AN ALEPPO-STYLE ROSH HASHANA, FRAGRANT WITH CINNAMON AND SPICE
By Charles Perry, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, charles.perry@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times, CA –
September 12, 2007

Cookbook Watch

Poopa Dweck’s new book, "Aromas of Aleppo," offers transporting
recipes that take you through the holidays and beyond.

On Rosh Hashana, Ashkenazi Jews dip apple slices in honey for a
"sweet New Year." The Aleppine Jews — whose ancestors were prominent
residents of Aleppo, Syria, for many centuries — may eat scarlet
candied quinces instead, or even translucent shreds of candied
spaghetti squash.

That’s just the beginning of the unexpected quality of their
cuisine. Its roots go back many centuries, and the dishes have both
rich historical resonance and a remarkable originality. The rest of
an Aleppine Rosh Hashana meal might be leek fritters, spicy tomato
soup with kibbeh meatballs, stuffed baby artichokes, Swiss chard with
chickpeas and a luscious braised breast of veal.

Savory and sweet click to enlarge Related Stories – Recipe: Kibbeh
bi’kizabrath (cilantro-tomato soup with Syrian meatballs) – Recipe:
Rubuh’ (roast veal stuffed with spiced ground meat and rice) – Recipe:
Ejjeh b’kerrateh (leek fritters)

When you get away from the holidays, the really unfamiliar dishes
appear. Okra with prunes, apricots and tamarind. Chicken roasted with
spaghetti until it starts to crisp. Eggs scrambled with rhubarb.

But scarcely anything had been written about this distinctive school
of cooking before Poopa Dweck’s "Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary
Cuisine of Syrian Jews."

Unlike most big Middle Eastern cities, Aleppo didn’t suffer an
economic decline at the end of the Middle Ages. Elsewhere, medieval
caravansaries (inns for caravans) have been torn down or converted into
museums, but in Aleppo some still serve as commercial warehouses. In
the 17th and 18th centuries, Aleppo was prosperous from the silk trade.

With prosperity came both a rich cuisine and an air of tolerance.

Early in the 20th century, when Aleppo was the largest city in Syria,
T.E. Lawrence described it as "a point where all the races, creeds and
tongues of the Ottoman Empire meet and know one another in a spirit
of compromise. . . . there is more fellowship between Christian and
Mohammedan, Armenian, Arab, Kurd, Turk and Jew, than in, perhaps,
any other great city of the Ottoman Empire."

Preserving a cuisineTHAT was some 90 years ago, of course. The last
Jews left Aleppo in 1997 and most now live around New York or in
Latin America. Dweck’s family came to New York in 1948. She has made
it her task to preserve their venerable cuisine in its fullness. Her
book is a huge tome of 388 pages and is lavishly produced; most of
the 180 dishes are illustrated with color photos, interspersed with
soulful black-and-white family pictures dating back to the 1890s,
when the first Aleppine Jews came here.

The cuisine of this book is clearly north Syrian, as you can tell from
the favorite spices. Aleppo pepper adds its fragrant, moderately hot
note to dish after dish. There’s lots of cumin — cumin in hummus,
cumin in potato salad, cumin in tomato salad, cumin even in yogurt
cheese. As in Lebanon, the most common spice is allspice, standing
in for the spice mixtures used in the Middle Ages.

A few touches are obviously Jewish. Because of the prohibition on
mixing meat and dairy, frying is typically done in oil, rather than
in butter or lamb fat. The influx of Sephardic Jews, from Spain,
after 1492 brought a few dishes with Spanish names, including the
tiny meat pie bastel and the cheese ravioli calsonne. A meat roll
that can be stuffed with hard-boiled eggs also has a Spanish look. The
rest of the dishes are mostly amped-up versions of Syrian standards,
emphasizing fruit and sweet-sour flavors.

All the regional cuisines in the area have a preferred ingredient
for giving a sour flavor. In the citrus-friendly climate of coastal
Lebanon, it’s lemons. In inland Syria, lemon has traditionally given
way to vinegar, sumac and other sour flavorings. The Aleppine Jews
are heavily into tamarind.

The secret of Aleppine cuisine, Dweck writes, is ou’, a thick
sweet-sour tamarind concentrate. It shows up in all sorts of recipes —
in beet salad, in the broth for cooking artichokes, in the topping for
laham b’ajeen (better known as in this country as lahmajoun). There’s
a whole cup of ou’ for every pound of meat in that topping, which gives
laham b’ajeen a smoldering purple-red color and a deep, fruity tang.

This book also shows a near mania for cooking savory dishes with
fruit. Stuffed eggplants stewed along with quinces in tamarind
ou’. Stuffed grape leaves (and stuffed zucchini) cooked with apricots
and ou’. A sheet of ground rice and meat rolled around dried apricots
and braised with cherries and ou’. Tongue with raisins. . . and
pineapple (the Aleppines have taken eagerly to tropical fruits).

Needless to say, the Jewish tradition that you should eat sweet
foods on Rosh Hashana is right up the Aleppine alley. Dates, apples,
candied quinces are already year-round favorites.

Dweck ascribes the enthusiasm for fruit in cookery to Persian
influence. It may also reflect the fact that meat was an expensive
rarity in Syria, mostly served at holidays and on the Sabbath, so
meat dishes tended to be appropriately elaborate.

For other days, there were plenty of egg dishes, particularly
frittatas. The book has recipes for cheese, parsley, potato, leek,
spinach, Swiss chard, zucchini and artichoke frittatas. Dweck proposes
the potato frittata (ejjeh batata) as a simpler, lighter substitute
for the potato latke of Ashkenazi cooking because it’s not bound with
matzo meal. (Another difference: that inevitable dash of allspice.)

There’s an elegance to this cuisine, even at its thriftiest. Throughout
the Middle East, cooks like to prepare zucchini stuffed with meat. This
book has the only recipe I’ve ever seen that uses the seedy pulp
that is usually discarded when zucchini are cored. The pulp is simply
sauteed with lightly fried onions and a little sugar to make a side
dish called lib kusa (the heart of the zucchini).

That’s a neat idea. I’ll never throw away zucchini pulp again.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress