my social production
- Regular series on this blog:
- Living in Syria |
- Living in London |
- Cycling |
- Cooking
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Viewing all posts tagged "food"
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Was just going through some old photos and found this. I documented myself making lasagna on September 17, 2010, a couple weeks before moving to Syria.
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The curator of mycitycuisine.org, a food wiki, asked permission to use a photo I took earlier this year of our Easter dinner in Damascus, Syria! The description of the dish is making me hungry:
Sayadieh is a classic main course dish in Syrian cuisine consisting of baked fish with rice. The cooking method consists of rice being sautéed with baharat spice mix, ground cumin and seasonings. Then fish stock is poured over the rice and it is left to boil until cooked. White fish (red snapper, sea bass or cod) is well seasoned with salt, pepper and spice mixture, stuffed with some lemon wedges and placed in the oven to bake for about one hour. Cooked fish is served over the rice garnished with roasted pine nuts and fried onions, with sauce on the side.
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Turkish food!
Dish 1: Spiced chunks of lamb on a bed of potato shavings with yogurt. Quick, simple, cheap, tasty. I easily shoveled all of this down the hatch in no time. Could have eaten more.
Dish 2: Chunks of lamb and walnuts drenched in pomegranate sauce with rice. Jennifer got this one and she was not exactly blown away. It was all good, but the flavor was intense, tart, sweet. Almost too much flavor. And the meat was kind of fatty.
Dish 3: Roasted eggplant, sliced open and filled with ground spiced lamb, and a side of bulgar wheat. It was served chilled, which was unexpected. But very well spiced. It looked to me to be a very heavy meal, but I downed it without problem.
Dish 4: You’re plain old typical skewered grilled meat, just like you’d get anywhere in the Middle East. This was good, for sure, but I wouldn’t say Turkish grilled meat is miles better than its Arab counterpart (as the Turkish students in our Arabic classes continuously insist). To me, Arab and Turkish grilled meat are essentially the same thing. The quality of your meal all depends on the ingredients, not the ethnicity of its cook.
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Arabic homework time! Here’s a picture of my notes — and translation below.
Assignment was to give a 5 minutes presentation on a special or unique food from your country. In our drills, when the topic of food arises, “hamburgers” is always given as an example of American food. I wanted to do something different, so I spoke about BARBECUE.
- barbecue is meat which is cooked over a low temperature for a long time
- it’s possible to cook all meats like: beef, goat and chicken
- but in southern America, when I’m from, where I was born, pork is considered one of the best meats for barbecue
- now, a history of pork in America!!
- Spanish people brought pigs from Spain to the new world
- and the people in the new world taught the foreigners about cooking with smoke and low temperature
- pork became important to the people because pork was cheap and the people were poor
- today, after five centuries, there are different styles from all places, but there are always three methods for cooking
- 1) smoking 2) baking 3) grilling
- and there is sauce sometimes and without sauce other times
- I love barbecue!!
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- 8 medium apples
- 6 huge carrots
- 4 big green bell peppers
- 5 medium eggplants
- 3 big lemons
- 7 cucumbers
- 9 kiwis
Total: 450 SYP ($10) !!
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Costs of things in Damascus
Common purchases, their amounts in Syrian pounds and US dollars, and some conclusions about the cost of living in Damascus…
- 1 ride on micro-bus = 5-10 SYP ($0.10 - $0.20)
- 1 kilogram of eggplants = 15 SYP ($0.30)
- 1 taxi ride across town = 50-80 SYP ($1.00 - $1.75)
- 500 grams of chickpeas = 50 SYP ($1.00)
- 1 hour in an internet cafe = 60 SYP ($1.30)
- 12 pencils = 120 SYP ($2.50)
- 6 1.5 liter bottles of water = 120 SYP ($2.50)
- 1 frappacino type coffee drink = 185 SYP ($4)
- AIDS test* = 500 SYP ($11) *free when enrolling with Uni. of Damascus
- 2 towels = 500 SYP ($11)
- Dinner for four at mid-range studenty restaurant = 800 SYP ($17)
- Dinner for two at a very fancy restaurant = 1200 SYP ($26)
- Full bedding set (sheets, pillow cases, etc.) = 1400 SYP ($30)
- 1 month Arabic lessons at University = 18,000 SYP ($390)
Getting around the city is shockingly cheap. Likewise, food, when bought and prepared yourself, is extremely cheap. Even eating out is much cheaper than what you might be used to in a major European or American city, though it’s funny how quickly you stop converting and start comparing local prices to each other (“I can’t believe that hummus, eggplant, grilled chicken and lamb, salad, bread, juice and coffee came to 1200 SYP!! Oh.. wait.. that’s an amazing deal.”)
Western style things and imported goods are roughly the price you’d expect or slightly cheaper. For one, you’ll only see posh things like frappacinos served in posh establishments catering to foreigners and the richest members of Syrian society; the novelty factor of feeling modern (eg dust-free floors, clean toilets, meat that’s safe to eat) with it a premium, but it’s not outrageous. You’ll also pay a premium for things manufactured outside of Syria, especially when there’s a Syrian-produced equivalent. This applies to mostly everything, from ice cream and canned foods to CDs and televisions.
I can’t really say how reasonably priced Damascus University is… it’ll depend on the experience and what I’m able to get out of it. But consider this: the other well-known Arabic teaching program at the French Institute of Damascus costs over 32,000 SYP ($700) per month.
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This is really disturbing. I was expecting Vice gross jar-like grossness. But no…
Sally Davies bought a McDonald’s Happy Meal in April of 2010. For 180 days, it was left on her coffee table, and it would NOT decompose. This time includes the hot summer days of New York this year. No worms, no mold, no smell, no visible decomposition of any kind.
The video concluded with “This can’t be a very happy meal”. I second that.
Then, McDonald’s posted a reply, but I’ll have to think about this a bit more before “jumping to conclusions”.
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This is Poutine
Poutine, pronounced poo-teen, is a deep bowl of salty French fries, gravy, cheese curds (a sort of semi-soft cheese like mozzarella), and any other topping of your choice. The variety I ate, pictured above, is topped with BBQ pulled pork and was the perfect ending to an evening in Toronto.
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Roast chicken, pulled pork, babyback ribs, coleslaw, fries and Moosehead beer at Soho’s Bodean’s BBQ.
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