Scenes from Taza

Yesterday, we went on a tour of Somerville, MA's own Taza Chocolate.

Awesome place.

Spectacular chocolate.

Mario Batali and Durian

Mario Batali (@Mariobatali)
12/26/11 11:30 PM
“@agentfortyfour: Hey Chef! We always hear about the food you love, so tell us, what's the one thing you absolutely will not eat?

Durian

Well, I can't say that I am surprised. Mario definitely is not alone in his aversion. That durian inspires such reaction is probably what I like most about it. Like Marmite, the New York Yankees and Sai Baba, it has the power to attract zealous devotees at the same time that its very existence acts to mobilize the forces of opposition (forks at the ready for anything but durian).

Time to revisit an old Make Lunch Not War durian-devoted post from 2006.

A Box of Chocolates

"The forest burned, and she had only a minute to gather a few things and her baby and run from the cabin as the fire smoked down the hill. Of what she'd snatched up, less and less seemed worthy, and she tossed away clothes and valuables as the heat drover her to the river. At the lip of the bluff she held only her Bible and her red box of chocolates, each pinned against her with an elbow, and the baby clutched against her chest with both hands. She stooped and dropped the candy and the heavy book at her feet while she tied the child inside her apron, and then she was able to pick them up again. Needing a hand to steady her along the rocky bluff as they descended, she tossed away the Bible rather than the chocolates. This uncovering of her indifference to God, the Father of All- this was her undoing" (77-78).

- Denis Johnson, Train Dreams, 2011

Education and Fast Food

"We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day. You know, there are two model of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food, where everything is standardized. The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized. They’re customized to local circumstances, and we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.”

"So I think we have to change metaphors. We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish."

- Ken Robinson, February 2010, TED2010

Another Mysterious Collapse

"And it isn't just almonds. All monocrops - which means virtually all our food - are part of a system of industrial agriculture whose astounding yields are predicated on the continued supply of a number of resources - groundwater, honey bees, functioning pesticides, migrant workers, and cheap oil, to name a few. As Kirk Webster wrote in American Bee Journal, beekeeping has the honor of being the first part of that system to fall apart. But none of the other parts are looking too spiffy right now, either...[U]ntil local agriculture replaces global agriculture, there will always be another parasite, another virus, another mysterious collapse" (181).

- Rowan Jacobsen, Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis, 2008

Khubz

On our second day in Fes, Morocco, Amber and I hired a guy named Rami to guide us through the medina, in which we had already wandered and gotten lost the previous day. He proved to be an expert, offering insight into the history and organization of a place that, at first glance, seemed labyrinthine and chaotic.*

On the contrary, the souks, or markets, are arranged neatly by type - the silk thread shops here, the spice shops there, and so on - and the medina, as a whole, is organized around clusters of mosques, hammams (baths), medersas (schools) and bakeries.

Like quilting points across the city, these clusters form the core of each neighborhood. As Rami, who as a young boy left the countryside to attend one of the medersas in Fes, explained, the mosque forms the core of each section of the city. The mosque supports the school, and the mosque funds itself through its hammam and through the largesse of wealthier people in the community. As a young student, sleeping many to a tiny room and studying the Koran and Islamic history and letters with intensity, he and his classmates paid no tuition and were given a token for the neighborhood bakery. With that token, he could receive two loaves of bread per day. Members of the community, who could afford to do so, paid the bakery to prepare bread, or khubz, for students and for the poor.

Rami inside the magnificent Bou Inania Madrasa in Fes

In the old city in Fes (and in Marrakech, where we also visited), these institutions live on, though the medersas, which we visited, no longer operate as schools and are more like museums. The mosques are lively (though we weren't, as non-Muslims, allowed into any of them), the hammans are steamy and frequented, and the bakeries run long hours. Women and children navigate the narrow, winding lanes with cloth-covered trays on the way to the bakeries. Peaking out from underneath the cloths are proofed loaves of flat, round, unbaked bread. For a few dirhams, the bakers bake the bread for their customers, leaving the loaves on shelves for pick up later. (In Marrakech, I also saw a woman enter a bakery with a tray of cookies and little sweet pastries to be baked off.)

Shelves of bread inside the bakery near Bou Inania

At the same time, as the newer parts of the cities continue to grow, these traditions will likely become more isolated. On a visit to a bakery in Marrakech, I learned that the number of community bakeries in that city is dwindling. Where there had once been dozens, there are now about ten, I was told. Nowadays, more people are able to bake their own bread at home and more people buy their bread at cafes.

Joan Nathan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, reminds us that community "ovens have been a part of Mediterranean life for thousands of years. People in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, in French country towns and in Middle Eastern medinas baked their bread in them, and later, when the ovens were cooler, cooked casseroles and other dishes...Today many people have gas stoves or propane cooktops at home, and the communal ovens are disappearing. In my travels I have found them only rarely: in Jerusalem’s old city; in Arab villages in Israel and the West Bank; on the Caribbean island of Montserrat."

Later in the article, Nathan quotes Paula Wolfert, the great translator of Moroccan cooking to American audiences: "These bread ovens are a link with the past...It was part of the community, an extension of the home."

Khubz

That all may be true, but from what I could tell, the community bakery still plays an important and key role in the present social and commercial life of the city, most noticeably in Fes. Wood-fired ovens burn bright there, and the steady stream of children ferrying loaves through crowds and around donkey-pulled carts continues.

Life in the bakery near Bou Inania

* "Within the apparent insanity of the medina there is a surprising level of order. Its confounding sprawl is really a mosaic of distinct squares, each with its own mosque, Koranic school, fountain, hamam, or bath, and, of course, a bakery" (13), writes Susan Seligson in her 2002 book Going with the Grain: A Wandering Bread Lover Takes a Bite Out of Life.

So, what utensil do you use for steak?

I know there’s never been a man in the awful shape I’m in.
I can’t even spell my name. My head's in such a spin.
Today, I tried to eat a steak with a big old table spoon.
You got me chasing rabbits, walking on my hands and howling at the moon.

- Hank Williams, "Howlin' at the Moon"