Recently, our training class discussed resiliency in service and shared some practices of self-care. Immediately, I was struck with a humorous collision of self-care practice and some mild resiliency. For me, cooking has always helped manage stress and invoked a sense of calmness. There’s just a bone in my body that aches for a pan in my hand and Van Morrison on repeat. So, when mama picked up spaghetti from Souk and instructed me to cook – needless to say, I jumped at the chance.
Morocco has forced me to adjust to a life that doesn’t even require looking in the fridge – food simply appears all day. Don’t get me wrong, mama’s food is mouth-watering no matter the meal: a constant variety of freshly baked bread; hand-battered and fried fish; savory meat with almonds and lemon sauce. But occasionally, my thoughts reminisce on family Christmases illustrated by plethoras of Spaghetti and Meatballs, celebrating our romanticized Italian ancestry. Deciding firmly to share a classic Italian-American dish, I figured: how hard could it be?
My Moroccan kitchen is a bit different from that in America; aside from mama’s industrial bread oven in the bakery downstairs, all food is cooked on a stove stop, typically in a pressure cooker or Tagine. Opting for the pressure cooker, I snapped up a couple recipes for reference, listing some key ingredients. Thankfully recalling the items’ names in Darija, I listed off the ingredients to my sister and she helped me arrange everything on the counter.
As you may have guessed, things didn’t quite proceed as anticipated. When the requested kefta [ground beef] was taken from the fridge, it was actually a small plate of sliced chicken topped with parsley. The recipe called for bread crumbs, and I was handed day old hunks of stale khobz [bread]. Then, I was given fresh cow’s milk in a recycled soda bottle. For the sauce, the canned tomatoes were a single quarter-size can of tomato paste. As the ingredients were continuously presented in an unexpected form, panic set in. I had promised my family an American-style Spaghetti and Meatballs dinner and bragged about how much I loved to cook, but how could I work with these ingredients?
Then, a full burst of laughter followed, along with strange looks from my sister. How much more pure of a representation was this scenario, but a metaphor for my journey ahead in this new country? Perhaps the meatballs would turn out to be absolutely awful, but at least I’d learn something new and share some laughs with my sister.
To the tune of my sister’s Moroccan pop music, the onions started to blister with the aroma of olive oil. Adapting along the way, we pulled out the blender and turned the day-old hunks of khobz to half-decent breadcrumbs. Why not throw the chicken in there, as well? The meat turned out a bit more fluid than preferred, but we threw it right in with the bread crumbs and moved along. An assortment of onion, salt, parsley, and garlic were sprinkled along. Cow’s milk required a filter, and probably should have been measured. After mixing everything with an egg, the consistency was not exactly as desired. My sister argued that it would be fine, but I was less than assured by the slimy mass in the bowl before me. With my last bit of hope and resourcefulness, I asked my sister to gather some flour and she scurried down to the bakery to scoop a handful; with the help of a sifter we were back in business.
With a quarter-cup’s worth of tomato paste, we turned to fresh tomatoes to make up for the sauce. In a pinch, about six tomatoes were snatched from the fridge, chopped and hand crushed before being thrown into the pressure cooker. Once the tomatoes were simmering, the meat mixture was shaped and added to the sauce; then the pressure cooker was put to work while we boiled the spaghetti.
Afterwards, the dish was plated and my sister began to take pictures to send to all of her friends. A full photo shoot ensued complete with a few of me holding a wooden spoon, captioned hadga [Darija equivalent of Martha Stewart-type woman]. Who knew Americans could cook? Of course, I compared the meal to the Disney classic “Lady and the Tramp” and we dug right in. Believe it or not, the meal elicited more than one compliment from my Moroccan family, and that’s truly more than I’ll ever ask for in these unanticipated circumstances.
Fay Jocelyn 