Atorina Zomaya Photo: Assyrian Kitchen
Assyrian
Kitchen’s founder shares lessons from the world’s oldest cookbook and other
stories from ancient Mesopotamia.
ishtartv.com - chicagomag.com
By
Sarah Conway, 24-3-2017
Atorina
Zomaya, the spirited founder of Assyrian Kitchen, is making ancient foods a modern
phenomenon. As part of the Chicago-based interactive cooking project, Zomaya
hosts popular cooking classes with Assyriologists from the University of
Chicago to share 6,000 years of Assyrian culinary tradition with her students.
Zomaya’s site also features ancient (and updated) recipes, and her store Buried Cheese will
open in the North Shore this summer.
This
Chicago native wants the local culinary scene to know that Assyrians,
descendants of one of the oldest civilizations in the world dating back to 2500
BC in Mesopotamia, still exist, and their food is both ancient and delicious.
Zomaya
sat down with Chicago to discuss what we can learn from the past and how she
makes the ancient new again.
What
sparked your dive into researching the world of ancient recipes?
Assyrian
Kitchen began with just a genuine desire to know how to prepare our culture’s
food while living the professional city life. Growing up it was always grandma
and mom in the kitchen, and cooking wasn’t something I was encouraged to learn.
My piqued interest in cooking was met with, “Don’t you want to be a doctor, an
engineer, or a lawyer?”
In a
way, I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole on this path of investigating our ancient
foods, and I’ve became so fascinated with the idea that there is a huge
connection between meals eaten by Assyrians 6,000 years ago and the meals
enjoyed in modern Assyrian homes today.
I
never thought people would be interested in learning how to cook authentic
ancient foods that Assyrian families enjoy daily. But I’ve found that sharing
our food is one of the best gateways into saying, here are the fun, delicious
things about my culture.
The
Yale Tablets are the world’s oldest cookbook. What have these three clay
tablets taught the world about ancient diets?
Assyrian
kings recorded details of their lives on tablets that would often be found on
the walls of an entrance to a palace. These very self-absorbed kings, through
their vanity, preserved a window into the history of food and its preparation
in ancient Mesopotamia.
The
Yale Tablets, which are housed at Yale University, include Akkadian cuneiform
[an ancient writing system] that describes 40 recipes dating back to 1700 BC.
The recipes were for master chefs in the royal court—mere lists of ingredients
with minimal instruction.
Today,
we often look back at the ancient world and wonder, were the ancients really as
evolved as we are in terms of diet? Jean Bottero, a French Assyriologist who was
also an accomplished gourmet chef, says the answer is yes. Their advancement in
combining refined flavors and elements into rich dishes was unique, and they
had an obsessive love of onions that continues to this day in Assyrians.
Describe
to us the connection between the old and the new in Assyrian food.
Throughout
my culinary journey, I became fascinated with how little Assyrian food has
changed over 6,000 years. The ancient Assyrians’ cooking still resonates today
in our meat pies, kibbeh in its many forms, kipteh (meatball stew), dokhwa
(dried yogurt and meat soup), girdu (sour yogurt & rice pudding), hareesa
(boiled wheat with meat), flat breads, and many more dishes.
You
can say it is a cultural food heritage with a natural, healthy focus on
vegetables and grains, such as barley, once an ancient form of currency, as
well as herbs, fermented dairy products, and pickles.
What
are some examples of these ancient foods that you could find Assyrians enjoying
today?
We
can see the influence our people picked up as they fled to countries like Iran,
Syria, or even America to escape persecution. The meat pie, similar to the
popular Turkish pide, was at the time made with fowl, shallots, roasted dill
seeds, and other ingredients. Though it’s been adapted, Assyrians eat this even
today.
Another
favorite of the ancients was kibbeh. Whether it is cooked in a tomato stew, as
a fried meat-stuffed torpedo, or a flat pie filled with meat and pine nuts,
kibbeh was enjoyed by the ancient Assyrians. Kibbeh pots were used by ancient
Assyrians, and the word kibbeh itself is an ancient Akkadian word that was
introduced into Aramaic, two of the root languages for modern day Assyrian.
Where
in Chicago can diners find authentic Assyrian food?
For
Assyrian food, like other Middle East cuisines, you have limited options in the
city, and they don’t serve the traditional dishes that we cherish as families.
There is Zaytune Mediterranean Grill, or Larsa’s in Skokie, where you can find
some unique dishes.
I
hope one day I see an authentic Assyrian restaurant in Chicago, so I have one
place I can to point to, to say this is us, this is our culinary heritage on a
plate. But to really taste our food, you need to make your way into the heart
of an Assyrian family, which is the dining table.
You
have a sold-out Ancient
Cooking class with the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute on April
1 at the Lakeview Whole Foods—with more to come this summer. What can people
expect to learn?
An
Assyriologist will be on board to explain ingredients and tools, as well as
pickling and fermentation in the ancient world. I’m in charge of cooking and
instructing on how to prepare various ancient foods.
But,
Ancient Cooking classes aren’t just about making a dish. It’s almost like
recreating the experience of entering an Assyrian home. Tea is always on, and
the table has pots stuffed with figs, dates, and walnuts. If you come to my
parent’s home, you will find exactly the same thing. There is food everywhere.
Guests are literally attacked by food, and that’s the generosity of our
culture, we want you to feel love through food. You will be overfed, you will
be loved, and if you don’t eat the food, it is an insult.
ISIS
and other extremist groups in Iraq and Syria have caused the mass displacement
of Assyrians since 2014. How do Assyrian Americans provide hope to people back
in the homeland?
I
have a cousin who runs an Assyrian food truck in Washington and the lamassu [a
deity with a human head and animal body], which is a really significant
cultural icon, is a part of their branding. You know, the Assyrian people are
scattered throughout the world and often in sad situations, like what
is happening in Iraq. Our ancient relics, like lamassu and Nimrud [an
ancient Assyrian city], are being destroyed by people with no respect for
anything. So when you see any Assyrian relic celebrated, people who are
enduring a genocide back home still feel that somewhere in the world our
culture is continuing on.
I
hope Assyrian Kitchen can give hope and strength to Assyrians facing war and
displacement today. If you know our story as a people, we have always had the
short end of the stick with genocides. Even today, there is a
genocide going on, and it is falling on deaf ears once again. But you can’t
give up hope, and I feel that sharing our culinary history is just one way that
our people can still feel that love and warmth in their lives.
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