Zrir and the story of Alexander's birth

Every now and then, I lack the motivation to post on this blog, and I forget why I started Kitchen Vignettes in the first place. I sometimes need to be reminded by others, and Food Riot's recent article did a great job of that, articulating it so simply: blogging is a way to share stories through food. Because the recipes we make tell the stories of our lives, the people we love, where we've been, the adventures we've had... And so behind the recipe I'm sharing with you today is a story about the magic of giving birth, and also about a marvellous friendship that spans across many years and a great big ocean. It's a story I began to tell you in my last post, and which I'll continue here.




There are times when life presents you with an opportunity to live something different, something really special. Something to crack your heart open a little wider. These past two months spent as my dear friend Synda's birth companion will always stand out in my mind as one of the most precious periods of my life.

Synda and I met on a cross-cultural exchange programme 18 years ago, young and eager to get to know each other's countries. We lived and worked together for close to 7 months in Quebec and then in Tunisia. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship, and little did we know our adventures together had just begun! 

A couple months ago, Synda bravely arrived all by herself from Tunisia with a big pregnant belly and the hope of giving her baby the gift of Canadian citizenship. She arrived in Nova Scotia when the cold April winds were still blowing strong, and the first thing we did was crack open her giant suitcase full of every imaginable Tunisian food staple: from dates to exquisite Sfaxian pastries, from dried octopus to black pine nuts, homemade harissa to wild mountain thyme. Together, we cooked, ate, laughed, walked, and danced our way through the last weeks of her pregnancy, waiting impatiently for spring to truly arrive, and for Alexander to make his grand appearance. 

He finally decided to come at the end of an endless grey spell of cold and rain, and like a true Tunisian, he brought the warm glorious sunshine with him on the day he arrived. 

Synda was in active labour for close to 24 hours. She had made the firm choice to have a natural birth with no medical interventions, even though her previous birth to twins had been by C-section. 

With the support and gentle hands of her amazing doula, and a crew of incredibly supportive friends, she was able to have the birth she wished for, spending all but the last 2 hours of labour at home. I have rarely seen such strength, bravery, love, and ecstasy all in the same room.

It's almost impossible to find the words to describe the joy that Synda and I shared and how strong the bond between us became after living such a grand experience together. But I believe that's what pictures are for. To tell a thousands words when actual words fail you. 

A couple weeks before his birth, Synda prepared a traditional Tunisian recipe to welcome Alexander into the world. Zrir is a nutritious dessert that was traditionally given to new mothers in Tunisia to help them regain their strength and also to help with their milk production after childbirth. The tradition evolved into a special treat that is served whenever a visitor comes to meet a newborn baby and congratulate the new mom. The sesame seeds, hazelnuts, honey, and butter that Zrir is made of are very nourishing so it is preciously served in small elegant glasses with tiny spoons. 

Synda says that in Tunisia, each family's Zrir is quite different. Her version is creamy and caramel-like though still very thick, but others make a harder, quite compact and crumbly Zrir, which is also delicious. The recipe for Zrir is therefore very adaptable. It contains 4 simple ingredients but you can vary the amounts based on personal preference. For instance, if you prefer a sweeter and softer Zrir, you can add more honey.

When I've made Zrir myself, I have not been able to achieve the fine smooth, caramel-like consistency of Synda's Zrir. I think there is a little magic in the way she prepares it. It also takes a lot of patience to grind hazelnuts and sesame seeds into such a smooth paste. And I believe therein lies part of the secret to a good creamy Zrir: the hazelnut and sesame pastes must be as smooth and buttery as possible before the honey and butter are added. Because this can take so long if you don't have a solid food processor, I am inclined to try substituting  store-bought tahini for the sesame seeds next time I make it. I'm not sure Synda will approve, but I'll keep you posted!

TUNISIAN ZRIR

Makes enough for about 10 servings

2 cups whole hazelnuts
2 cups white sesame seeds
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup honey (more if you wish)
1/4 cup pine nuts (optional garnish)

In a heavy skillet toast the hazelnuts on low heat for about 5 to 10 minutes or until they get golden and fragrant. Cool them and then rub them between your hands to release their skins. Don't worry if some of the skins remain, just try to release and discard as much of the skins as you can. Toast the sesame seeds as well for about 3 to 5 minutes on low heat or until fragrant. Watch them carefully so they don't burn! 

In a small saucepan, melt together the honey and butter. Remove from heat as soon as they've turned to liquid. 

Place the toasted sesame seeds in a food processor and grind until they begin turning into a paste or nut butter consistency. This may take quite a while, depending on how strong your food processor is. If your processor isn't powerful enough, you may want to try using a coffee grinder, as Synda did in the video. It is painstaking but necessary to achieve the right consistency. Repeat this process with the hazelnuts. Pour the hazelnut and sesame butters into a smallish heavy-bottomed pot. Place on low heat and add half of the honey-butter mixture to the sesame-hazelnut mixture. Stir until a homogeneous cream starts to form. Add the remaining butter and honey and continue stirring until the whole thing is creamy. As soon as it starts to bubble, remove from heat and allow to cool slightly before serving in small cups. As the Zrir cools, it will harden. Garnish with pine nuts if you wish. Zrir will keep for several weeks in a glass jar. Enjoy!

At the airport, just before they boarded the plane for the first leg of their journey home (I cried a river!)

Synda and Alexander are now happily returned home to Tunis and reunited with their family. It makes me tear up every time I imagine them all meeting little Alex for the first time. Putting this blogpost and video together was a wonderful way for me to remember how special our time together was. I plan to visit them this winter, inshallah, and I already can't wait to hold a somewhat bigger Alex in my arms again.

A Story About Friendship and Food

Things have been a little quiet on the blogfront lately and I apologize for that. But I have a good excuse. I'm awaiting the arrival of a baby.

No, it's not my baby. But it's a baby who will be very dear to my heart. To explain, I need to take you back to eighteen years ago, when I just out of high school and totally confused about what I wanted to do with my life. Hungry to learn about the world, I signed-up for a cross-cultural exchange program called Canada World Youth. It was a 7-month exchange between Tunisia and Quebec, and it changed my life.

After a first week of orientation camp (where a few dozen earnest young Canadians and Tunisians were thrown together and given their first introduction to cross-cultural communication and open-mindedness), we finally came to the eagerly anticipated day when we found out who we would be were paired with. When they called out the name of the most sparkling-eyed and mischievous-looking young Tunisian woman in the room, I began to realize how lucky I was. Synda and I spent the next several months getting to know each other's countries, living together in host families and doing volunteer work projects in the communities where we were placed. 

Back in our Canada World Youth heyday

In some ways, we were the bad-asses of our group, always up for mischief and adventure. I laughed more than I had ever laughed, learned new ways of seeing the world, and became more comfortable with myself. Despite our many differences (different religions, different languages, altogether different cultures), Synda and I fundamentally "got"and adored each other. We became inseparable! 

Over the years following our program, we kept in touch by phone and letters, and later on, through Skype and facebook. I went back to Tunisia several times to visit her and her husband and their adorable twins.

Last fall, Synda announced that she was pregnant again, 11 years after giving birth to her twins. She threw out the idea of coming to Canada, all by herself, for the birth of the baby. It would mean that her baby would receive dual citizenship of the country she loved so much, and it would be a chance for us to have a very special visit together. Though I felt honoured that I might get to help her welcome her little one into the world, it did seem like too wild of an idea at first, even for our adventurous ways. For me, it would mean delaying going to Maine for the summer, and for her, it meant overcoming a lot of logistical hurdles back home, along with the difficulty of temporarily leaving her family. But as we discussed it some more and made the necessary phone calls to the customs and immigration offices and local hospitals, we began to hatch a plan that looked more and more feasible and took a life of its own. Before I knew it, my small library had exploded with books on how to become a good birth partner and I was finally meeting her at the airport, all teary-eyed, and welcoming her back to Canada for the first time in 18 years.

Synda is one of the bravest and most determined people I know for getting on that plane and travelling halfway across the planet with such a pregnant belly. Words can't really quite describe how much I adore and admire this woman.

The day that she arrived, we lifted her very heavy suitcase onto the dining room table and opened it to reveal every imaginable Tunisian delicacy including dried octopus, home-ground spices, fresh dates, and harissa paste she had carefully prepared before her long journey here. There was even a bag filled with a rare kind of black pine nut that is used for a special custard recipe. I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and was instantly transported back to Tunisia. This is our shared passion: cooking together and she came well-prepared for us to get right to work.

Synda's knowledge of traditional Tunisian cuisine is mind-blowing. She makes recipes that her mother and grandmothers have passed down to her, recipes that she says young urbanites such as herself simply don't make anymore nowadays. As the pace of life makes fast food a more appealing choice for many modern Tunisian families, Synda has always remained a staunch defender of traditional foods and the pleasures of cooking from scratch. She is the one who unlocked the culinary secrets of Tunisia for me, in my opinion one of the world's most delicious, yet most under-appreciated cuisines. During her time here, we have pretty much been cooking non-stop, and I have filmed a few of her recipes which I will try to share with you very soon in some upcoming posts. 

In the meantime, there's this simple spring radish salad that she showed me how to make, which tastes as fresh and flavourful as can be!

You can find the recipe on my recent post for PBS Food.

And now I must sign off… The spring breeze is blowing strong and our hospital bags are almost fully packed. As I write this, Synda is baking traditional Tunisian pastries for her birthing team and I should really get downstairs and give her a hand. Her due date is tomorrow!!! I'm feeling so incredibly grateful to be reunited with my beloved friend on such an occasion. Wish us luck as we welcome this new little Tunisian-Canadian  into the world!

(Update: read the story of Alex's birth here!!)

Synda was positively glowing during our 'woodsy Canadian' photo shoot

A Night at The James Beard Awards

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the James Beard Book, Broadcast, and Journalism Awards because Kitchen Vignettes was one of three nominees in the Video Webcast, on Location category. What an honour that was! Especially being a finalist alongside two of my favourite fellow foodie video producers, Dark Rye and Perennial Plate! And finally getting to meet the PBS Food team in person!

The evening got off to a wobbly start as we discovered how utterly impossible it can be to find a taxi on a busy Friday evening in Manhattan. After some frantic waiving and whistling and everything in between, we finally found a free cab and scrambled in, only to be promptly booted back onto the street and told he was headed a different direction from where we were going. Feeling very much like two lost farmers in the city, we managed to  jump on the nearest subway and then proceeded to undertake a rather frantic, un-elegant 'walk-run' all the way to the venue. We made it to our table just in time for dinner and the beginning of the awards announcements, phew! 

The soirée was a blast, with a Southern-themed dinner and all the excitement of the awards announcement. It was a thrill to be sitting in a room filled with so many foodie personalities... even Martha Stewart was there to receive the award for Best Television Program. The Video Webcast on Location award went to the amazing world-travelling duo at Perennial Plate and my only disappointment was that they weren't there to congratulate in person (because every single one of their videos makes me want to hide in their suitcase and be their travel buddy on their next trip). If you haven't already seen their work, you've got to check them out… though it's hard to choose just one, this is probably my all-time favourite:



The awards dinner was followed up by the Lucky Peach after-party at Momofuku's which was a blast. Three floors of all you can eat and drink madness. My favourite was the seafood-covered table decked out with jars of mysterious tiny pickled fish, mountains of crawfish (maybe one day someone will teach me how to actually eat those buggers, though I did my best with my limited skills…). And then there were crab legs. Muchos crab legs. I ate a lot of those crab legs. They made my night. This photo captures a bit of the glistening seafood raunchiness. It was really a rather crazy scene.

My adventurous date dared to venture into the equally crazy sheep-inspired cocktails being whipped up. I'm not sure I'll ever have another chance to taste a sheep yoghurt cocktail. We had fun. But possibly the best part about New York was seeing leaves and flowers on the trees.

Fancy that! Up here in the north pole, we barely have daffodils yet. So a little taste of actual spring was a most delightful break from the endless days of rain and cold we've had here. Oh New York, you're always such a charmer. Thank you for the memories and until next time, fair city.