Banquet Reflection

I really enjoyed the banquet we had instead of a final exam. For my dish I made hummus with a recipe from the children's book that I did my presentation and paper on, Farah Rocks Fifth Grade by Susan Muaddi Darraj. In the book, Farah’s catchphrase is “holy hummus”so the hummus recipe was very fitting and in the book the recipe was even called Farah’s Holy Hummus. I picked this dish to make because I love hummus. I grew up eating a lot of it, I always preferred a hummus and cheese sandwich over a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I also knew it would be easier to make. I am not a very good cook nor do I particularly enjoy cooking but this recipe was fun and made me interested in making more food in the future. I thought the recipe was a little under seasoned and simplified for normal standards of hummus but since it was a recipe for kids to make it worked for the book. Hummus is a traditional appetizer from the Middle East that dates back to 13th century Egypt. The ingredients for the recipe I made were chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, salt, cumin, water, olive oil, and paprika. At the banquet we doctored it up a bit to help it suit a more mature palette and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. Tahini is where most of the iconic hummus flavor comes from and I think I could have used more of that. Tahini is thought to have originated in the area that is now modern-day Iran and it is a paste made from sesame seeds. Chickpeas are the foundation for the spread and they are thought to have originated 9000 BCE in the areas of modern-day Turkey and Syria. Sadly I did not have time nor the transportation to make it to an Arab grocery store so I purchased all of my ingredients from my local Giant. I think this banquet was the perfect choice for a final exam for this class. We can talk all we want about the books and the messages within them but ultimately one of the most recurring messages was to eat instead of talk. We saw this most prominently in Crescent with Sirine and her grandfather and then we saw it later in A Woman is No Man with Isra and her father-in-law. I think there is no better send off for this class than eating good food and sharing stories throughout the night. The oral storytelling tradition was another huge thing we learned about in Arabic culture through our readings and it all started with A Thousand and One Nights. So instead of rehashing the stories we have already studied, we created new ones. It was such a lovely night and it felt so gratifying to get to try dishes that we had only read about. It is very hard to imagine the impact of a meal without ever having tasted it, that would almost seem cruel. I loved this class and I loved the chance to experience the Arabic culture a little bit more and to get to chat with the other students in the class. It was wonderful. (538)