The universal language of food
This spring I was in Beirut for several weeks and one Saturday morning I went to the farmers’ market. It was the season of artichokes, fresh almonds and those hard unripe plums that are so good stewed with lamb. But for some reason I was taken by a bouquet of long-stemmed, leafy broccoli. It made me think of an Italian pasta dish called orchiette di crema di rapa, which calls for the brassica to be wilted down in a pot with fresh salsicce. I had my bitter green and it was not hard to find pasta shells which would work as well as orchiette, but I could not find Italian sausage. I stared at the chilled meat cabinet in one of the swankier supermarkets: American bacon, ground beef, a nasty pink lump of processed ham; none quite right. Then I noticed a tray of sujuk, fiery Armenian sausages made with fenugreek, cumin, sumac and red pepper. Sujuk, it occured to me, might just be the right sort of heat and funk to accompany the broccoli.