Blind Cooking Date With Iraqi
Set Up in Bulgur Isle
By Lindsay Sterling
At Sindbad, the Iraqi Market on
Forest Avenue near Woodford Street, I was looking for fine bulgur. It’s a pre-cooked,
ground form of wheat used for making tabbouleh. I asked the cashier with black
hair and big square black glasses: “Do you have bulgur?” He looked at me quizzically.
He took in my brown hair, light skin, American accent and absence of headscarf.
He asked around to fellow customers in Arabic what they thought I might mean. “Ah!”
He then said, motioning for me to follow. He opened up the chest freezer and
pointed out a package of frozen burgers.
“Not
burgers,” I laughed, “Bulgur!” I tried to pronounce it the way my Lebanese
cooking teacher had. “Bergool?” “Ah!” he said again, smiling and leading me to
another part of the store. In the bulgur isle I got my stash of #1 fine ground
bulgur. As we were both smiling at our mutual success, I asked the cashier if
he happened to know a Syrian cook who could teach me how to cook a dish. He
said he didn’t, but his Iraqi wife would be happy to cook with me. They’d come
here a year and four months ago because Iraq had become too dangerous to raise
a family. These days, she was home all day without a car and wanted to practice her English,
so she would probably enjoy my company in their kitchen.
When I met his wife at their home,
she was wearing a nightgown and pink slippers. She wore dangling gold earrings
and a necklace carrying a cursive word in gold: “Asraa,” [pronounced EEssra], her
name. The couple introduced me to their young boys and baby girl, and then Asraa
and I cooked an Iraqi pastry together, called klejeh.
First, she
proofed active dry yeast with a little warm water and sugar. In a large bowl
she mixed flour, oil, sugar, the yeast, milk, vanilla, and ground green
cardamom. She kneaded this into dough with her hands until the dough pulled cleanly
away from the side of the bowl. Then she covered the bowl with plastic wrap and
a towel. Next she made the filling. She took the pits out of dates with her
fingers and kneaded the dark date meat with a little butter and white sesame
seeds until the date mass was evenly speckled. She rolled date mixture into cylinders
about the thickness of a pencil just as you would make snakes out of Playdough.
She rolled out the pastry dough
into a big circle, about 1/8th inch think. She rolled the top of the
dough over one of the date pieces and then rolled over another. Then she cut off
the rolled, date-stuffed strip. She made diagonal slits on it for decoration
and brushed on egg wash to so the sprinkled nigella seeds would stick on. They
looked like black sesame seeds but tasted like mild cumin. They’re from a
flower in the same family as the buttercup, and have been cultivated for at
least 4000 years. Funny, I should be learning about them just now. She cut the
roll into bite-sized pieces and baked the klejeh
until golden. They tasted, according to my daughter who tried the batch
Asraa sent home with me, “Peppery but sweet.” I liken them to a homemade,
non-industrial Fig Newtons, only prettier, peppier, and made with dates. They’re
great with coffee or tea. When they were done, she asked when I would come to
cook again. The cashier chimed in, “Anytime. Anytime.” I’m looking forward to
it already.
