"His monograph on keskek -- defined in the dictionary as "a dish made by slowly boiling well-beaten wheat, together with meat" -- is less about boiled wheat than about a process unfolding over a certain geography. Musa has identified twenty-four regional names for keskek, which may be eaten at funerals or weddings, on New Year's, Muhammad's birthday, Easter, or Ramadan; in the Turkish bath, during rain prayers, or in honor of special guests. In some villages, keskek is cooked at home and eaten with walnuts; in others, villagers bring their keskek to a communal oven that is operated only seven days a year. Keskek is sometimes cooked in vats with prickle juice, or, like rice, with chickpeas and cumin. 'There are dishes without wheat that are still called keskek,' Musa writes. He later told mea bout a kind of dessert keskek, made with dried fruit instead of meat. The facts of the dish, resisting definition, turn out to be almost incidental. What really interests Musa about keskek is that it embodies a living series of social functions."
Apart from delicious, this passage is also intriguing, because of what it says about categories. My brain is too addled from studying right now to fully articulate this -- but it has to do with a sort of diversion or misdirection. You think you know what the common elements are in a dish -- the ingredients. But you're wrong. The dish is a practice, a habit, an activity. We are what we eat, and what we eat is what we do...
That's about as far as I can take this right now, but I welcome other thoughts and comments.
2 comments:
It's funny, because next time we hang out you'll have to ask me about Shane and I's next documentary...partially inspired by this very article! I found the whole thing fascinating, the old women weeping openly at the taste of a certain dish they hadn't had since childhood...only men cook restaurants, so the food people eat at home is never in restaurants, etc...
On another interesting note, I think I read my first bad New Yorker article this last week...the one about the Bukhran Russian woman accused of murder? I couldn't decide while reading it if a future law woman like you would be fascinated by things I couldn't understand, or as annoyed as I was about her wasting page after page on describing things that seems already pretty obviously inherent in trials as if it was the coolest thing ever. The descriptions of the journalists, the analysis of how, indeed, the lawyers are putting on a show EVEN AS THEY ARE CRITICIZING OTHERS FOR LYING! OMG! I am SO disillusioned.
Anyway, I just thought while were on the subject of amazing New Yorker articles, I'd mention the only time wondered why I was wasting my time while flipping through that vaunted magazine.
Oh I'm so glad you're making that movie! I can't wait to watch it. Someone else you could talk to is the proprietress of Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper (on 20th b/w Mission & Valencia). She has all kinds of knowledge about bees and all kinds of plans to start selling chickens and whatnot...might fit in w/ the food theme, although I'm not exactly sure what angle you guys are working on.
But yeah, the article about the trial was a trip. I haven't finished it yet b/c it's about 8 million pages. But it is just straaaange. Writing about the other journalists? What? It just seems like she was at this endless trial and it turned into her own sort of Bleak House and then she lost the cognitive ability to edit. I think most people pretty much know that trial lawyers' job is to tell stories and that our justice system is one of competing narratives...
Still, I think there were some interesting nuggets in there -- especially the part where she gets involved by calling the defense. But then it doesn't go anywhere! Or hearing what the jurors had to say after the fact. But yeah, seems like a big muddle with no real take-away...
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