Kabylie, Algeria, October 2017, 40th Day ritual
tiɣrifin , pancakes prepared for various celebrations. For the 40th day they are a comfort to the family in mourning. taħbult , a sweet omelet with semolina, that is given to women who have just given birth (topped with a mix of honey and orange blossom flowers)
KABYLE cooking
KABYLE cooking
Food (cf. Pollock 2011) Nutritionists diet and health Semiologists system of communication, symbolic oppositions (raw/cooked) Anthropologists food production (economic, political, social aspects), serving rituals and sharing, preparation techniques … mostly centered around ‘horizontal’ transmission (between co- participants/communities)
« we would have vegetarian couscous, I remember my grandma in the old times, she would cook us some vegetarian pudding, she would do this dish with wild leeks, she would cook some vegetarian porridge for us inside the house, when it snowed, with dried figs. We used to go gather figs, we would pluck the figs, we would take them back home, my grandma would give them to us and we would eat them. People made sorts of wicker- racks, ‘ tadkent ’, that's how we call it in Kabyle, a traditional shelf, they would dry all those figs outside, and after that, when winter came, they would fill the storing jar with dried figs. At night, when we stayed near the fire as kids, my grandmother would give us olive oil, she would tell us tales, and we would eat those figs with olive oil. We were in good health, we didn't fall ill, this diabetes didn't exist, there was no high blood pressure, no cholesterol, nothing. But now, it's cookies and cakes, all this new food, that we find in quantities. This is what makes people ill, this is what they consume in excess now. In the old days, we had bread, the kabyle flatbread. The Kabyle woman would put two flat loaves of bread to cook, and when her child arrived from school, she gave him a portion of bread, he would dunk it in oil and eat it, with two dried figs, he would drink goat milk, or cow milk - we were in good health in those times, we thrived . But now it's not the same anymore ».
And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me La madeleine the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, Marcel Proust mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all- powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime- flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks ’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.
Power of food, link to remembrance, joy, resilience, eternity. Imagine you are a migrant, or a person trying to reconnect with her vanishing culture and language … on your journey, among your few immaterial possessions, there is (the memory of) food, and there is language
App Scenario • Taos is a young woman, s he’s starting college, she’s homesick and would like to cook the traditional recipes her Grandma Zahwa used to cook for her • Thankfully, she has her Zahwa App, where she has her Grandma’s voice explaining her recipe in Kabyle, • She sets the app, and starts gathering the ingredients, she’s feeling happy
• Last spring, she went to the village for a few days, and asked her grandma for her tameqfult recipe … • They set up the ingredients, Taos took photos of all the stages while Zahwa cooked the recipe, as well as the final picture of the dish. • Then, after having eaten, in front of warm coffee, they went through the photos, selected the ones they considered the best and Taos recorded her grandma explaining the ingredients, utensils and stages of the recipe in Kabyle. • Then Taos took a picture of Zahwa, and set up her profile for future recipes. • She uploaded the recipe, kept a copy on her phone, and shared the recipe online. • Now, every time Taos wants to cook tameqfult , she has her grandma’s recipe, voice, gestures.
• Taos speaks her language fluently, even though she is bilingual in Arabic now, but she’s happy to listen to her grandma’s speech, especially as Zahwa added information about the significance of this dish. • But Ines is not so lucky: she was born in France sixteen years ago, and her parents haven’t spoken to her in Kabyle, because they thought this would help her integrate. She can understand the language, but feels insecure speaking it. She’s so happy that her cousin Taos sends her their grandma’s recipes! She can learn the language of food, and be fluent at least in the kitchen. And this makes things easier with her mother, who can be so annoying at times when she says Ines cannot go to such or such party – her mum, who is now also interested in recording her own recipes in Kabyle …
Tameqfult Tameqfult is a main dish based on semolina, a ‘couscous’. It is a type of couscous cooked in the spring with fresh vegetables.
Ingredients and Utensils
Cut the vegetables
Moisten the semolina … … and steam it
Arrange the vegetables in layers with coarse salt in between … … carrots, then green beans, then onions, then potatoes, then onions again, then zucchini
… and put everything to steam.
Meanwhile, when the semolina is half- steamed Drench it with water, and let the water drain for ten minutes, and then put the couscous back into the large dish …
… then add some coarse salt … … and eliminate all the lumps by rubbing the couscous between your hands
Since this gesture is not easy to understand if you’ve never performed it, here is a mini-video.
Then put the couscous back on the fire to steam … … and when it is cooked put it back into the large dish and eliminate the last lumps, adding olive oil and coarse salt.
Serve the couscous with the vegetables on top, and provide olive oil and salt for those who’d like to add some
How is Zahwa different from the usual documentation of recipes? • My experience for 20 years: first a way to vary genres, given my involvement in working with women – Get the MAN forms I was expecting, the syntactic structures too – in natural speech – studied language during activity, and post-activity + discussions on cooking then & now (woman and daughters-in-law) – left videos (for souvenir)
• Northern Arapaho, Wind River Reservation (Wyoming) – Yolanda Hvizdak & Berta Monroe – Sadie Bell – Allison Sage • Hän, Fairbanks (Alaska) – Ruth Ridley
• But with Zahwa: – self-documentation of recipes (autonomy), – with a smartphone (light, everyday-life technology), – with immediate saving and sharing possibilities (immediate use and diffusion), – and a potential for intergenerational transmission, not only of cooking skills and cultural materials, but of language, especially in contexts of language loss and revitalization
https://zahwa.aikuma.org
Please join our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/12989012201 88099/ ZAHWA – Food is Love
Recommend
More recommend
