BREAD-MAKING UTENSILS
1. Wheat bin. 2. Stone mill. 3. Fine sieve. 4. Wooden bread-bowls. 5. Straw mat used as a tray or as a bread-bowl cover. 6 and 7. Ovens made of clay, fire is to be built around the outside. 8. Metal cooking plate. 9. Tiny basket for dry flour. (From the Hartford Theological Seminary Collection.)
Many of the villages fail to cultivate garden vegetables in any considerable variety or quantity. They submit to a more monotonous diet than seems necessary. Other villages go into gardening extensively. They are villages with superior facilities for irrigating the crops. The vegetables are retailed in the less favored villages, or, more often, taken to the surer market of the nearest city. Squash, pumpkin, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, turnip, beet, parsnip, bean, pea, chick-pea, onion, garlic, leek, radish, mallow and eggplant are common varieties. Of the eggplant it is said that, since there are so many ways of preparing it, should a woman say to her husband, during the eggplant season, “I know not what to provide for dinner,” he has a sufficient cause for divorcing her. Doubtless, if he were hungry and sensible at the same time, he would at least try the expedient of getting a dish of the savory vegetable before discharging the cook. But, on the other hand, one might quote the Arabic proverb, “Minds are lost with stomachs.” There are two kinds of cucumber. The one like our own goes by the name khîyâr. The other, called faḳûs, is thinner, longer and fuzzy, and is eaten without peeling. The buds of the artichoke when boiled make a delicious dish. Potatoes are getting to be quite common now. Most of them are still imported, but probably more and more success will be met in raising a native crop.
A pleasant little story is told of how potatoes may have first come to Jerusalem. Sister Charlotte, a Kaiserswerth deaconess, was for fifty years in mission work in Jerusalem. At the time of her death in 1903 she was the revered head of the German Orphanage for girls in the city. When the Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince, visited Jerusalem, he accepted an invitation to dine with Sister Charlotte and the other German sisters. He asked them what, of all things, they would like from Germany. They said that they thought potatoes would be their choice. Two barrels of potatoes were the result of this incident, and Sister Charlotte thought that these were the first potatoes in Jerusalem. It is to be regretted that this is not the place to go into a thorough appreciation of the work of these blessed women who, in hospital, school and other Christian service in the East have performed a most gracious ministry of Christian womanliness.
The milk of the flocks is made into butter, and that in turn is often cooked down into what we should call clarified butter, but which the Arabs call semen. It will keep a year and is much used in cooking, especially in preparing rice. There is a very pleasant, cooling preparation of milk called leben,[[89]] which is thick and has a slightly acid taste. It looks like junket. A little of it, when put into slightly warmed milk and set away in a warm place for a few hours, will make leben of the milk. The process is one of partial digestion and makes a wholesome food for invalids, particularly for those suffering from fevers. Lebbeneh is strained leben to which a little salt has been added. It is a sort of compromise between butter and cheese. A cream cheese, jiben, is made in square cakes averaging the size of a man’s hand. These cakes are put away in brine for keeping and, when needed, are soaked in hot water. Many meals are made of wheat bread and cheese. Hard, dried leben, pressed into little balls, may be kept for months. It is then called kishk. When they are to be used the balls are cracked into little fragments and soaked in water.
Eggs, mutton and goat’s meat are obtainable in most villages. For game, the gazel, pigeon, quail and partridge, as well as smaller birds, are shot and used by a few of the peasants. For those who live near the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee), the fish there found add to the variety.[[90]] In parts of Palestine locusts are eaten.[[91]] They are usually dried or roasted. A story and a proverb are mentioned concerning the vigor and spryness of these insects. A man who was in great haste and yet wished something to eat caught a locust and, holding it by the legs, roasted it over a fire. He didn’t wait to do it very thoroughly before he put it in his mouth. Fearing that it would burn him he delayed shutting his teeth together on it. The moment he loosened the grasp of his fingers, therefore, away went the locust. Now for the proverb: “Âflat min jarâdeh,” which means, “Better at escaping than a locust.”
Baked dishes are not common among the peasantry. Boiling, roasting and frying are the common modes of preparing food. Kibbeh is a mixture of meat and burghul, bruised together in a mortar until it becomes a jellied mass, when it is pressed into pans, scored off into cakes and fried with semen. Maḳlûbeh is a preparation of rice and eggplant cooked in a deep dish, and, when served, turned out, upside down; whence the name, which means “turned over.” Keftah is a meat cake fried in semen, not very different from Hamburg steak. Mujedderah, or ‛aṣîdeh, is a mixture of rice and lentils. Sometimes fried onion scraps are served with it.
A favorite vegetable called kûsâ, which looks like a cucumber and tastes like our summer squash, is often hollowed out, stuffed with meat and rice and boiled. Here is a combination of fruit, flesh and vegetable worth trying: A roll of tender grape-leaves stuffed with rice and meat and then boiled. It makes a little sausage-like affair of which a Scotch professor said that, if there were sausages in Paradise, they would be of this kind. The natives call all stuffed dishes of these sorts maḥshy, stuffed. A maḥshy made of eggplant is called shaykh el-maḥshy, the chief of the maḥshys. Kids, lambs and chickens also are stuffed. With some of these maḥshys, leben sauce is served and with others lemon-juice.
Salads of all kinds are enjoyed by the people. Ḥumuṣ b’ṭeḥîneh is made from dried chick-peas boiled, mashed with olive-oil and flavored with ṭeḥîneh. Ṭeḥîneh is a mixture of olive-oil, serej and some sour substance, either vinegar or lemon-juice.
Caraway, anise, thyme and mint are used as seasonings.