From za’atar, the delicious mix of herbs, to labneh, a strained yogurt that has an acidic tang, the Levantine cuisine is back on the global table. “[Levantine] food is gaining recognition more and more. It is something that everybody is craving nowadays, because there is a new tendency in the world to eat healthier foods and a back-to-the-roots trend. People do not want to eat junk or fast food. We have a healthy diet,” said Barbara Abdeni Massaad, a Lebanese American chef who wrote the book “Soup for Syria,” where celebrity chefs contributed recipes to help generate funding for Syrian refugees.
Massaad, the president of Slow Food Beirut, is a determined believer that food is one of the most important cultural aspects of both the Lebanese and Levantine culture. Once, at a conference at the University of Beirut, she went up to the minister of culture after his speech and reproached him for not speaking about food. “He looked at me and admitted that I was right. Then we became friends, and then he became prime minister,” she said smiling.
Speaking of her passion a day after the New Levantine Initiative (NLI) conference in Washington on March 1, Massaad explained that the people of the Levant have also become more aware of their culinary heritage. “I think we are getting closer to appreciating what we have. We realize that we have good local products — sun-kissed vegetables in particular — which we have started using again. Beirut’s Souk el Tayeb [Farmers Market] has revived its popularity. Some of the recipes are making a comeback, thanks to those who worked to dig them out. We have some interesting chefs. I myself will open a restaurant soon using local products. It will not necessarily be Lebanese cuisine, but Mediterranean, Levantine cuisine.”
Poopa Dweck, an expert on Aleppian Jewish cookery and the author of “Aromas of Aleppo” who was a speaker at the NLI conference, also underlines the importance of heritage, which she became aware of when she was a student in the United States. “There was just a certain kind of security knowing my heritage, being brought up with that heritage. I learnt very early on from my [Syrian] mother, who would tell me that she’d be in the souk with her Arab neighbors, touching shoulders, shopping for spices, shopping for ingredients, all friendly, all cohesive. I taught my classmates about what I was eating … and that started me off on understanding the communicative powers of food.”
Once you become aware of your heritage, you aim to share it. That’s what prompted Wassef Haroun, born in Syria and educated in the United States, to open a restaurant in Seattle. After years of working in technology and computer science, he and his wife opened Mamnoon restaurant, which means “thankful” in Arabic. “[Just as we were retiring] it occurred to us that the representation of Middle Eastern food in the United States is terrible. It’s below par; it’s the worst stereotype you can imagine and that if we could do it — if we could combine proper representation, the right quality — that it not only would be a great cultural mission, it could potentially be a good business mission as well,” he said at the NLI conference, explaining how they started the business. “One of our biggest challenges with Mamnoon was the bread and also some very specialized ingredients like za’atar, which today is fairly popular in trending mainstream cuisine. We still source our za’atar from Lebanon because there’s no other way to do it — to get the right quality.”
Massaad believes that while a good recipe is required, tweaking is inevitable, simply because the perfect ingredients can’t always be found abroad or creativity is called for. “Cuisine is not stagnant — it is moving. We should not be stuck in a recipe and insist that it should remain the way our grandmothers made it. Societies are changing, people are changing. Therefore, recipes can and should change too. Cooking is like art, you cannot go on duplicating what exists — chefs need to be creative. I want to experiment and have fun doing it.”
Massaad expresses pride in her Lebanese culinary heritage. “I used to always dream about going to Italy and writing a book on the pizza, the people and the Italian dream. One day I woke up and I said, ‘Why am I always thinking about the other side?’ I have this beautiful country, I have this man’oushe — the common denominator in Lebanon. We have 17 communities in Lebanon and we all eat man’oushe [a dish of dough pressed flat and baked with a topping of wild thyme, sumac, sesame seeds, salt and oil]. So I decided to go all over the country and I visited 250 bakeries in order to learn about each and every type of man’oushe. Through man’oushe I was able to discover the people, the regions and how bread is a very important aspect of our culture.”
Poopa Dweck inherited her pride in the Aleppo kitchen from her mother. “She told me, ‘Poopa, there is no other food in the whole world like the food of Aleppo.’ … She’s talking about the Armenians, the Muslims, the Jews, all the groups living in Aleppo. Then I started to do some research and realized — as most mothers are — she was right. I became aware of the location, the trade route, the silk road, the tremendous long souks, and that Aleppo was the jewel of the Ottoman Empire where sultans would send their chefs to copy the Aleppo recipes.”
Dweck, Massaad and Haroun are all immigrants. Massaad presently lives between the United States and Lebanon, but Dweck and Haroun have made the United States their home. “You carry your heritage with you. It’s not a matter of demographics, it’s not a matter of geography — it’s in you, it’s in your soul, your traditions, your heritage, your foods are with you,” Dweck said.