Three Vegetable Mezes for a Muhabbet Table, by Melek ErdalKözde patlican (smoked aubergine and yoghurt), zeytinyağli fasulye (green beans in olive oil), and havuç tarator with carrot and walnuts. Words and photos by Melek Erdal.
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‘Muhabbet’ is perhaps my favourite word. It has no direct translation, just like all the others I’ve shared in this column. This suggests that the word grew out of the earth it came from, much like the ingredients we cook with. Which came first, the word or the act that made creating a word for it necessary? Which came first, the meal or the ingredients abundant in the soil? I was once asked on a food panel show about celery’s importance in my cooking. The classically trained chef on the panel answered, ‘It’s everything – it’s the base of everything.’ When they turned to me, I said, ‘It’s nothing, we use it in nothing.’ Celery did not grow in our plains, so it did not become a foundation in our cooking, or a term of endearment or insult, like the Kurdish word for cucumber, ‘xiyar’. Or like ‘ciğeramın’, which means ‘my liver’ and is what my baba calls me, as I am my baba’s vital organ, and he is mine. If you go to our regions, liver is the delicacy served at the start of the day, and the last thing served late at night. I am nobody’s celery – at least not yet. Muhabbet is one of these words too. It is born of our land, and its people and food. It is the sum of more than one word, deriving from the Arabic word ‘mahabba’, meaning ‘love’, and related to ‘habib’, which means ‘beloved’. The ‘mu’ is a prefix that turns the word into something between two people: it isn’t dormant, it involves action, participation. It births things, harbours them, and keeps them alive. Last autumn, when I was thinking of how this column might take shape, I met my editor, Rebecca, to discuss the possibilities. I told her that, unlike my mother tongue, food is a language that has not been lost. As a second-generation Alevi Kurd growing up in northeast London, I had a deep-rooted feeling that neither my past nor my present had legitimacy. My generation was undocumented and unprecedented, part of a lineage not recorded in history, not traceable, not wanted, and not understood. My reason for cooking, I said, was to reconstruct the etchings of an identity and sense of self that was otherwise so opaque. ‘A living etymology of cooking is what we can call it,’ responded Rebecca, giving shape to my ideas. This conversation was so beautiful, so affirming, it was more than just a conversation: it was a muhabbet. Muhabbet does not have to begin with words, or involve any words at all, but it has to be mutual, to have loving intention. And although it can be light or casual, it cannot be aimless. A muhabbet is a meditation and sometimes a pure happenstance. (You can have a muhabbet with a total stranger, of course, but the messages you exchanged with that guy off Hinge are unlikely to qualify, no matter how good the ‘banter’ seemed. At best, that’s a muhabbantz.) Last summer, I got talking to an elderly aunty in Yasar Halim grocery store. We were both excited that purslane was in season, and we chatted about how we use it (I mix it into garlic yoghurt, she makes a stew with it). I left her, saying that it was lovely to speak with her, only to end up on the bus together. She sat next to me before realising who I was, and, eyes gleaming, told me she could give me her purslane recipe. As we talked, I told her that she looked beautiful with her silver cotton hair and cobalt blue jacket, which was the same colour as the yoghurt tub in my bag. She giggled and smiled and held my hand, and told me her name was Arife, after the eve of Eid – the day she was born. I said, ‘That means it was just your birthday.’ She replied that she had forgotten, and asked if I was married. I told her I wasn’t, and she laughed again and then said a mumbled prayer that I would meet a good man. I thanked her and kissed her hand before I left her, saying, ‘This is my stop, aunty.’
On my last visit to see Mum and Dad, they commented on how well I looked, that I’d lost weight. I told them I’d had food poisoning from an oyster, which explained why I had ‘reduced’. Then followed thirty minutes of charades to try to explain what an oyster was: one family, three languages, none spoken with regulation, or ‘accuracy’, the chaos of unregulated words flying across the room, animated descriptions and failed guesses (‘Oh, you mean that thing with eight arms?’, ‘No, Dad, that’s an octopus and they’re not arms’). This all happened while they were feeding me fresh walnuts, one cracking them while the other peeled, collected, and handed over to me. Whether the patchy, chaotic shouting matches with my parents over walnuts, or the holding of hands with aunty Arife for a brief moment over a mutual love of purslane, muhabbet does not rely on language and words alone. It is a conversation had with affection, and like these, it needs pure intention, love and light. Toni Morisson once said, ‘Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt.’ When we think of survival, we rarely think of sentimentality or storytelling, of retracing the histories of words or recipes. But that’s what survival means for me. Cooking is tangible and visceral and cannot be misinterpreted. It is the most whole thing given to me and the most complete thing I can give to you. In Turkey, there is something called a ‘muhabbet masasi’ or a ‘muhabbet table’, which is made up of dishes that are conducive to a muhabbet. Small plates, mezes if you will, dishes that are not overbearing and do not command too much attention or energy to consume. They are companions, not central players. They delight in order to encourage sweet, sweet conversation to come forth. So, friends, let’s create a muhabbet masasi, a table fit for, and made from, muhabbet. From the muhabbet that started with dear Rebecca and continued through this series. Where it became, through the sharing of a word and a recipe, a muhabbet between you and I. Muhabbet MasasiA Muhabbet table with havuç tarator with carrot and walnuts, zeytinyağli fasulye (green beans in olive oil), and közde patlican (smoked aubergine and yoghurt) Make sure you have good bread to accompany all these dishes – a crusty sourdough loaf would be perfect, as would flatbreads. Havuç tarator with carrot and walnutsTarator refers to any meze served with garlic and a sauce, and is usually yoghurt-based. For this one, I use carrots and walnuts, topped with dill. Serves 2
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Three Vegetable Mezes for a Muhabbet Table, by Melek Erdal
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