The first bread was baked here 14 thousand years ago
By Eileen Ogintz
AMMAN, Jordan — Maria Haddad was just 23 when she and her two sisters decided to honor their grandmother’s memory by opening a cooking school in her grandmother’s home in Amman.
The idea, Haddad explained after we had finished eating the Jordanian dishes we had just learned to prepare, was to teach guests from around the world dishes her grandmother had taught her mom and then her and her sisters to cook. The school is called Beit Sitti, which in Arabic means “My Grandmother’s Home.” There is also a terrific Beit Sitti cookbook—14 years in the making—that explains the history of many of the dishes.
For example, we learned that the first loaf of bread was made 14,000 years ago in Jordan when people mixed wild wheat and barley with ground plant roots, added water, and baked it. Today, bread is a staple here often filled with different foods including hummus, cheese, tomatoes, olive oil, or fava beans, with the bread serving as the fork and spoon. Jordanians share plates, communally dipping their bread into eggplant and beet dips and hummus, making the food symbolic of a connection and community. This is especially true on Fridays, Haddad said, when families gather together.
“Everyone thinks it is normal for women to cook…We want to show how much effort and creativity that requires. Arab moms focus on food as a way to show their love.”
That of course can be said about moms and grandmothers around the world.
More than that, Haddad hopes that such classes, taught by local women, will be a bridge between cultures. “Cooking together breaks so many barriers,” she explained. “You are cooking together so at least you have one thing in common.” To celebrate women who have carried their culture through their dishes down through generations” with every recipe telling a story of our land and heritage.”
As my husband Andy chopped eggplant and cucumber, stirred tahini and spices into dishes, pounded little rounds of dough into Arabic bread. I learned that one of our cooking teachers, Um Rween, immigrated from Iraq some 30 years ago when she married a Jordanian. Our other teacher, Um Muhamad, came from Egypt 25 years ago. (Here women take their firstborn’s name with “um” in front of it which means “mother of.”
In the past 15 years, the teachers have taught travelers from all over the world, including many families. They teach to earn money for a goal—putting a child through university, for example. Other women in the community have been taught to make the spice mixes that the school uses and sells.
“The idea has always been to create a platform to meet local women…so they can tell you about their lives and you can tell them about yours,” Haddad said.
Of course, travelers want to see the great sites of Jordan—the Roman ruins of the Citadel in Amman, Petra, the massive archeological city famous for its rock-cut architecture that dates back more than 2000 years; the Dead Seas, the stunning landscape of the Wadi Rum desert with some 25,000 petroglyphs.
But increasingly, tourists are looking for an entrée to local culture and there isn’t an easier one than food, for kids as well as adults. Haddad joked that her nine-year-old son Da.
Oud, an avid cook, always wants to cook with those from abroad.
We are staying at the Four Seasons in Amman prior to an Abercrombie & Kent trip to Petra and the Dead Sea, then Egypt. The Four Seasons they arranged this class for us. Last night, we joined an Iftar at the hotel where hundreds of locals gather to break their Ramadan fast with a spectacular feast of Jordanian and international dishes (even pizza and sushi!)
Today we learned how to prepare some of these dishes like Maghluba, a chicken rice and vegetable dish; Mutabal with roasted eggplant, tahini, yogurt, lemon and garlic, orange blossom that is made from petals from organic bitter orange trees and then mixed with hot water as a digestive.
We learned how Jordanians use pomegranate molasses, sumac that comes from a small berry and Qatayef, a popular desert during the month of Ramadan that has a crispy pancake outer layer stuffed either with cheese or walnuts.
Haddad was quick to explain that Jordanian cuisine comes from the mix of cultures here. As those from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have all made there home here. Haddad noted that her cooking was influenced by her Lebanese grandmother, her Palestinian aunt, and others. Her cookbook “is a testament to the resilience and determination of those who have made Jordan their home,” she writes.
Just as important is to appreciate that Jordan is a “quiet home surrounded by lively neighbors,” in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. While close to Gaza, there is no war here. “People don’t realize how Jordan is so different from our neighbors>’
“Come for the experiences,” she urges, “Obviously you don’t want to miss Petra…but stay for the food.”