I have been reading a number of non-fiction books based around the themes of food and cooking of late:
Day of Honey: A Memoir, of Food, Love and War - Annia Ciezadlo
Perhaps the most memorable is Annia Ciezadlo’s “Day of Honey: A Memoir, of Food, Love and War”, an autobiographical account of the 6 years the author spent living in the Middle East with her journalist husband from 2003 to 2009. She was a freelance correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in Baghdad and the New Republic in Beirut while he worked as a full time bureau chief for larger media organisations.
The book is on one level a chronicle of conflicts in Beirut and Baghdad during this time – as she and her husband Mohamad shuttle between Lebanon and Iraq on various assignments - but Ciezadlo’s focus is different:
“Many books narrate history as a series of wars: who won, who lost, who was to blame (usually the ones who lost). But I look at history as a series of meals. War is part of our ongoing struggle to get food – most wars are over resources, after all, even when the parties pretend otherwise.”
The early part of the book examines the differences between her sometimes troubled upbringing as an American with a Greek /Polish background and her yet to be husband’s early life and family in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. Her descriptions of various meetings with Mohamad’s extended family, their attempts to get the young couple married as quickly as possible and the central role that food plays in their lives is a fascinating study.
“As an American woman married to a Lebanese man, I had access to a world of families and domestic life that most foreigners never get to see. Food was a window into that world: the dinner table was where I would learn new words, hear new opinions, where people would open up ... "
They move to Baghdad to cover the Iraqi occupation by allied forces after the fall of Saddam Hussein; the period also coincides with the various rebellions and terrorist attacks by Sunni militants and by Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia. Ciezadlo profiles a number of characters she meets during the course of living there including long suffering locals, Iraqi tribal leaders and an American intelligence officer based in the heavily fortified Green Zone.
“To enter Baghdad in those days was like walking into a time capsule ... The country had spent the past several decades cut off from the rest of the world, conducting a dialogue with the past. The result was a cargo-cult fascination with things the rest of the world had replaced long ago. After a few months in Baghdad, I was no longer surprised when people stopped in the middle of a conversation and broke into songs by The Doors or Bryan Adams.”
Eventually, the couple move back to Beirut – after Iraqi militants begin targeting freelance journalists who were working there with little or no security – only to be caught up in the July 2006 invasion of Lebanon by Israel after the Hezbollah kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers.
This period of the book chronicles the local Lebanese’ efforts to maintain their day to day lives despite bombings, power cuts and food shortages. Many of the local residents had lived through the 15 year Lebanese Civil War that lasted from 1975 to 1990 and shared with her their earlier experiences of surviving in a conflict zone. Ciezadlo weaves through the book references to classic Middle Eastern recipes from Mohamad’s mother Umm Hassane and other family members and friends. Many of these recipes are included in detail in an appendage at the end of the book.
The July War, as it was known, lasted 33 days and left more than 1200 civilians killed, smashed the country’s infrastructure, and setback 16 years of post-war reconstruction after the Civil War. Not long after this event Annia Ciezadlo and her husband decided to leave the Middle East and return to New York.
I really enjoyed this book on a number of levels: on one level it’s a classic warzone/foreign correspondents tale – a career which is not for the faint hearted (such as myself?) and for which many brilliant and talented journalists pay the ultimate price ... as foreign correspondents Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadad both did earlier this year in separate incidents in Syria.
On another level it paints portraits of individuals struggling with everyday living and illustrating a shared humanity that links us all through something as essential to life as food on the table. The people the author documents come from vastly different backgrounds – Mohamad’s family, Iraqi female politicians, poets and housewives – but in the end the book drives home this message of a shared humanity that many of us are blind to or choose to ignore in our own everyday lives.
And finally of course there are the recipes ... for Fattoush - the Levantine bread salad, Shawrabet Shayieh – a rich noodle soup laced with pasta and kafta meatballs, for Umm Hassane’s Mjadara Hamra – a lentil and cracked wheat stew and for various spice mixes used in Lebanese and Bedouin cooking.
Yes, Chef: A Memoir - Marcus Samuelsson
Marcus Samuelsson’s autobiography “Yes, Chef” is an altogether different story. It is a tale of an Ethiopian orphan who grew up in Sweden and went on to become one of the most recognised and awarded chefs in America.
When he was 3 years old Samuelsson contracted tuberculosis along with his mother and sister in his village in Ethiopia. His mother trekked 75 miles on foot with the 2 children to seek medical attention at the nearest hospital in the capital, Addis Adaba; tragically she died a short time later but the two children survived and after they recovered they were placed in an adoption agency.
A Swedish couple eventually agreed to adopt both the children and they grew up in the Swedish city of Goteburg, a bluecollar city on the southwest coast. Anne Marie and Lennart Samuelsson were white middle-class Swedes; he was a quietly spoken scientist and his wife was a traditional housewife though one with apparently little flair for cooking.
However, it was Anne Marie’s mother – Helga – who would have a profound influence on the young Marcus and spark his lifelong interest in food. His grandmother introduced him to the joys and mysteries of freshly baked bread, traditional Scandinavian dishes such as pickled herring and roast chicken.
He served an apprenticeship in Goteburg learning the basic fundamentals of cooking and at the same time developed a passion for playing soccer. This he originally saw as his way out of small town Goteburg, but despite his obvious talent at the game, he was eventually judged as too small in physique to reach true professional level football and he was dropped from the team. This came as a devastating blow to the young aspiring player; so much so that he writes in his book:
“I sometimes see myself as a failed soccer player than as an accomplished chef.”
Several apprenticeships and junior positions followed along with stints cooking on cruise ships and eventually scoring a position or ‘stage’ at the then famous French chef George Blanc’s eponymously named restaurant in the French village of Vonnas, located near the Swiss border.
Finally, Samuelsson returns to live in New York (where he had previously worked in small time venues) and lands a job at the American-Swedish restaurant Aquavit. Here his career really moves up a gear as he develops his own sense of flavours and draws on both his Swedish and African ancestry to forge a new style of Swedish-American influenced cuisine.
When the head chef dies suddenly of a drug-related heart condition, Samuelsson is elevated to the position of head chef and soon earns 3 stars from the New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl. Then things really take off for him and the rest of the book charts his growing success at Aquavit, the ups and downs of the restaurant scene in the US after the Sept 11th attacks and finally his departure from Aquavit to set up his own restaurant in Harlem, the Red Rooster, which is now apparently a huge success.
During this time he also cooks for the Obama’s at their first State dinner after coming to office – coincidentally a visit by the Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh. The menu was a mix of traditional American and Indian-influenced flavours – cornbread served alongside chutneys, naan and sambals. The menu also had to cater for vegetarians amongst the invitees so it included potato and eggplant salad, red lentil soup, roasted potato dumplings with tomato chutney, chickpeas and okra alongside a green prawn curry with coconut-aged basmati rice.
Marcus Samuelsson’s story would be very familiar to many Australians, where there are numerous success stories of refugees and orphans having come to their adopted country and excelled in a particular field ... in small businesses, agricultural industries, and the restaurant trade.
But his book is also engaging for the forthrightness that he displays in detailing the areas of his life where everything was not part of the fairytale success story. His beloved grandmother dies while he is working on a cruise ship and he misses her funeral because he puts his career first, he fathers a child to a young girl he meets during one of his apprenticeships and, though he pays for her upbringing, he doesn’t meet her for 14 years.
And he details his falling out with his business partner at Aquavit and a disastrous attempt at setting up his first restaurant with some shady business partners. All this is told with a disarming and at times brutal honesty that gives another dimension to the book. So too is his dealing with the race issue: as a young black man growing up and working in Europe he encounters several examples of racism particularly in the restaurant industry, including a phone call from the as always charming British chef Gordon Ramsay who ended the acrimonious conversation by saying, “Good luck you fucking, black bastard.”
“Yes, Chef” is fascinating look behind the scenes at the restaurant world and the life of a chef in a professional kitchen as well as being a remarkable story of one man’s journey out of poverty and hardship to reach the top of his chosen profession.
Tony saab/Hyderabad August 2012
Day of Honey: A Memoir, of Food, Love and War Annia Ciezadlo
Yes, Chef Marcus Samuelsson
Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton
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