From Memory to Mémories: How the Foodies Channel Began

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However, in taking these recipes and reminiscences out to a broader audience, I've not only renewed closer contact with many people without whose contributions this collection would never have happened, but it made me realise how much the project was actually simply about creating communities wherever you are. Ilaria, thanking me for “organizing and creating these beautiful culinary mémoires: it is so evocative, a treasure for all of us", not only had me go and look up mémoire, but also had me hearken back to the beginnings of the Foodies Channel: Al Yamamas, 2001.  

My first email from the Middle East, a decade ago, began: "The palm trees all need a good dust. So does everything else for that matter. Dusk is lovely though, purples, pinks, light to dark blues, as the lights go on in all the buildings, lamps and palm trees around which they have been wrapped. The sea which hardly laps the shore ranges from aquamarines to deeper blues. The shell fish on the beach are tiny spirals, not much else. The sand large and crunchy under your feet -"

At the time, we were just about to move into a 38 unit compound of two basic horse-shoe shapes of double-storey units all facing into one another, one full of small children and close community living, an Austenian world of expatriate women, where leisure was ours but oil money was not precisely sloshing around; we mostly occupied the lower-earning end of the highly-skilled expatriate work-force. About two months in, the blues hit me but bad, and Fem arrived home late one evening to find me as miserable as a wet cat in a thunderstorm, dripping tears off my chin, splishing them onto an exceedingly damp pillow, and yowling, “I want my ca–a–a–a–at!!” Yes, indeed, I was both maudlin and lachrymose, and all just because I'd gone and done the grocery shopping -  

One of the things our compound had going for it was a regular bus service, which was indispensable, really, in a country in which women cannot drive. On that day, however, the driver and I had had a small, a very small, communication problem, and hence at midday, I had found myself stranded, with a full load of groceries, outside a store, in the blisteringly hot sun, just as prayer time began, the mosques seemed to be competing for congregationalists and the various muezzin calls all appeared to accrete and reverberate at a point just above my head, and I felt hopelessly foolish and abandoned and lonely and home-sick, full of flu, newly wed, dislocated in a strange country with a husband putting in execrably long work days and work weeks.  

I found that once I started to drip, copiously, it continued for an extended period of time, not hysterically, merely steadily, so when Fem arrived home at 10pm, it was to find me having drizzled my way steadily through the afternoon, since 12am  when I'd paid the taxi to bring me home. Yes, it was a bit excessive, but my water-levels have always been high and to compound matters, I was suffering from all kinds of issues related to medication, courtesy of our deep desire to begin a family, so I was contending with a roller-coaster of hormones and emotions anyway - and on that particular day, enough was enough was enough. Fem was so concerned and felt terribly guilty at leaving me so long alone. I said, “Big deal! If you’d got home at 6pm I’d have been crying for 6 hours. 10pm? So, 10 hours! You want to make 4  hour’s difference to my crying? I’m just having a Baaaa–aaaa–aaad day, that’s all.” He said I could phone my mum and dad and even my friend Enid if I wanted, I said, “What? When I’m crying? And waste the phone call?” 

Women! Can't live with them, can't live without them. 

Rather than focusing on what I didn't have, I decided instead  to use whatever came most readily to hand. What I had in abundance was acres of leisure time and that most delightful of all riches - people. There were children swinging in the tiny playground, children at every corner, boys tumbling out of houses, running towards the small area they'd appropriated as a playing field and shouting out: "Soccer Match: The Muslims Against the Christians!" (and when queried as to why that was proposed, somewhat disingenuously responded, "Well, it used to be The Arabs Against the World, but since Elie's arrived, well, he's not very good at soccer, so when we realised he was a Christian, we felt we'd have a better chance of winning if he was on the other side"). 

Women greeted you as you stepped out your door, sometimes even as you stepped into your door, women - and their shopping - crowded you out on the mini-bus, there were women who offered to take you down-town and teach you how to bargain, women who twitched net curtains as you walked past their windows and one, Pat, who'd plant herself solidly, babe in arms, squarely in the centre of her curtain-less living room and, unembarrassed, watch the world and her husband go by - wonderful women, drawn from all over the world, who as I discovered, not only had recipes to relate but also stories to tell, and hence the foodies channel began as a way of documenting it all. 

Herewith the first email: 

The long-awaited, much trumpeted, and possibly over-hyped Al Yamama's International Cuisine Cookbook is about to be launched on a regular email basis. 

Not knowing how many "foodies" were numbered amongst you, you are left to decide for yourselves whether you want access to the recipes I have compiled from the women on our compound. They all consist of "real food" recipes - i.e., what is prepared on an everyday basis, and have been adapted to what is regionally available in different parts of the world. You will receive them on an ad hoc basis, and can try them out as and when you want. Very little specialist equipment is needed - a pressure cooker will speed the Indian food up, but is not necessary, while an electric blender will be a LOT easier on your hands for this cuisine. For the Arabic food, you definitely will need a vegetable corer, for as Hadeel puts it, laughingly: "We Arabs stuff everything". 

Culinary delights to tickle your palate, delight your taste buds and astonish your friends include:

Ghanaian Chilli "Chutney" - but this ain't what we'd call a chutney. It is hot, hot, hot stuff! 

Khiar Mahshi - a dish unique to Nablus village of Palestine, consisting of Stuffed Cooked Cucumbers (we kid you not!) in a Tamarind sauce. 

Paleek Paneer - a North Indian Spinach and soft white Cheese dish. 

Nigerian Beef skewers with crushed Peanuts and Chilli powder

                       and many many more, 

Including a Sierra Leone Peanut-Butter Chilli Chicken stew 

How to make all those wonderful Meze Platter dippie things such as Hummus and Babaganoush and Falafels 

You will also discover how to stuff any vegetable or leaf of your choice, from vine and cabbage leaves to turnips, potatoes and cucumbers. 

If you want to subscribe, please send me an email with the message: SUBSCRIBE ME!!! and you will duly be added to the Foodies list. 

SUBSCRIBE NOW AND GET ALL FUTURE EDITIONS FREE!!!

Yours sincerely

Cosmopolitan Cuisine (PTY Ltd)

Our Motto: We Strive Not Just to Survive Sandy Arabian Compound Life, but Work Out How Best to Make it Work for Us!

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To all the more recent readers of this blog, I can assure you that I have only just begun putting up the first of a veritable treasure trove of stories, memories and recipes, and that I will be regular in my posts, not daily, but certainly weekly. Please join me, and, via our stories, all of the rest of us who  together make up:   

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The Foodies Channel