Guest Newsletter: Lavi Small ~ P is for Pumpkin, Persimmons, Palestine and Polyglotism
Searching for sweetness, hunting for hope, and what we can learn from a name
Kia ora newsletter whānau, and Mānawatia a Matariki!!!! ✨✨
I hope this weekend has brought with it time for reflection, to honour those whānau who have come before, and of course, to feast!
As promised, this week’s newsletter is a little different. I am so so excited, and tremendously honoured to introduce Lavi Small as the first-ever guest writer for Eating Who I Want to Be. Lavi’s talents in the kitchen and in food writing are unparalleled, and her ability to weave culture, poetry and history through the lens of food is a beautiful thing. Lavi has some mouth-watering offerings to share with you all this week, as well as thought-provocating and truly informative words that I hope you find as captivating to read as I certainly have.
Lavi, thank you for sharing yourself with us today, I am truly grateful.
I’ll see y’all in a fortnight! Much love,
Alby xx
From Lavi:
Ka nui te koa o taku ngākau kia hoatu tēnei tuhinga ki a koutou. Ngā mihi mō tō koutou manaakitanga.
Hello everyone and thank you for having me here! I’m Lavi, a friend and fellow Eat NZ Kaitaki of Alby’s. I am a chef, writer, food historian, and poet, or all of the above depending on my mood. I am also a polyglot - a person who speaks several languages - and I have a bit of an obsession with words, particularly food-related ones. I live in the strange and wonderful portal-to-an-alternative-future town of Ōamaru, surrounded by fruit trees, pumpkins, roses and rapidly growing broad beans, with my partner, her mother, a cat and the world’s friendliest chickens.
Most of you will have noticed by now that Alby has a bit of a sweet tooth. Whilst a lot of the food I create has a sweet element; hummus and pickled dates, charred lettuce and mulberry molasses, fire roasted kūmara with burnt sugar (if you ever visited Conch while I was there you’ll know), I am far more likely to choose sour, salty, or umami over sweets. These are the flavours that excite me, that challenge me, that paint my tongue in ways that make it come alive. But over the last 8 months, feeling more and more horrified by the genocide we are currently witnessing, stuck at home recovering from a spinal injury and trying to write a recipe book full of poems that encourage people to explore the stories held in our food, I have found myself more and more craving sweetness.
Sweetness in my book has become synonymous with hope. I keep telling people it is accidental, but it’s only consciously so. There is no shame in finding comfort in sweets, or craving them in times of emotional, social, spiritual or physical distress. Humans are hardwired to search for sweetness, to find it soothing. Breastmilk (and formula!), the first thing we taste, which sustains and nourishes us, and helps build connection between us and our parents, is sweet. So instead of feeling the strange sugar-induced-guilt I could, I’ve decided to lean into this sweetness. I still play with sour and bitter and salty, but right now, it’s the sweetness that makes me feel alive, the sweetness that gives me hope. I’ve found it in marshmallows, skewered with despair and brought to the point of collapse in the fire, plastering sweetness across my face (I like to save a bit for later). I’ve found it in feijoa Louise cakes, making use of the feijoas whose plenty quickly turns luxury to frustration. I’ve found it in halawa (Arabic for ‘sweet’, aka. halva) and bowls of rose rice-pudding that smell like pink and hope for Palestine. And more frequently, thanks to the abundance of mine and my mother-in-law’s gardens, I have found hope in the sweetness of pumpkin.
Hello pumpkin, my old friend
The arrival of pumpkins through my front (and back and side) doors is a clear signal to me that winter will not be far behind. They are old friends, pumpkins and winter have always come together. Despite the fact that it is on the wrong side of the year here in Aotearoa, the link between Halloween and pumpkins is strong, pumpkins represent the end of the harvest, the time for coming inside and cozying up with bowls of soup and stews and fires (maybe even marshmallows). Pumpkins, like all fruits (yes, it’s technically a fruit according to the ‘has-seeds-inside’ rule) in the cucurbitaceae family are originally from the Americas, and are one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world. They are one of the Three Sisters, the (fairly) well-known Indigenous North American companion planting system, named for the Three Sisters who sprouted from the body of Sky Woman’s daughter as pumpkin, corn and beans (there are many versions of this story, this is an Iroquois version). They grow together lovingly, arms as vines wrapped around each other, body and leaves providing shelter and structure and sustenance, roots providing nutrients. Pumpkins now grow on every continent except Antarctica, and to many of us they are intimately linked to that elusive feeling of nostalgia. I was speaking to a friend recently, a wonderful woman in her 60s, who told me that she has always disliked pumpkin and yet she grows them and every single year makes herself eat them, thinking perhaps this is the year. Hope hidden in pumpkin.
I have three recipes to share with you today, all involving pumpkin, all involving different levels of sweetness. They are so different in fact, that you could take a large pumpkin, make all 3 and serve them up at a Pumpkin Party! I quite like the sound of that and not just as alliteration appreciation.
The first recipe is my own exercise in plating nostalgia. I do not have particularly exciting memories of eating pumpkin as a child, or at least none that stand out, but I do have wonderful memories of eating persimmons (intriguingly I wrote this before Alby’s last newsletter, great minds!). Both raw pumpkin and under-ripe persimmon have a pale, rock-melony scent and for an entire year, since I last conceived of the idea as I ate a persimmon and locked eyes with the pumpkin looking on sullenly from my kitchen bench, I have dreamt about eating the two together. It may seem a slightly odd combination, but atop milky ricotta with nutty anisey flavoured bulgur (in honour of the ever-aniseed loving women in my family) bringing out the melon-y flavours, the two come together to paint a beautiful picture of late autumn sun and new winter fires.
the most fascinating fruit
Persimmons are a fascinating fruit and a great example of how much we can learn from a name. We get the English word Persimmon from the Algonquin word Pessamin. The word pessamin means ‘dried fruit’ as usually they are eaten dried, which reduces their tannin content, though in their molten ripe form they are also added to bread doughs. Given we get the word from a group of Indigenous North American languages, it would be reasonable to conclude English speaking people first encountered the fruit in North America, where they had been growing for thousands of years, and this is true. But because of their high tannin content persimmons were not widely eaten or readily available in North America outside of Indigenous populations until very recently.
‘Very recently’ brings me to the next piece of this story; the persimmons widely available today are native to China / Japan (there is debate) where they have also existed for thousands and thousands of years. In most other languages around the world the word for ‘persimmon’ is something like ‘kaka’ (which is the Arabic word). Because the word ‘kaka’ or ‘caca’ in a lot of languages also refers to poo, some people have believed that persimmons are named for the birds who eat them and spread their seed. Alas, this could not be farther from the truth. The name ‘kaka’ comes from the Japanese name for the fruit; ‘kaki’; which in turn comes from the old word ‘kakayagu’ which means ‘to shine dazzlingly’ or ‘to be crowned with glory’. From this also comes the word ‘kakayagi’, ‘lustre’ or ‘brilliance’, which is now the name of a Japanese Bullet Train service.
Now to come right around a circle, the things we call ‘persimmons’ are not really persimmons at all, that is, they are not the North American persimmon, botanically known as Diospyros Virginiana. They are the Japanese persimmon Diospyros Kaki. The two are completely distinct, but from what we can tell by looking at them, they must have started out as the same thing and split, somewhere around the time Gondwanaland split, about 180 million years ago. As good a lesson as any that nothing in this world exists in isolation
Astringent persimmons when meltingly ripe, while deliciously datey flavoured, tend to smell something like uncooked cake batter. The non-astringent Japanese Fuyu kind (the flat, round ones most readily available in Aotearoa), do not need to be melting before they can be eaten, and when crisper smell more like rockmelon as does pumpkin. There are two schools of thought on where we got the word pumpkin, one being from another Algonquin word pôhpukun meaning ‘to grow round’ and also relating to melons. The other suggests that the word comes from Greek pepōn, meaning melon and coming from a root word meaning to ripen or ‘to cook in the sun’. All in all, I think we can say that when I locked eyes with that moody bench pumpkin while devouring a persimmon and thought of melons, I was on to something. I strongly suggest that when you next cut open a pumpkin (hopefully to make one of these recipes) you take a deep sniff and allow yourself to be transported through time.
Following the scent of melons, we find ourselves standing with a watermelon in place of a flag. Surrounded by fields of wheat 15,000 years old, milling our hands through cracked bulgur, tossing it in a celebration of flour and rubbing pearls of dough through a sieve like panning for gold. Once the dough has been left to dry in the sun it becomes maftoul, known in English as Pearl Couscous. It is also the name of the dish, and my next recipe.
Maftoul: more than just food
Wheat has, for as long as oral histories have been around (and from what carbon dating can tell us if you’re more into that kind of thing), been an integral part of Palestinian culture. I say culture, as opposed to cuisine, because it is not just food that wheat is important to. Think about maftoul; the growing of wheat requires land, it requires knowledge, and understanding, and patience and timing and skill. The drying of wheat, the turning of that wheat into flour. The collecting of water to mix with that flour. The rolling of dough between hands, the teaching and learning to roll the dough (the name actually comes from the word ‘fatala’ or ‘to roll’). The drying of the dough in the sun. The gathering and growing and rearing of things to eat with the maftoul. The cooking and sharing and talking about. The eating. There are so, so many parts to the story of this food, so many more complex and heart-wrenching twists when we add the difficulties of life under occupation. When I say ‘integral to Palestinian culture’, I do not mean necessary to, or important to, I mean integral in the very truest sense of the word - integral means whole, or complete. This dish is not just food, it is an entire history of people and land tied together.
My second recipe is for a soupy caraway-studded pumpkin and chickpea stew which is served spooned over the maftoul itself. There are many versions of maftoul, many topped with chicken or slow cooked lamb, but the scarcity and expense of meat in Palestine means that often it is now made vegetarian. The majority of the recipes available in English online are made without the caraway seed, though in the Bedouin communities from which it originally comes, the caraway, in all its fragrant, cooling complexity, is the defining flavour. This is a dish full of nuance, hope transferred from pumpkin to broth and broth to maftoul. Textural intrigue bubbling across our tongues in chickpeas and pearls. Perfumed soup that sings the name and the colours of a land who needs us to sing her name too.
All sweetness and sumptuous light
And so we find ourselves in the eternal search for sweetness and hope. Weaving coloured lines of ink and broth and Oil through the fabric of despair. Despair and hopelessness are easy. Hope is not, definitely not always. But the ability to hope and despair all at once is part of what makes us so wonderfully, powerfully, fragilely human. My final recipe for you is all sweetness and sumptuous light.
I have done some very interesting research into what people define as comfort food and found that overwhelmingly these foods are shades of cream, or beige, or yellow, or golden-brown. These are easy colours, they do not shock or jar our senses. There is nothing unsettling or unexpected. I am going to shake that up a bit. Pumpkin is sweet, but it could be sweeter. Whether or not that means you will find yourself more hopeful, I will leave up to you to decide. The Arabic word for sweetness is Halawet and this dish is called Halawet ‘Arae or ‘Sweetness of Pumpkin’ (sometimes spelt Qarae, but the q is soft, almost swallowed like the space in ‘uh oh’). Traditionally it requires soaking the pumpkin in slaked lime, but despite living in limestone central (Ōamaru) this is very hard to get hold of, and surprisingly dangerous to use, so I am definitely not going to ask you to try. The slaked lime helps the pumpkin stay crisp, a texture impossible to replicate without it (trust me, I have tried), so instead we are going to celebrate the pumpkin for her softness and subtle melony flavours, her sweetness, and then we are going to serve her as a shocking orange crown atop a bowl of gently floral rice pudding.
As with all recipes, these ones are guides, they are letters of love and hope and longing, building connection between us and the world. Although it is literally my job to write recipes, I am not a big believer in following them, and for most of history and in much of the world, recipes as we know them were not a thing. These recipes are yours now, follow them if you wish and tweak them as you like. Share them and share their stories of places and people and sweetness and hope. My suggestion is that you use the ingredients (particularly spices) as teachers; smell them, imagine them, note their flavours and from that learn what else could work instead. All the ingredients in these recipes play a part in creating something integral, something whole and with heart. Like The Three Sisters they hold each other up, they support each other, nourish each other and draw each other out. Be it caraway’s whispers of desert wind, aniseed and basil painting memories of ripe melon upon a persimmon, or pumpkin’s gentle cushion of hope.
Iti noa ana, he pito mata.
Aroha nui,
Lavi xx
Pumpkin, Persimmon & Ricotta
Serves 4 as a generous entrée, alternatively serve on one large plate and share.
Ingredients
500g pumpkin, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes
½ cup fine bulgur
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp nigella seeds
¼ tsp aniseeds (or ⅛ tsp ground aniseed)
⅓ tsp salt
small handful basil (~12 leaves) + extra leaves for garnishing
160g ricotta
6 Tbsp milk
2 persimmons, of desired ripeness (I like them jellylike)
1 ½ Tbsp date syrup
1 ½ Tbsp fruity olive oil
Method
Toss the pumpkin pieces with a little olive oil and season with salt (there is no need for pepper). Roast in a 180c oven for about 20mins, until soft and a little caramelised around the edges.
When the pumpkin has 10 mins left to cook, mix the bulgur, seeds and salt in a small pot or bowl and pour over the boiling water. Cover and leave to sit for 10 mins.
Finely chop the handful of basil, mix the ricotta and milk until a smooth cream, peel the persimmon and cut into cubes slightly smaller than the cubes of pumpkin.
Fluff up the bulgur, I do this by scraping around it with a fork, and mix in the basil.
To serve, smear a quarter of the ricotta mixture on each plate, top with a few pieces of pumpkin and a persimmon, scatter over quarter of the bulgur, top with remaining quarter of pumpkin and persimmon. Quickly whisk together the olive oil and date syrup and pour over the top. Garnish with extra basil leaves.
Maftoul
Serves 4 - easily doubled for celebratory eating. I do not recommend halving this recipe, but it will keep deliciously in the fridge for 3 days.
Ingredients
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, thickly sliced
1 ½ tsp ground cumin
1 ½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp allspice
¾ tsp caraway seeds
½ tsp fennel seeds
½ tsp ground black pepper
4 green cardamom pods
3 bay leaves
2 tsp tomato paste
½ tsp sugar
1.2L veggie stock
400g pumpkin, in 3-4cm cubes
6 garlic cloves, split in half lengthwise
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
20g butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups Maftoul (pearl couscous or ‘moghrabieh’)
To serve
yoghurt
parsley
green chilli shatta (Palestinian fermented chilli paste)
Method
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, turn the heat to medium low and allow to sweat beneath a lid for about 7 mins, until translucent and beginning to brown and curl in places.
Add all the spices except the bay leaves and toast for a few seconds until fragrant. Add the tomato paste, sugar and pumpkin and cook for another few minutes, stirring until the tomato paste deepens in colour.
Add the garlic cloves, chickpeas and veggie stock, bring to a gentle simmer, cover with a lid and allow to cook for 20 mins until the pumpkin is tender but not mushy.
Strain the mixture, reserving the liquid and set aside the veggies in another pot. Measure out 750ml (3 cups) of the broth and pour the remaining broth back over the veggies.
Melt the butter with 1 Tbsp olive oil in another pot, add the maftoul and toast for 3 mins until golden and nutty smelling. Add the reserved broth, bring to a boil, turn down to as low as possible (I use a simmer plate on my gas stove) and cover with a lid. Cook for 15 mins (or according to your package cooking time) then turn off the heat and quickly sneak a paper towel or tea towel under the lid. Leave to steam for 10 mins. (As long as the maftoul is tender don’t worry if some liquid remains).
While the maftoul is steaming, reheat the stew.
Serve the maftoul topped with the stew, with any extra broth in a bowl to be spooned over. Eat with yoghurt, parsley and green chilli shatta if you wish.
Halawet ‘Arae and Rice Pudding
Serves 4, easily halved or doubled.
Adjust the sugar in the halawet as you wish, you can taste the pumpkin raw to assess its sweetness, but note that the raw bitterness will disappear when cooked. Begin the night before serving.
Ingredients
Rice Pudding
⅔ cup short / medium grain rice, unwashed
⅔ cup water
4 cups milk (of your choice - macadamia is a good plant based option because of the higher fat content!)
½ cup sugar
1 tsp rose water
½ tsp orange blossom water (or extra rose water)
Halawet ‘Arae
350g pumpkin
175g sugar
Method
Begin this recipe the night before.
For the Halawet ‘Arae, cut the pumpkin into short 5mm matchsticks. Place in a bowl with the sugar and rub together well.
Cover and leave to sit for ~8 hours on the bench (or overnight). It will produce a lot of liquid, it is ready to cook when the liquid almost covers the pumpkin.
The following day, drain the liquid into a pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 mins, then keeping the pot on the highest heat add the pumpkin and cook for another 5 mins until just tender but keeping its shape.
For the rice pudding, put the rice and water in a pot and bring to the boil, turn down and simmer until all the water is absorbed, about 5-7 mins. Add the sugar and 3 cups of the milk, stir well and cook at a gentle simmer for 15 mins until the milk is absorbed. Add the flower waters and the remaining cup of milk and cook for a further 5 mins. You want it to be a loose milky porridge.
Serve the rice pudding topped with a big spoonful of halawet ‘arae. If desired, sprinkle with ground cloves or cinnamon as is traditional in Palestinian Jewish communities.
**Leftover halawet can be kept for a week in the fridge. It is delicious on toast or flatbread, with or without labneh. To reheat the rice pudding, which will keep refrigerated for 3 days, add more milk or water and heat gently, stirring frequently.