion of meat to bulgur is very important,” Anissa begins. “Heavier on the meat. It should be well-seasoned and fatty without being greasy. And it should be grilled or fried until it’s crispy.”
On our first evening, we ate at Yasmeen d’Alep, which opened in 1995 in the Christian-Armenian neighbourhood of Jdeideh. We sit down, a bit ragged after what seemed like endless hours on the bus from Damascus. And the mezze parade begins: eggplants stuffed with bulgur salad, nuts and potatoes, rice kibbeh, sausage casing stuffed with rice, ground meat and chickpeas, and several salads.
If you go
The flight Return flights to Damascus from Dubai on Emirates (www.emirates.com) cost from $325 (Dh1,195) including taxes
For more information on the Syrian Academy of Gastronomy and Pistache d’Alep, see www.gastrosyr.com and www.pistachedalep.com
Along with excellent grilled meats, Yasmine d’Alep serves a superb rendition of kebab kerez, or cherry kebab, lovely little balls of spiced, minced meat swimming merrily in a sauce of sour cherries, topped with toasted flatbread. According to Antaki, the sweet-and-sour combination (arguably a Persian influence) is in fact a Chinese contribution to Aleppan cuisine, although the dish is considered Armenian. In lesser hands, it can taste as though someone opened a can of cherry pie filling onto a plate of meatballs; here the chef shows admirable restraint in tempering the tartness of the cherries.
The newest and perhaps most successful restaurant in Aleppo is Zmorod. It opened around a year ago, and the owner, Dalal Touma, was dining at a table by the door when we walk in, and the large courtyard, warmed by golden-rose light, is filled with mostly Syrian patrons.
Anissa orders what sounded like two of everything on the menu, despite the fact that most of us were still wobbling from lunch. The service is excellent – Anissa barely glances at the menu, and instead embarks on a swift back-and-forth with the waiter in Arabic, who has a number of suggestions for what’s freshest and most interesting. The highlights include a cold dish of chicken morsels covered with the thickest, richest tahini sauce imaginable, tender fish with spicy tarator (a tahini sauce spiked with red pepper), and a grilled red pepper salad.
Through her cookbooks, such as Modern Mezze (Quadrille Publishing, 2007), her occasional columns in The Financial Times, and her blog (www.anissas.com) Helou does her bit to champion Syrian cuisine, which despite its similarity to Lebanese food, is considerably less well known. This is most likely, she thinks, because Syrians never experienced the famine and political turbulence that, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, drove so many Lebanese into the diaspora, where they had to eat, of course.
“You can eat the same dishes in Syria and in Lebanon but they’ll taste totally different,” Helou says. “Kebab in Syria is actually kafteh (ground meat balls) whereas kebabs in Lebanon really means lahmeh meshoui (grilled chunks of marinated meat.)
The Syrian fattouche is different in that the bread is fried and it often has cheese in it, and it is dressed with pomegranate syrup whereas in the Lebanese fattouche, the bread is normally toasted and the dressing is mostly sumac.”
The two cuisines share many similarities – a mezze tradition, kibbeh worship, an emphasis on the fresh and the seasonal – but Syrian food has its particular charms. It also comes with an edge of danger. Judging from the number of travellers who fell ill on the tour (five out of seven, or everyone except Anissa and me), Syrians’ enthusiasm for hygiene is nowhere near as rigorous as their devotion to flavour.
One place where we are assured a higher degree of protection was at the home of Maria Gaspard Smara, a successful caterer known for her sure hand with Aleppan specialities (she also contributed many recipes to Ollivry’s book). She welcomes us with bowls of rosy, fresh pistachios and proceeds to demonstrate a series of classic Aleppan dishes, including muhammara, a dip made of red pepper paste, walnuts and pomegranate syrup, and a delicious snack of deep-fried aubergine slices dipped in egg batter and deep-fried again.
“There are four seasons in Aleppo, and each has its own cuisine,” explains Smara. Late summer, for example, is stuffed vegetable season. “Also, Aleppan cooks don’t waste anything,” she says, illustrating her point by using the insides of hollowed-out courgettes (to be stuffed with a rice mixture) to make a garlicky dip.
The main dish, frikeh, or toasted green wheat and lamb, she cooks in a meat broth flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon and pepper, topped with pistachios, almonds and pine nuts fried in semneh, or clarified butter, and served with a thick, plain yogurt. For dessert, it’s all we could do to find room for a couple of large, juicy figs.
On our last morning in Aleppo, Anissa took a few of us to Hajj Abdo, the city’s authority on beans. His beans – foul, or fava beans– simmer overnight in large copper vessels that appear to be as old as he is (66), and their hearty, faintly bitter smell hangs in the air around the corner shop he has been working in since he was 21. Having lived for a year in Egypt, I was traumatised by foul. Egyptians tend to turn it into something resembling mud, which, although I have not yet found an archaeologist to back me up on this, I believe it was used to bind the bricks of the Great Pyramids. But Anissa assured me this was something utterly different.
Eating under the scrutiny of a dozen pairs of eyes can be faintly uncomfortable for women travellers, but these beans demand to be savoured. There is one major choice to be made: shall it be with tahini or lemon? After this hurdle, everything else – chilli paste, garlic, salt, cumin, olive oil – is a matter of degree. Anissa and I prefer the tahini version, which has a certain unctuousness amplified by a ladleful (yes) of oil on top, and she goes for extra chilli, while I enjoy a spoonful of cumin.
The Aleppan leg of the tour wound down at an old favourite, Wanes, a modern-looking, rather characterless, and staunchly local eatery that has been open since 1977.
“My mother and I used to come here in the 1980s for their grills,” Anissa tells us as we sit down. After a morning of foul, we were too full for grilled meat, but Anissa orders an abundant spread nonetheless. (It is customary – and Anissa never strays from this custom – to order enough mezze so as to eliminate any negative space on the tablecloth).
The standouts are the jibneh kurdiyyeh (Kurdish cheese), a salty white cheese between two pieces of flat bread, with small but potent minced hot green chillies and slices of tomato, all pan-fried like a quesadilla, and the basterma, an Armenian speciality of spiced, pressed dried meat often served with thin slices of raw garlic and eaten drizzled with olive oil and freshly cured green olives on the side. For dessert, I hand out some plump, sweet figs I had picked up in the giant market outside the old city, and the group piles back into the bus to head to Palmyra.
If there was anything fabulous left to eat in Aleppo, it would have to wait until the next trip.
travel@thenational.ae
Source: The National: An appetite for Aleppo
I’m trailing Anissa Helou, the London-based, Syrian-Lebanese cookbook author and docent of delicacies, on a culinary tour through Syria.
A tall, elegant woman with an attention-grabbing puff of silvery hair (small children compare her, sotto voce, to Cruella de Vil), Helou gives regular cooking classes in London and, once or twice a year, steers small groups of hungry travellers to the region’s gastronomic epicentres – Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, Istanbul and Gaziantep in Turkey – where they eat themselves to a standstill.
On this trip, the occasional cultural interludes, such as excursions to the Roman ruins of Palmyra and the Crusader castle of Krak de Chevaliers, feel like flickering film static interrupting a week-long highlight reel of Syrian cookery.
Syria has become a relatively popular tourist destination in the past five years, and not only for backpackers bouncing around the region on falafel-fuelled gap years.
A mandatory pit stop on both the Silk and the Spice Roads for hundreds of years, Aleppo’s residents (both welcome and unwelcome) have included Turkomen, French, Greeks, Indians, Italians, Chinese, Jews, Ottomans, Armenians and Kurds, all of whom bequeathed at least a trace of their cookery to the city.
Damascus, the capital, has many lovely courtyard restaurants, but it is best known for its spectacular variety of street food.
Aleppo, on the other hand, has evolved a tradition of more elegant, elaborate dining. Pierre Antaki, the co-founder and vice president of the Syrian Academy of Gastronomy, attributes this to economic factors: most Aleppans still go home for lunch, snooze a bit, then work again until evening, whereas Damascenes often work far from their homes and eat a quick bite in or near their shops or offices before finishing the day’s work.
“In Damascus, hardly anybody goes home for lunch,” says Pierre. “They work one shift, and live far outside of the city. Here, if the big fat boss doesn’t go home and eat and have his siesta, it’s not a day.”
Aleppo in particular is known for the quality of its raw ingredients; despite a brutal drought in the north-east of the country (and in neighbouring Jordan), the land surrounding the city is, and always has been, rich and green. The famous Aleppan pistachio, fistik halabi, for example, wears many hats in the local cuisine, appearing in both sweets and savouries.
We arrived just as the season kicked off, early October, and it’s difficult to turn a corner without encountering a mountain of fresh, unpeeled nuts, looking rather majestic for something the size of a nut, in their matte magenta robes.
The lush environs also nourish those higher up on the food chain; lambs are usually fed on an all-grass diet, resulting in top-quality meat that, know-how aside, sets Aleppo’s kibbeh apart. Florence Ollivry, the author of Les Secrets d’Alep: Une grande ville arabe révelée par sa cuisine, counts 58 different preparations, sculpted into various shapes, raw, baked, or fried, and served with everything from a simple drizzle of olive oil, a few mint leaves and a green onion to savoury yoghurt or tomato sauces.
At Bazar al-Charq, just outside of the old city in a 300-year-old building, we taste at least half-a-dozen of these. While two travellers recline on cushions at an empty table, recuperating from the various stomach plagues that Syria visits upon foreigners, I try to banish the testicles and hanging camel head from my mind and focus on the kibbeh carnival unfolding before me.
Bazar al-Charq has been around since 2003 and, according to Anissa, is one of Aleppo’s most underrated restaurants.
The setting – a large, basement room with vaulted stone ceilings – is slightly heavy on the Orientalist kitsch, but the kibbeh are no joke. Among those we tried were a well-seasoned kibbeh sajiyyeh (cooked on the saj, or concave grill), which was relatively light (kibbeh is more frequently encountered fried), kibbeh bi-laban (fried balls swimming in yogurt sauce, with tender bits of lamb floating alongside), kibbeh with sumac and aubergine (in a sour, dark sauce whose colour contrasted with the light, lemoniness of the sumac) and the formidable kibbeh maajouqa, a kind of quesadilla that substitutes discs of greasy meat for tortillas, with a filling of cheese and red and green peppers.
If we put all the ground meat on our table together, we could probably have assembled a small lamb.
Several of the diners are avid home cooks. What makes a perfect kibbeh?, they want to know.
“The proportion of meat to bulgur is very important,” Anissa begins. “Heavier on the meat. It should be well-seasoned and fatty without being greasy. And it should be grilled or fried until it’s crispy.”
On our first evening, we ate at Yasmeen d’Alep, which opened in 1995 in the Christian-Armenian neighbourhood of Jdeideh. We sit down, a bit ragged after what seemed like endless hours on the bus from Damascus. And the mezze parade begins: eggplants stuffed with bulgur salad, nuts and potatoes, rice kibbeh, sausage casing stuffed with rice, ground meat and chickpeas, and several salads.
If you go
The flight Return flights to Damascus from Dubai on Emirates (www.emirates.com) cost from $325 (Dh1,195) including taxes
For more information on the Syrian Academy of Gastronomy and Pistache d’Alep, see www.gastrosyr.com and www.pistachedalep.com
Along with excellent grilled meats, Yasmine d’Alep serves a superb rendition of kebab kerez, or cherry kebab, lovely little balls of spiced, minced meat swimming merrily in a sauce of sour cherries, topped with toasted flatbread. According to Antaki, the sweet-and-sour combination (arguably a Persian influence) is in fact a Chinese contribution to Aleppan cuisine, although the dish is considered Armenian. In lesser hands, it can taste as though someone opened a can of cherry pie filling onto a plate of meatballs; here the chef shows admirable restraint in tempering the tartness of the cherries.
The newest and perhaps most successful restaurant in Aleppo is Zmorod. It opened around a year ago, and the owner, Dalal Touma, was dining at a table by the door when we walk in, and the large courtyard, warmed by golden-rose light, is filled with mostly Syrian patrons.
Anissa orders what sounded like two of everything on the menu, despite the fact that most of us were still wobbling from lunch. The service is excellent – Anissa barely glances at the menu, and instead embarks on a swift back-and-forth with the waiter in Arabic, who has a number of suggestions for what’s freshest and most interesting. The highlights include a cold dish of chicken morsels covered with the thickest, richest tahini sauce imaginable, tender fish with spicy tarator (a tahini sauce spiked with red pepper), and a grilled red pepper salad.
Through her cookbooks, such as Modern Mezze (Quadrille Publishing, 2007), her occasional columns in The Financial Times, and her blog (www.anissas.com) Helou does her bit to champion Syrian cuisine, which despite its similarity to Lebanese food, is considerably less well known. This is most likely, she thinks, because Syrians never experienced the famine and political turbulence that, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, drove so many Lebanese into the diaspora, where they had to eat, of course.
“You can eat the same dishes in Syria and in Lebanon but they’ll taste totally different,” Helou says. “Kebab in Syria is actually kafteh (ground meat balls) whereas kebabs in Lebanon really means lahmeh meshoui (grilled chunks of marinated meat.)
The Syrian fattouche is different in that the bread is fried and it often has cheese in it, and it is dressed with pomegranate syrup whereas in the Lebanese fattouche, the bread is normally toasted and the dressing is mostly sumac.”
The two cuisines share many similarities – a mezze tradition, kibbeh worship, an emphasis on the fresh and the seasonal – but Syrian food has its particular charms. It also comes with an edge of danger. Judging from the number of travellers who fell ill on the tour (five out of seven, or everyone except Anissa and me), Syrians’ enthusiasm for hygiene is nowhere near as rigorous as their devotion to flavour.
One place where we are assured a higher degree of protection was at the home of Maria Gaspard Smara, a successful caterer known for her sure hand with Aleppan specialities (she also contributed many recipes to Ollivry’s book). She welcomes us with bowls of rosy, fresh pistachios and proceeds to demonstrate a series of classic Aleppan dishes, including muhammara, a dip made of red pepper paste, walnuts and pomegranate syrup, and a delicious snack of deep-fried aubergine slices dipped in egg batter and deep-fried again.
“There are four seasons in Aleppo, and each has its own cuisine,” explains Smara. Late summer, for example, is stuffed vegetable season. “Also, Aleppan cooks don’t waste anything,” she says, illustrating her point by using the insides of hollowed-out courgettes (to be stuffed with a rice mixture) to make a garlicky dip.
The main dish, frikeh, or toasted green wheat and lamb, she cooks in a meat broth flavoured with cardamom, cinnamon and pepper, topped with pistachios, almonds and pine nuts fried in semneh, or clarified butter, and served with a thick, plain yogurt. For dessert, it’s all we could do to find room for a couple of large, juicy figs.
On our last morning in Aleppo, Anissa took a few of us to Hajj Abdo, the city’s authority on beans. His beans – foul, or fava beans– simmer overnight in large copper vessels that appear to be as old as he is (66), and their hearty, faintly bitter smell hangs in the air around the corner shop he has been working in since he was 21. Having lived for a year in Egypt, I was traumatised by foul. Egyptians tend to turn it into something resembling mud, which, although I have not yet found an archaeologist to back me up on this, I believe it was used to bind the bricks of the Great Pyramids. But Anissa assured me this was something utterly different.
Eating under the scrutiny of a dozen pairs of eyes can be faintly uncomfortable for women travellers, but these beans demand to be savoured. There is one major choice to be made: shall it be with tahini or lemon? After this hurdle, everything else – chilli paste, garlic, salt, cumin, olive oil – is a matter of degree. Anissa and I prefer the tahini version, which has a certain unctuousness amplified by a ladleful (yes) of oil on top, and she goes for extra chilli, while I enjoy a spoonful of cumin.
The Aleppan leg of the tour wound down at an old favourite, Wanes, a modern-looking, rather characterless, and staunchly local eatery that has been open since 1977.
“My mother and I used to come here in the 1980s for their grills,” Anissa tells us as we sit down. After a morning of foul, we were too full for grilled meat, but Anissa orders an abundant spread nonetheless. (It is customary – and Anissa never strays from this custom – to order enough mezze so as to eliminate any negative space on the tablecloth).
The standouts are the jibneh kurdiyyeh (Kurdish cheese), a salty white cheese between two pieces of flat bread, with small but potent minced hot green chillies and slices of tomato, all pan-fried like a quesadilla, and the basterma, an Armenian speciality of spiced, pressed dried meat often served with thin slices of raw garlic and eaten drizzled with olive oil and freshly cured green olives on the side. For dessert, I hand out some plump, sweet figs I had picked up in the giant market outside the old city, and the group piles back into the bus to head to Palmyra.
If there was anything fabulous left to eat in Aleppo, it would have to wait until the next trip.
travel@thenational.ae
Source: The National: An appetite for Aleppo
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
'Falafel, falafel - every day falafel!'
By Omar Chatriwala in
Iraqis are proud and passionate about their food - at least here in Baghdad.
Iraqis are proud and passionate about their food - at least in Baghdad. I’m told Anbaris (people from Anbar province) are less preoccupied with it.
Pacha, baterma (fatty sausage), qouzi, kebab to name a few – meat dishes feature heavily in the traditional Iraqi diet. Lamb, especially, is big.
Kibbeh is a traditional, meaty breakfast food. Other morning classics include dibis, a sweet date syrup, asal (honey) and qaimar, thick cream taken off the top of full-fat milk.
Once an occasional treat, qaimar can now easily be found pre-packaged in stores.
Black tea here is brewed with cardamom and served sugary. And samoon, a fluffy, diamond-shaped bread baked in brick ovens, is what ties it all together. (Great with sunny-side up eggs, my Iraqi editor tells me.)
At the Abu Nawas Beach restaurant a little past noon, we found the kitchen staff preparing for the lunch crowd, due in at half past one.
On the open flame outside, Baghdad’s famous masgouf – a fish caught from the Tigris River, and grilled spread open. Concerns over the river's pollution scared some off the renowned dish, but I'm told these are farm-raised carp.
Inside, two Bangladeshi men were at work alongside the Iraqi staff inside.
Twenty-year-old Sadek said he’s been in Iraq for 5 months, and has found the adjustment very hard. A food server here, he eats and sleeps in the kitchen.
Magid Ali San, the restaurant’s cashier, tells us that the restaurant was damaged three months back by a nearby blast, which hurt business. But it’s since been renovated, and looks good.
The park surrounding the restaurant is quiet in the middle of a working day. “Lovers” stroll the walkways, and old friends catch up.
Friends relaxing by the Tigris
Sitting with shisha, and inviting us to tea and lunch, Tha’ir Jaboori and his friends say they come out regularly (all day, every day is the claim), to sit and talk.
All three voted in Sunday’s election, and they say it went well. Jaboori says he voted for Allawi's Iraqiya Coalition – a secular mix-sect group, just like theirs, he points out. At the table are two Sunni Arabs and a Shia Kurd.
Food of necessity
In Baghdad’s trafficy Salhiya district, we step into a bustling falafel shop.
Here, bright yellow falafel balls are being shoved into loaves of samoon bread with some shredded lettuce. Customers than go down the buffet line and stuff the sandwich with whatever toppings they prefer. Cost: 1000 Iraqi dinars ($0.86)
A stuffed felafel
Back at the Baghdad bureau, our Iraqi companions decline to share in the fast food spoils.
“Falafel, falafel, every day [we have] falafel!” exclaims one of our guards.
It’s a daily street food staple now, but my colleague Omar al-Saleh tells me growing up in Baghdad, falafel was practically unheard of.
Faced with tough international sanction in the 1990s and a resulting failed economy, Iraqis had to find new ways to survive, and this cheap Egyptian fare was one of them.
Almost two decades later, it seems that situation continues.
Source: Al Jazeera: 'Falafel, falafel - every day falafel!'
Iraqis are proud and passionate about their food - at least here in Baghdad.
Iraqis are proud and passionate about their food - at least in Baghdad. I’m told Anbaris (people from Anbar province) are less preoccupied with it.
Pacha, baterma (fatty sausage), qouzi, kebab to name a few – meat dishes feature heavily in the traditional Iraqi diet. Lamb, especially, is big.
Kibbeh is a traditional, meaty breakfast food. Other morning classics include dibis, a sweet date syrup, asal (honey) and qaimar, thick cream taken off the top of full-fat milk.
Once an occasional treat, qaimar can now easily be found pre-packaged in stores.
Black tea here is brewed with cardamom and served sugary. And samoon, a fluffy, diamond-shaped bread baked in brick ovens, is what ties it all together. (Great with sunny-side up eggs, my Iraqi editor tells me.)
At the Abu Nawas Beach restaurant a little past noon, we found the kitchen staff preparing for the lunch crowd, due in at half past one.
On the open flame outside, Baghdad’s famous masgouf – a fish caught from the Tigris River, and grilled spread open. Concerns over the river's pollution scared some off the renowned dish, but I'm told these are farm-raised carp.
Inside, two Bangladeshi men were at work alongside the Iraqi staff inside.
Twenty-year-old Sadek said he’s been in Iraq for 5 months, and has found the adjustment very hard. A food server here, he eats and sleeps in the kitchen.
Magid Ali San, the restaurant’s cashier, tells us that the restaurant was damaged three months back by a nearby blast, which hurt business. But it’s since been renovated, and looks good.
The park surrounding the restaurant is quiet in the middle of a working day. “Lovers” stroll the walkways, and old friends catch up.
Friends relaxing by the Tigris
Sitting with shisha, and inviting us to tea and lunch, Tha’ir Jaboori and his friends say they come out regularly (all day, every day is the claim), to sit and talk.
All three voted in Sunday’s election, and they say it went well. Jaboori says he voted for Allawi's Iraqiya Coalition – a secular mix-sect group, just like theirs, he points out. At the table are two Sunni Arabs and a Shia Kurd.
Food of necessity
In Baghdad’s trafficy Salhiya district, we step into a bustling falafel shop.
Here, bright yellow falafel balls are being shoved into loaves of samoon bread with some shredded lettuce. Customers than go down the buffet line and stuff the sandwich with whatever toppings they prefer. Cost: 1000 Iraqi dinars ($0.86)
A stuffed felafel
Back at the Baghdad bureau, our Iraqi companions decline to share in the fast food spoils.
“Falafel, falafel, every day [we have] falafel!” exclaims one of our guards.
It’s a daily street food staple now, but my colleague Omar al-Saleh tells me growing up in Baghdad, falafel was practically unheard of.
Faced with tough international sanction in the 1990s and a resulting failed economy, Iraqis had to find new ways to survive, and this cheap Egyptian fare was one of them.
Almost two decades later, it seems that situation continues.
Source: Al Jazeera: 'Falafel, falafel - every day falafel!'
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