Dead Sea strolls

20 January 2003 by
Dead Sea strolls

There were seven of us altogether. Two members of the party - Anton Edelmann, the Savoy's maître chef des cuisines, and Mary Johns, chairman of the British Guild of Travel Writers - had come to Jordan in search of inspiration: they needed ideas for the guild's annual awards dinner on 10 November, which this year carried a Jordanian theme. My own mission, on behalf of Caterer, was to search out cutting-edge Jordanian food, if indeed there were such a thing. I wondered whether two days would be enough time to find it.

We arrived at Amman International Airport at half past midnight on a Monday morning, to be greeted by Kamel, our guide, who ferried us by bus to our hotel by the Dead Sea, an hour's drive away.

Later that morning, we met for breakfast. This consisted of an enormous buffet including the usual suspects (pastries, fruit salad, eggs done five ways, etc) as well as a few Arabic dishes. I ate olives, feta, hummus and shrak - a delicious flat bread made with flour, sugar, salt and water which tastes something like a pancake but has the elastic quality of a roti. There was also an Egyptian spiced bean dish called fool, which is so heavy that its digestion demands the full attention of your body and your brain, rendering you stupid. I found this a refreshing excuse for a Monday morning state of mind.

It was time, though, for a little sightseeing. The Dead Sea lies in the fertile Jordan Valley. This is the country's main wine-growing region and, at 400m below sea level, is also the lowest point on the planet. The sea itself, milky blue and as clear as crystal, is totally calm and tepid, with the consistency of a light sugar syrup. Several hours after a quick float in the brine, I examined what had been a third-degree burn on my arm. Miraculously, it had all but healed. Perhaps the Dead Sea ought to be a place of pilgrimage for burnt, cut, chafed and otherwise maimed chefs.

Leaving the Dead Sea, we headed for Madaba, the city of mosaics, to a restaurant called Haret Jdoudna, where the food they cook is described as a fusion of Italian and Arabic, although the venue is best known for its excellent traditional Arabic food.

I asked Kamel about Jordanian food. What was it? He surprised me when he said that the Jordanians had no cuisine that could truthfully be claimed as their own except for mansaf, a Bedouin invention that has become the national dish. A whole stewed lamb is served on rice with shrak and jameed (dried yogurt), sprinkled with snobar (fried pine nuts), and brought to the table on a giant dish, crowned with the head of the lamb. The eyes are considered the ultimate delicacy and are usually reserved for the guest of honour.

We arrived at Haret Jdoudna, starved and parched, and were met by our host, owner Zaid Goussous, and invited to watch the chefs preparing our lunch, an elaborate feast of classic and reworked Arabic dishes.

First was the shrak (I had come to realise that bread was one of the most important parts of any meal, from the poorest to the most wealthy of tables). Waleed, the shrak man, tried to educate me in the ways of handling this fragile dough. The process is much the same as throwing pizza bases, except the dough must be uniformly paper thin. It is then cooked on what looks like an upside-down wok over a gas or wood fire. It looked easy; it wasn't. Waleed and his friends laughed at my attempts and I decided I would try to make shrak again only in the privacy of our kitchen at Providores.

Next, we watched the chefs prepare some of the house dishes. They included a caprese salad with goats' cheese instead of mozzarella, plus tomatoes, kaloonji, thyme instead of basil, and finally Jordanian extra virgin olive oil, which was nutty and delicious - I was reminded that the first olives grew in Palestine.

The food was spectacular. We sampled delicate pastries stuffed with lamb and sumac, spinach and goats' cheese; softly smoked, creamy, ethereal aubergine and tahini pur‚e; tangy quail marinated in pomegranate molasses and fried with a tonne of garlic, chillies and lemon juice. We ate hamdan, a fresh, clean-tasting pur‚e made with labne, yogurt, lemon, basil and olive oil; a salad using stale shrak cut into strips, deep-fried and tossed with fresh herbs and vine-ripened tomatoes (a house creation); next, the most delicious tabouleh, made traditionally using 80% parsley and 20% bulgar wheat, tomato and cucumber (unlike the heavy bulgar wheat salads one has come to expect elsewhere).

These treats were followed by succulent lamb marinated in cumin, lemon juice, garlic and chilli (the majority of the meat used here is lamb from New Zealand, while beef comes from Argentina), potatoes thinly sliced on a mandolin and marinated in paprika before being deep-fried to crisp perfection. This was not complex cuisine but, thus far, all outstanding.

Next stop: Amman. Tuesday morning brought an early start, at 9am sharp. We were heading to Zalatimo's, a family-owned Middle Eastern sweet shop, to sample the sweetmeats of Jordan. We were met by Ahmad Ramzy Zalatimo, whose great-grandfather, Mohammed Zalatimo, opened the family's first shop in Jerusalem in 1860. His speciality is moutabak, a fine pastry made with semolina, flour, oil and salt, stuffed with halawet jibin, a sweet cheese, sprinkled with sugar and eaten only for breakfast. We also sampled mamu - a luscious date-stuffed pastry - plus several versions of baclava and various other delicacies. These may not have been modern or reworked, but they were totally more-ish, nonetheless.

Rich and vibrant
In the afternoon, we visited the Amman spice market. Stalls flanked the streets, with crates piled high and tables overflowing with 20 varieties of fresh dates, juicy custard apples and strange purple pods that turned out to be fresh cashews, which were creamy and sweet. There were piles of herbs, with leaves so large and fragrant they were almost unrecognisable, and earthy new potatoes. Dotted among the vegetation were mountains of spices and teas so rich and vibrant in colour that they seemed almost unnatural.

That night we dined with Eric de Blonde, head chef at the Four Seasons Amman - and previously at the Four Seasons London. He has been charged with the task of raising the awareness of Jordanian food by combining its unique traditional elements with a contemporary pragmatism. He has already set up a chefs' association, focused on maximising product quality and consistency without losing local flavour. His skill and unbridled enthusiasm, backed by the complete support of King Abdullah himself, convinced me that he would succeed.

Back in London, I sat thinking about my original brief. Had I found any cutting-edge Jordanian food? Over the two days, I had been assured that it was evolving - by modern standards. For my part, remembering the succulent grilled sparrow I had eaten, and the goats' liver and cheese sandwich consumed on a Jordanian roadside, I think the edge is sharp enough. n

Anna Hansen is joint head chef and co-proprietor of Providores restaurant on London's Marylebone High Street.

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