The Heart of an Arab Home is Its Kitchen

We don’t only love eating the food, but we also love being close to the preparation of what provides us with sustenance. In my household, I know that my kitchen is so much more than just the room that produces the food. It is, in fact, the place that acts as the gathering spot. The engine room for the entire house. It shows how much humans naturally gravitate towards being around food.

Throughout time. kitchens were not always been used this way. The ‘cookhouse’ started out as no more than a hole in the ground where a fire was lit. Usually some distance from where the main dwelling would have been located. Locating it away from the main house minimized smoke from the fire overwhelming the living quarters. More importantly, it ensured that the fire could be maintain alleviating concerns that about flames getting out of control and curing everything down. This problem eventually led to the invention of the hearth, which encircled the fire, containing it to one spot.

In the Arabian Peninsula, nomadic tribes lived in deserts and their ‘kitchens’ were always temporary. The main cooking technique was to dig a hole and get a fire going in it. As the embers died down, meat was placed over the embers, covered and then buried with sand. As you can imagine this form of cooking produces the most tender of meat dishes, known as zarb. Traveling tribes would cross each other’s paths, giving rise to customs that built social capital through being gracious and courteous to strangers. Arabs like to show their standing in society through the spread they can lay on for their guests.

In Ancient Egypt, clay ovens were used along with cooking pots, pans, clay pots and plates. As kitchens began to modernize, cooking utensils were invented for different uses. The ancient Greeks cooked using a spit over a large fire, and also utilized clay domed ovens. They tended to make their kitchens separate structures at the back of the house. And they also cooked meat and vegetables buried in a hole over hot coals; a similar method to the Arab nomads. Another similarity to the nomads is that ancient Greeks also ate with their hands or bread.

Bread became a universal food due to its nutritional characteristics, and was adopted by most cooking cultures around the world. I’m talking bread made with whole grain flour of course. Bedouin tribes in the desert today will make a dough and handle it pretty much like a pizza pie maker does, stretching it out by throwing it. Then they bake it over a convex piece of metal placed over a fire. In the old days they would bake the bread right on the hot embers of the fire. Saj or shrak in the name given to the bread cooked over the metal surface. Taboon is bread cooked directly on hot embers or stones.

In the area of the Levant, the peasants and farmers were utilizing communal domed clay or stone ovens for their cooking. Large families lived and worked together in villages alongside other families; intermarring, and socializing together, through food, with cooking playing an important role in everyday life. Prepared at home, food in need of cooking was taken to the public oven. As the Roman Empire enveloped these villages, they were influenced by the latest cooking ‘technologies’.

In Roman times, kitchens became incorporated into the house with ovens and open fireplaces. Interestingly, the Romans also invented ways for the fireplace to heat the entire house using underfloor pipes that would transfer hot air. This method was also used to heat water for baths. The size of a kitchen to the Romans had a direct correlation to socioeconomic status. I would argue much like today!

While all these changes were taking place in how people cooked around the world, changes in attitudes, and customs were also taking place. Lots of the customs we see today are a carryover from the time of our ancestors. They have become rules that we follow in our everyday lives in order to live together in harmony. These customs, rules, and etiquette developed out of how we prepared food, lived our lives, and learned to coexist. We now take for granted the social norms that have developed around our food eating habits. And we often look askance at what people in other cultures do, and don’t do.

In the Arab world a lot of eating takes place with the hands, more specifically the right hand. It is seen as very rude, and just not done to eat with your left hand, including if you are left handed. The left hand is seen as being unclean, and maybe before running water, it especially was. However, if you grow up in Chile, then eating with either hand is deemed disrespectful, and rude. In China, you have to leave a little food on your plate to show that your host fed you enough. But in India you must clean your plate in order not to be seen as rude. In South Korea, you must wait for the oldest person to start eating before beginning the meal yourself. And then you must not out pace that person, and eat too quickly. Following local customs shows good intentions to one another, and is a form of coming together as one.

Establishing respect and trust is extremely important in the Arab world, and formal occasions will have a social aspect to them. This gives those present time to earn the esteem of each other. Respect and family honor is huge in Arab society, and family is revered above all else. Showing generosity is also a very important tenant in Arab culture, with hospitality bestowed liberally on friends as well as strangers. Often these kindnesses are shown through occasions where food is shared, and eaten together. This custom is not just practiced by those who can afford it either. The less well off, and poor people are also very giving of what they have to others as an expression of honor.

As these acts of goodwill are bestowed upon each other, we notice that the overwhelming majority of them come from our kitchens, and the foods we prepare. We are social creatures who gravitate towards each other, and show our love and respect for each other through eating together. As we feel that love, which comes from the heart, we recognize that that heart is at the center of every home.