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Authentic
Arab Cuisine
Farouk Mardam-Bey |
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In
Spite Of undeniable merits, the chickpea has never
had the honor of literary praise, nor been accepted
in mythology. Could it be because of its modest
origin? This is not like the fava bean, to which
it is related, which has had a brilliant career
in semiology - the realm of signs. To this day,
the fava bean represents either the first product
of the earth, or the gift of the dead to the living,
or the embryo, as can be seen every year in France´s
galette des rois (Kings´cake) on the day
of the Epiphany. Is it because the chickpea has
not been especially blessed by nature? How ugly
it is with its hairy pod and rolled up horn, which
earned it the nickname of "ram´s head"!
As far as I know, lentils are not very good looking
either, yet, according to the Book of Genesis,
Esau, on returning from the fields after a hard
day´s work, yielded his birthright to Jacob
in order to eat them. Alas! There is nothing of
sort with the chickpea. The only historical mention
is that it derived its Latin name, cicer, from
the Cicero family. But, we do not know whether
the name comes the fact they were chickpea merchants,
or because of the famous orator who had an ugly
mole on his nose, in the shape of a cicer. Some
of us may also know of Charlemagne´s famous
capitulary in the year 812 C.E. The King of the
Franks ordered in this book that beans be grown
in his imperial gardens. But there is no precise
indication as to whether these beans were chickpeas
or what they were to be used for.
In any case, in spite of the special concern on
the part of the King, I must recognize that in
France, the chickpea has been the least important
of all dried legumes- a freak, so to speak, a
pariah, and a despised resident alien. This low
status becomes even more bizarre when we learn
how the physicians and botanists of Antiquity
all believed that it had extraordinary powers.
In the 15th century C.E., the Egyptian polygraphist,
Suyouti, in his Medicine of the Prophet, summed
chickpeas up in one sentence which was evidently
inspired by the ancients: He said, : "the
chickpea is to the body what yeast is to dough.
"The chickpea raises our organism in every
sense of the word, and as Oribases wrote earlier,
"it passes on to us three of its own properties:
heat, which excites our sexual desires; humidity,
which increases our seeds; and wind, which swells
up our veins. "I guess this is why the Greeks,
and later the Arabs, gave it to their stallions
as fodder. Perhaps this explains Charlemagne´s
taste for peas, whatever the variety was, and
his passion for young women, which is evidenced
by his four weddings and the impressive number
of his concubines. Stendhal, a fine observer of
love, evidently did not know about this when he
wrote in his diary on March 25, 1808, "Sovereign
medecine against love: peas." I personally
see in such a harsh judgment the harmful influence
of the chefs in Stendhal´s time. They were
the sworn enemies of dry beans and peas, as can
be seen in their cookbooks. There is just no mention
of the chickpea in the Dictionnaire portatif de
cuisine. The reason was probably that the chickpea
is the cause of "thundering digestions",
as Flaubert wrote in La Tentation de Saint Antoine.
Sheikh Nafzawi was assuredly wiser when he advised
his flagging contemporaries to drink a potion
made up of chickpeas, onions and honey.
I will not dwell too long on the issue, pleasant
as it is, for I believe that men and women do
not live only from aphrodisiacs. Once in a while,
they do dedicate themselves to certain activities,
cooking for one, and they do not have to focus
on sex all the time. This is why I would like
to urge them not to forget the chickpea. It can
give them healthy satisfactions, provided they
know how to use it, of course!
So, what is one to do? First, one should start
by avoiding canned peas, though Odile Godard in
her Soupers de Schéhérazade tolerates,
and even recommends them. What bothers me most,
to be truthful, is that Godard suggests canned
chickpeas for hummus, which is exactly where I
would strongly advise against them. Has she decides
to push cruel Shahriyar to have Scheherazade executed,
and interrupt the One Thousand and One Nights?
On the contrary, chickpeas must be soaked for
at least twelve hours in lukewarm water, but whether
it is necessary to add any baking soda is debatable.
Some deem it indispensable, others do not, and
I agree with them. It is actually necessary, even
indispensable, when one wishes to soften chickpeas
for a purée or a soup to use baking soda,
but then only while the chickpeas are cooking.
Still, you should know that not everybody agrees.
Some discard the water in which the chickpeas
have soaked, sauté the chickpeas by themselves
in a pan for about five minutes, then sprinkle
them with a teaspoon of baking soda, and finally
pour some boiling water over them. Others think
that once the water has been discarded, it is
enough to mix the soaked chickpeas with the baking
soda, and cook them in water, preferably boiling.
Another serious issue whether the chickpeas should
be peeled, and, if so, when? I will not elaborate
on this process as it would take too long, and
because it depends on what you want to do. If
you want to cook hummus, don´t bother as
the baking soda has taken care of the problem.
If you need to cook with whole chickpeas, e.g.,
if they must be soft and solid, I strongly advise
that you spread the pre-soaked peas over a level
surface, go over them with a rolling pin, them
put them back into some lukewarm water, and you
will be astonished at how easily they will shed
their skins, and leave their undesired coats floating
in the water.
You might tell me: all this is well and good,
but what are we to do with those chickpeas that
are neither destined for a purée, a salad,
or ingredients in a coucous? This is a good question,
and so I eventually decided to write the great
Treatise on the Chickpea with my friend Robert
Bistolfi, which we believe has been hitherto missing
in gastronomic literature. Our treatise offers
dozens of recipes, which we collected from all
over the word, and tested with much love. For
a start, you should try the Damascus panade. It
is definitely country cooking, but it is extremely
tasty! Other simple recipes are lablali, a Tunisian
soup with olive oil and cumin that is very popular
in poorer households, or the Lebanese makhluta,
and Egyptian kushari, which uses different legumes
and cereals. There is falafel, from the Near East.
Contrary to ta´miyya; which is made in the
Nile Valley, it mixes chickpeas and fava beans.
One step higher is harira, which is cooked by
our Maghreb brothers, in particular in Morocco.
It is actually so superior in taste, that I can
quietly assert there is no better soup in the
whole world.
A very large number of q´dra recipes come
from Morocco. I am speaking of the many tagines
with samn (a mixture of butter and olive oil),
where the chickpeas are mixed with almonds, or
with rice or potatoes, or better still, turnips.
They remind us that our humble legume is not necessarily
a poor relative living on a few handouts. The
Arab chefs in the Classical Age understood this.
I am thinking of a magnificent dish, which was
allegedly created by Prince Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi.
It was given a pretty name: `achiga (lover). It
basicall calls for chickpeas, spinach, chicken
(or duck), ground lamb, almonds, walnuts, and
pistachios. It was seasoned with cilantro and
verjus.
I now would like to mention ghraybe, popular pastries
made with chickpea flour, and the candy in which
the toasted chickpeas replace the almonds, or
the sesame seeds. Toasted chickpeas, qdame (from
the classical Arabic qudama) are salted, sprinkled
with hot pepper, or sugar, or served alone. They
have been offered for centuries as starters all
around the Mediterranean Sea. The Romans would
swallow them with relish in the arenas, watching
the Christians being devoured by lions. We are
still doing the same in front of our TV sets,
and what we see is not much nicer.
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