Even though this is the third (fourth?) time I’ve been to Eressos, there was still plenty of new food things to find out about. One day we were out walking around in the “campo”–the little farm plots around the village. Here’s the view from the big hill and fort:
In one side yard, we happened to see this guy with a giant cauldron over a fire. He invited us in and explained how he was making trahana.
Later that day, after the guy had cooked the milk, stirring constantly, for about nine hours, till it was about a third of the volume, we popped back in. (Yes, after all the hard work was done.) He loaded us up with a foil package full of fresh, warm trahana–the milk mixed with coarse bulgur. It was sour and toasty and sweet, and the bulgur was perfectly fluffy. The guy showed us how the next day, he and all the old ladies would sit down and form the giant tub of trahana into these patties, which would be dried in the sun for a couple of weeks and then stored for winter use in soups and things.
The next night, we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Costa’s, and he served us these grilled trahana cups, filled with spicy feta. It was trahana-making season all over–these were from some other family entirely.
It was the grilling that made me realize: trahana is the missing link between pasta and kibbeh. Not that you were looking for one–neither was I. But…trahana is dried like pasta and used in soups. But it’s made out of bulgur, and you can work it into all kinds of shapes and cook it different ways–I had grilled kibbeh in Syria last time I was there.
It was also the beginning of tomato season. In the yard two doors down from us, we saw sun-dried tomatoes in the process of getting dried in the sun. Peter complimented the grumpy-looking man on his garden and he actually grinned.
It was not Easter, but our other favorite restaurant made us special Eressos Easter lamb, which they’d also served at the dinner after Peter and I got married. I was able to concentrate on it a bit more this time. And I even got the recipe, which, traditionally, involves baking in a community oven for about nine hours. Ingredients include cinnamon and dill–this combination strikes me as somehow quite obviously Turkish, though I have no real evidence why. This photo doesn’t even begin to capture the amazingness. Those are chunks of liver in the foreground.
My godmother (less formally, the woman who runs the hotel we usually stay at, who happened to get drafted to be my godmother back in 2005, when I had to get baptized before I could get married) brought us this pastry from the new bakery. It’s a specialty of Eressos, but as Fani told us, it’s rare to see it for sale, as it’s usually only made at home. It was filled with almonds and nutmeg.
My mother has this saying, “It’s hell having a good time.” Best uttered near the tail end of a party, when exhausted, or when the logistics of entertaining oneself prove very challenging.
Also, to oneself when lying in bed, bloated with delicious food.
I signed up for a culinary tour of Syria because I love Syria and I love Syrian food. Makes sense, right? Let’s just say I didn’t really think through the implications of the phrase “group trip”–ie, that we did everything as a group. And that was a lot of things, and never really included naps.
Maybe I do more stuff in a day when I’m on a research trip, but, hey, that’s work. Syria was my big vacation. So when I had to roll out of bed the first day after just five hours of sleep, it felt a little rough. Actually, it felt like karmic payback for nearly wrecking my mother during my research trip to Spain.
Granted, I’m inherently lazy, and there’s something to be said for making me do stuff. But, ohhh, I never thought I would complain about having to eat so much in such a short time. But here I am.
What we ate was remarkable. It happened to be the season for rose-petal jam, so there was quite a lot of that. Also, of artichokes–though I think the Syrians are so into sour that they sometimes forget salty, and artichokes need a lot of salt; some we ate were quite bland and didn’t have that special zing.
It was also the season for desert truffles, or kama’. I’d never had them before, and I started to get worried that we wouldn’t get any, because it was supposedly near the end of the season. Not to worry–at a massive dinner at the Club d’Alep, they were served two ways. I could only muster a couple of bites, though, because yet again, I’d managed to eat too much that day, and each bite of that dinner felt like it might be my last, before a Monty Python-esque explosion.
They were intriguing. Nice dense mushroomy texture, with a mellow, kind of all-purpose spring-vegetable taste that lasted a surprisingly long time. Nothing at all like European truffles, of course, but then neither are Mexican truffles, or huitlacoche. “Truffle” is the new “Riviera,” in terms of creative naming.
We also tasted quite a lot of varieties of kibbeh. I rarely order it myself, because it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. But we had a very nice grilled rendition, filled with a molten center of pomegranate molasses and nut paste, and the more I looked around, the more varieties I saw and tasted.
Sweets
One night mid-trip, I was lying in bed, again in some digestive misery, and it dawned on me that my money would probably have been better spent on, say, a trip to China, where I really do need someone to lead me around and translate, and to explain the food to me.
And then I woke up the next day, and we went to Pistache d’Alep, a fancy bakery, and visited the kitchens. Not being a huge sweets fan, I wasn’t expecting much. But, whoa. Words cannot begin to convey the complete niftiness of the industrial equipment at work, and the depth of craftsmanship in all the meticulous handwork. I put up a whole separate Flickr set just for the bakery trip. Don’t skip the videos.
After having my mind boggled by all the weird sweets-producing technology, we had coffee (and more sweets!) with Willy Wonka himself, who used to live on Long Island. His right-hand man, Hassan, expounded on food in a philosophical way that reminded me of Ali.
We absolutely must eat seasonally, he said, because our health comes from nature–not only is it wrong to eat oranges in the summer, he said, it’s bad for your health too. While he was saying this, however, this was going on outside the windows of the cafe:
I cannot explain…
Getting Schooled
The other really outstanding thing we did was go to the house of a woman chef for a cooking demonstration and big lunch. I could’ve sat there for days and watched her stuff eggplants. We occasionally were put to work, but kind of botched it. Here she is impatiently emptying out a mis-stuffed eggplant and refilling it the proper way.
I also learned the dirty secret to muhammara, the red-pepper-and-walnut paste: sugar. Loads of it. Also, citric acid. Apparently all the restaurants use citric acid instead of lemon juice, because the flavor doesn’t go off as fast. Of course purists frown on this, but still fascinating to know. Will mentally file with judicious use of MSG.
Solo in Damascus
After that was all over, and I bid fond adieu to my fellow travelers (the actual group part of the ‘group trip’ was excellent), I got on a train back to Damascus. On previous trips, I’ve spent just about all my time in Aleppo, so aside from a memorable nap in the Umayyad Mosque and some excellent blackberry juice just outside it, I had little impression of Damascus.
So it was a double treat to explore a new city, and to do it completely on my own terms with no schedule whatsoever. I really just wandered aimlessly for three days, eating street snacks and taking photos.
I did get a good scrub at a hammam, and drank myself nearly sick on frozen lemonades and mulberry juice. My last night in Damascus, after the one lemon slush I really didn’t need, I collapsed on my bed in a mild sugar shock.
Some random observations: Syrian men are exceedingly polite (I even witnessed a man chide his son for making flirtatious noises at me–export to Egypt, please!), but they are also giant hams. Some of the most fun I had was taking pictures of all the guys who begged me to. I was very glad to have a digital camera.
Syria seems like a notably less paranoid place than when I first visited 10 years ago. Change is happening. And here’s hoping the US doesn’t somehow screw it up with some ham-fisted negotiations.
It’s also a far less cheap place than when I first visited. That’s probably rough for Syrians, but OK by me–it used to be embarrassing how cheap it was. Now it’s on par with Egypt, roughly.
Syria is still the only place in the world I’ve gone back to just because I like it so much–if it’s possible to have a crush on a country, I suppose I do. And I’d still go back–maybe next time in the fall, for a whole range of different seasonal treats.
