Food as a Bridge to Peace

It's About the Food

By Chef Kurt Michael Friese

Food as a Bridge to Peace

My wife Kim and I spent our twentieth Christmas together last year.  While we always welcome the chance to be around the table with family and friends, too many of those holidays have been clouded by events of the day.  I remember one when we watched the collapse of the Iron Curtain over chips and clam dip, nervously wondering if it would remain a "velvet revolution."  Another when we worried whether her brother Scott, a Marine at the time, would be shipped to the Persian Gulf.  We discussed "Desert Shield" over Bourbon Pound Cake with Whipped Cream and Tawny Port.  Last year, like our first Christmas together and several in between, was spent in Columbus, Ohio at my mother's house.  With Bing Crosby in the background singing "I'll be Home for Christmas," much of our conversation once again centered on war.  The rest was about food.

 Although Christmas has become a secular holiday for many families (mine included), that does not leave it devoid of all spiritual meaning.  Quite to the contrary, my family holds many strict traditions that are necessary to make the holiday especially meaningful for us, and they all revolve around food.

Christmas is not alone here.  At Thanksgiving, there must be a large steaming bowl of my mother's wild rice dressing (the one with the sausage and mushrooms); at Easter, the Cream of Asparagus Soup is required, thus giving Easter it's Friese-family subtitle "The Festival of the Green Soup."  Christmas though has an assortment of requirements.  They need not all be present for a successful holiday, but the more the better.

 Among these delights are the Wild Rice Dressing (again), Almond Crescent Cookies, Cranberry-Port Relish, Yorkshire Pudding, Clam Dip, and Mom's Bourbon Pound Cake.  Now the Pound Cake is an absolute necessity, and it simply has not been Christmas unless we had some Pound Cake.  It's a little bit like the "figgy pudding" in that old Christmas Carol – we won't go until we get some.  The secret to the Bourbon Pound Cake, I will now reveal to the world, is that you should never….  No, forget it, it's a secret.

This year we had the Pound cake and the Clam Dip and the Cranberry-Port Relish.  We did not have the Yorkshire Pudding, though.  In order to have Yorkshire Pudding, one must first make a roast rack or other similarly fatty cut of beef in order to have the drippings.  We chose to forgo the old favorite entrée, which had been popular in our family chiefly so that the Grinch himself could carve the "Roast Beast."  Instead, I roasted a Leg of Lamb that had been raised in Marysville, Ohio, just a short drive north and west of Columbus. 

The lamb was chosen to compliment something called "Jeweled Rice," which was to be brought to the festivities by our dear friend Pari.  Pari is one of the best cooks I have ever known, and she specializes in the cuisine of her native Iran.  She and her husband Ali, and their sons, Abdi, Amir and Amid, emigrated to the U.S. from Shiraz, the city that gave its name to the very popular wine grape.  Sadly Abdi could not join us, but it was wonderful to see the rest of their family again around our Christmas table, and to talk at length about our mutual favorite subject, food.

 I explained to Pari the way I prepared the lamb.  We had the butcher at North Market remove the bone for us (if you are ever in Columbus don't miss North Market).  Right away, when we brought it home the bone went in the oven to roast, then into a stockpot with onions, carrots and celery to make a lamb stock.  This I simmered for a couple of hours, filling the house with the mouthwatering aroma.  Once the stock was done, I strained it and then returned it to the stove to reduce.  Meanwhile, I sautéed shallots, garlic and tarragon in olive oil, deglazed with Port and some of the reduced lamb stock and allowed all this to cool.  Once it had, it became the stuffing for the leg, which I rolled and roasted to a tender medium-rare.  Sounds good, but it was Pari's rice that stole the show.

Jeweled Rice is a complicated dish with many steps to follow.  Pari explained the process to Kim and me.  It contains no less than 21 ingredients, including Saffron, barberries, almonds, pistachios, and a Persian spice blend called "Advieh."  This is made with cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, nutmeg, cumin, angelica and dried rose pedals. 

 It is no mere coincidence that the cuisine of Iran is laced with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of herbs and spices.  Iran lies directly upon the old Spice Road, a trading thoroughfare over which uncounted wars have been fought for millennia.  For centuries spices were used as currency.  Where there is money, soon there is power; where there is power, soon there is war.

 Iranian culinary custom calls for the rice to be rinsed several times and then boiled in lots of water the way westerners cook pasta.  Then it is steamed with orange peel and saffron. The barberries, along with golden raisins, are the jewels that give this dish its name.  The aroma and the mesmerizing array of flavors was a great compliment to the lamb, but if Christmas dinner were some sort of contest, my lamb would have finished a distant second.

If what the great chef Brillat-Savarin said is true, "tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," then the surest way to understand other cultures is to understand their food.  I am quite convinced that had it not been for the unfortunate politics of the last quarter century, Persian cuisine could be as popular in the U.S. as Indian cuisine is now.  It is every bit as rich in tradition, ingredients, complexity and fascinating passion as anything India has to offer.  India too, after all, is a major point on the old Spice Road.

The best way to reach across borders is to reach across a table.  Every culture that has endured for any significant amount of time has left a culinary legacy that is the truest measure of its people.  It is no coincidence that the international symbol of peace is a branch from the tree of life – the olive.  Sitting across a Christmas table from devout Muslims, sharing a mixture of our culinary traditions, from lamb to rice to Pound Cake, I see that only through sharing will Peace ever be achieved.

To teach Peace, teach food.  Find a cuisine you know nothing about and taste some part of it.  Learn to make it.  Creation is an act of Peace. Teach lutefisk to a Texan or sushi to a Palestinian.  One dish at a time, we can all learn some tasty lessons.