Two About Sesame Seeds

Last week a friend listed his favorite twentieth century Russian writers out in a letter. “For me, I’ll stick with . . .”  I recognized them all except Babel.  Fortunately, Amazon.cn had “The Complete Works of Isaac Babel” here in China and soon it was on its way to my home.  How I’d made it through my twentieth century Russian literature course in college without reading “the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry,” is beyond me.  And as I asked one friend and then another everyone beside myself seemed to know of the author.  He had a remarkable life and a terrible end.  It sounds familiar.  He looks familiar.  I’ll have to make up for lost time.

Sometimes I feel deflated when I need to make the dinner for the third night in row. Pity the poor 1960’s housewife who stared down uninterrupted decades of this.  I have a little lazy-Susan of possibilities in my mind’s eye.  I made Italian two nights ago.  Can’t have that taste again.  Italians make Italian food every night, I don’t know why I can’t, but I can’t.  Last night it was Chinese tastes, soy sauce in a stir fry, dumplings dipped in vinegar.  We won’t be having that again.  The call, the ask, “sure.  I’ll do dinner.”  I spin the roulette wheel stops on the Middle East.

Over at the market, it is worth noting how fortunate it is that I can simply step out and get what I need to make humus and baba ganoush here in Beijing.  Certainly, in the early nineties one could always get lemons and garlic.  Chick peas nor eggplant was especially hard to find either.  It was always the tahini that would make or break these dishes.  China knows a thing or two about sesame seeds.  But bottles of tahini one formerly made do with in China never had that creamy taste.  The results were always flat. 

These days there are expensive bottles of imported, middle eastern tahini staring back at me from the shelf.  There’s imported couscous too that isn’t so expensive.  Olives that aren’t so expensive and they taste like it.  But I’ve got what I need to make this meal.

Our blender, my old friend the blender that I’d bought back in Hong Kong twelve years ago, is no more.  So, I grind and I mash the chick peas, with the big dollops of tahini and the diced garlic.  It’s lumpier, but it doesn’t really matter.  I mash it some more.  I lick it once and thrice and its’ where it need to be.

I think I must have made baba ganoush fifty times before I realized why mine didn’t taste like the good stuff at a middle eastern market.  I wasn’t grilling the eggplant. Now I have my smoky, strips of eggplant at the ready.  Once again, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t liquefy.  The black cuts of skin look authentic, in my mind anyway.  The couscous is full of things.  Too many things.  But by the time the kids are home its all ready and I know they’ll like it.  We won’t be having this again this week. 

Wednesday, 03/21/18