…measure with your heart

One thing that has been a long standing tradition in the Stewart family is that everyone helps out in the kitchen. We all love to cook and bake. The kitchen is definitely not reserved for my mom and sisters.

While it’s possible to find men working alongside women in the kitchen here in Morocco, it is not as usual in rural places. When my host sister asked me if I would teach her how to make pizza, I was excited. I have done a few cooking classes at the local women’s association and I’ve found the experience to be exciting and sometimes a little stressful! Imagine, if you will, being surrounded by a gaggle of Berber women who are  watching you measure out flour very carefully and concurrently teasing you mercilessly about not being married: “But Fatima, I’m still so young — dang it, I completely forgot the salt…”

I have never made pizza, but just as all Americans are assumed to be brilliant basketball players, they are also expected to know how to make a delicious pizza! I looked up an easy looking recipe online and set a date to come over to my host family’s house.

Miriam, my host sister, was amused by my American measuring cups. I told her that in America we use them all the time for cooking. Here in Morocco, cooking is a lot more of an intuitive process. Add flour until you feel that the consistency is right. Freestyle the spices. Measure with your heart. In America we pack the measuring cup to the brim and use a knife to level off the overflowing ingredients so that we are positive that we are using exactly 8oz. of whatever we are measuring. I was too nervous on my first pizza attempt to eyeball the yeast and so I put up with getting made fun of for being so serious about my scientific measurments. As we traded cooking styles and tips the pizza came together. As the dough rose, I told Miriam how important garlic was to the pizza sauce. 3ziz 3leihum f Italia! (It’s very cherished by them in Italy!)

When the time came to roll out the dough, Miriam took over. She patiently watched as I struggled to shape the dough into somewhat of a pizza shape before it got stuck and tore. After sitting through two of my performances, she gently motioned me aside, expertly rolled out the sticky dough and put it into the round iron pan. We added our sauce and some black olives, and it looked good enough to eat!

 

I didn't want to put pictures with Miriam's face showing because people are sensitive about being on the internet. So you get me, not quite as easy on the eyes...

It was hard waiting for the pizza to cook, but as it did Miriam and I talked and joked. I kept opening the oven to make sure that all of our hard work didn’t end up a crispy disaster. Slowly, much too slowly, a delicious scent began to waft around the little mud hut where we were cooking. Miriam kept telling me not to open the oven door because I was letting the heat out. I knew this to be true, but couldn’t help myself. When the pizza came out it was perfect. We took it inside and showed my host mother who, drying her hands on a towel, said it was pretty zween (beautiful). Damn straight. The only pizza I make is a Zween pizza.

Before we ate, I ran out and bought some coke. “You can’t eat pizza without coke”, I told them.

So I got to share my enjoyment of cooking and eating pizza with my host family. The women, anyways. My host brother watched tv the whole time 🙂