16 Jan
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/16977936[/vimeo]
Great news. Absolute Press are bringing out an expanded edition of my Fifth Quarter next year. To celebrate this, I thought I’d post a couple of videos I did recently of one of my food obsessions: lamb testicles. The last place I expected to see them was in the kitchens of Pistache d’Alep (the best baklava maker in Aleppo) where they have recently installed a separate butcher’s kiosk to prepare the meat for the kibbeh balls and lahm bil-ajine (meat ‘pizza’), which they also make there. Their butcher is a charming and very jolly man, who took great pleasure in showing us how to prepare the testicles for cooking. It is possible that this butcher ‘kiosk’ was a temporary installation because of the Eid. i forgot to ask. In any case, I am only sorry he wasn’t there when Andrew Zimmern filmed in the kitchens for his upcoming Syrian episode of Bizarre Foods. He would have loved the spectacle. And Andrew, if you are reading this post, I am totally flattered to be your new food-crush! I also loved spending that day with you.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/16952000[/vimeo]
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21 Nov
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/17020136[/vimeo]
I drove into Damascus on the second day of Eid el Adha (the feast of the sacrifice and the big Muslim holiday marking the beginning of their new year). The streets were empty. Hardly any cars, most of the shops closed, and no street vendors except for the occasional one squatting on the roadside by a stack of bloodied sheep skins. This was a new sight for me. Then it occurred to me that the skins must be from the lambs that are freshly slaughtered for the feast of the sacrifice — each family slaughters a lamb to prepare their own feast, and to distribute meat to those who can’t afford it. I was too slow to ask my taxi driver to stop for me to take a picture but I came across an even more gory sight the next day as we were leaving the city to drive to Aleppo. It was on a regular corner in a non-descript quartier and still in the city. Two men had just rigged a butcher rack right on the street, with two skinned carcasses hanging from hooks and a small flock of sheep herded on the opposite corner, waiting for their life to end and for their coats to be sheared. In fact, some had most of their coat already off — the skins are sold to tanners who treat them then sell them as rugs or lining for winter coats.
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15 Aug
Or to be more accurate in a pick up van on the street. I love these startling sights that are quite common throughout the Middle East. I was in Aleppo I think when I spotted this poor animal. As luck would have it, I was with Jason Lowe who doesn’t need introducing, and only he can make something so gruesome look so beautiful. I love this picture and it’s a perfect follow-up on the lamb testicles post to illustrate the quick passage from freshly slaughtered to the butcher’s counter. The sheep was about to be unloaded at a local butcher who was going to skin and butcher it.
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1 Mar
As you know, I am pretty familiar with camel meat but when I recently posted a link on facebook to an article on camel burgers in Dubai, my lovely friend Charles Perry (who is the leading expert on medieval Arab cookery) left a comment about a recipe he had for camel hump. I had seen the hump for sale at my camel butcher in Aleppo but I had never seen a recipe for it. So, I asked Charles for his. Sadly, he couldn’t find it — it had gotten lost between computers — but as usual, he sent me lots of information and other recipes; and I thought it would be great to have him do a post here about how camel meat was used in medieval times. Here is his post with some photographs that I shot in the souks of Aleppo.
Charles Perry: Last May, Anissa blogged about visiting a camel butcher in Damascus and making camel kebabs. That was a new one on me – I’d only heard of camel being cooked in elaborate stews. It’s how they cooked camel in the Middle Ages.
Camel meat was reasonably popular back then, popular enough for doctors to gravely warn against eating too much of it (in the manner of doctors throughout the ages). They held it to be “heating” and to “engender thick blood,” and declared it suitable only “for those who do exhausting labor.” Or suffer from “hot stomach” and diarrhea, oddly. Read more >
