Diaspora dishes are strange in how they take on an identity of their own

December 10, 2024 12:35 AM

The hankering for mulukhiyah is a unique hunger. When I lived in Europe for graduate school, it was the first meal I’d eat on my short visits home, texting my request before my plane even landed. It’s the food I crave when I haven’t been to my parents’ for supper in a while. I can call its garlicky taste to my mouth as readily as I can trick my ears into filling with the timbre of my dad’s voice when I’m miles away from him, traveling restlessly as we both love to do. Though my mom excels at every dish in her repertoire, the exhilaration of the roughly monthly cycle culminating in mulukhiyah makes me clap my palms and cheer like I’m 4. from The Kitchen with Two Doors by Kristina Kasparian [Longreads]
posted by chavenet (9 comments total)

Beautifully written and, for this USian immigrant to Spain, thought-provoking.

My cooking heritage from my French Canadian-descended mom is mostly about baking desserts, but since I live alone and don't really eat sweets anymore, I've been a bit stymied in figuring out what, if anything, I brought with me to Spain that is rooted in my family home.

However, I've recently discovered how easy it is to make quick breads leavened with baking soda or powder, featuring flours like spelt and rye, seeds like fennel or caraway, and acidic dairy like yogurt. The recipes I've found are forgiving and flexible, far lower maintenance than a fussy sourdough housepet, and delicious. Some of these doughs are rollable, which means I can make heart-shaped savory "cookies". My late mom, an expert baker, would be pleased.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:55 AM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

Aha, hedge-soup is it? Corchorus olitorius (ملوخية‎, mloukhiya, molokhia, molohiya, mulukhiyya, malukhiyah, or moroheiya) doesn't sound too inviting for someone who grew up on 1950s comfort food (toast, chicken pie, roast potatoes and fish-fingers for preference - but not all at once): a thick mucilaginous broth often described as slimy - therefore similar in its chemistry to okra. But my MiL was raised in the Sahel where Nigeria meets Niger and family members were requested-and-required to return with mulukhiyah if they went back to the home place. So hedge-soup was often on the menu when I visited, back in the day. I could happily pack away a couple of bowls, no problem. But okra . . . I just can't.
posted by BobTheScientist at 3:33 AM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

Oh hey, we just made this dish last week. We use my in-laws' recipe, and have adjusted it to make part of it in the Instantpot, and have now made it our own. It reminds me of my own parents' similar soups that use dried greens, but are not exactly the same, and recalls my own childhood, but not exactly in the same way.

I think this is the most similar to what we make, and we order the dried leaves from here. Prior to finding it on the Internet, we would rely on relatives bringing bags and bags of them in their luggage from overseas trips.
posted by toastyk at 7:19 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

Oy, speaking as a fellow member of the Armenian diaspora with a very different set of food-authenticity hangups, this was a read I'll return to again. Lots to think about. Thanks for sharing it.
posted by potrzebie at 8:35 AM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

In the small world department, I just was served this dish at Thanksgiving attended by a number of people from Egypt. I was told that either you love it or you hate it but everyone there was clearly of the first variety (I'm guessing because like the author of this piece, they grew up eating this dish). In this version of the dish, mulukhiyah was poured over rice. I tended towards categorizing it along the lines of 'slimey' even with the rice but I found the taste interesting. No one knew the translation to English for the Arabic term for the major ingredient, but wikipedia tells me it's variety of jute. Food carries so much emotion (having just made the molasses cookie recipe my grandmother used to make for Christmas, arriving in her metal cookie tin with the roses painted on the top).
posted by bluesky43 at 8:49 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

far lower maintenance than a fussy sourdough housepet

Where do croutons fit in on this housepet maintenance spectrum?
posted by notoriety public at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

I'm really curious to see if there's a North African variant of jute leaf that I could pick up in Morocco, which is a short hop across the pond from southern Spain where I live.

Per Wikipedia, jute leaf is popular in sub-Saharan African cooking. So maybe they do import it in Morocco, will need to investigate, God willing.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:32 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Diaspora food is also a record of when people left their homeland. Eating Portuguese food in a Toronto churrasqueira is a very different experience than going out to eat in modern Lisbon. I'm really curious what mulukhiyah is like in 21st century Yerevan vs what my Armenian friends' grandmas cook.
posted by thecjm at 12:37 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

@notoriety: croutons wouldn't last long enough chez moi to be considered housepets. CRONCH
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:40 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]