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What the Food
May 2023
The tea-party was curated to activate a site for collective reflections and informal discussions around an imagined tea party in an attempt to decolonise the ‘tea party’ as we know it. The tablescape was an imagined menu of drinks and snacks absent of ever being colonised.
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Participating artists name here. I erased by mistake
Gateau, Petit Four, Kahk
Andrew Riad
This tablescape pays homage to Le Chantilly Restaurant from Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt supported by home-baked Egyptian pastries from the Riad family and LaReen Sweets in Al Barsha, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Le Chantilly is not only a Swiss restaurant and bakery, rather, an ubiquitous anchor at the heart of the Heliopolis district in Cairo. The bakery opened its doors in the early 1950s under the name, Homemade Cack owned by Mr. Bully, the secretary of the last king of Egypt, King Farouk. Following his death, the Swiss restaurant took over in the mid 70s. The Swiss Egyptian Restaurants Corporation was founded in 1976 and boasts restaurants across egypt (Le Château, Le Chalet, Le Chesa, and Le Chantilly). Their objective is to “merge the charm of Cairo with the coziness and cuisine of the Swiss Alps for an unforgettable experience”.
Le Chantilly houses bespoke menus for the Coptic Orthodox community of Heliopolis, specifically each Easter on Good Friday. From Bissara to fava beans, Falafel and Eish Baladi, Le Chantilly boasts a wide range of vegan and Siyyami dishes and desserts for the wider Coptic community. Canonically, the restaurant has come to represent the heart of Heliopolis, inaugurating the actual district itself as it was founded before most of the district was built.
While Le Chantilly exemplifies the colonial legacy of French influence in Egypt, this legacy arrests at the birth of the restaurant. The evolution of, mechanisms of, and the assimilation of Le Chantilly in Heliopolis is upheld by the Copts who work in the restaurant, the Copts who eat at the restaurant, the Copts who bake and cook at the restaurant, and the wider Egyptian community. Salma Serry’s European Pastries in Egypt: A History of Colonialism, Modernity, and Class (1850 – 1969), enunciates the democratization of food propelled by the working class in Egypt and how a colonial legacy has, over the years, been digested and assimilated as an instrument of reclaiming power and resistance. This is the case for Le Chantilly and the wider context of French pastries in Egypt. This resistance transcends beyond how we eat and cook––albeit, Egyptian desserts are made with Egyptian butter, Egyptian eggs, and Egyptian flour––but is also pronounced in the enunciation of and the evolution of originally French words. What was once a Petit Four is now a Betefour.
This tablescape pays tribute to Le Chantilly as a gathering space for the Coptic community in Heliopolis and larger Cairo. It also invokes LaReen Sweets bakery in Dubai and Sharjah, a bakery founded almost 35 years ago in the United Arab Emirates by Copts that propels parallel connotations as Le Chantilly for the Coptic communities in the U.A.E.: Siyyami desserts and cakes. LaReen Sweets is also a gathering place for Copts during our Eids. Here, Le Chantilly and LaReen Sweets meet, carving out space to ruminate, reflect, and digest food as resistance. Both sites employ certain ritualistic elements––we visit them when we are fasting, we visit them when we break fast––and in this exchange, the desserts they house resist their origin in the French pastry school and begin assimilating a larger Egyptian lexicon of ritual and celebration.
Za’etman
Farah Nasrawi
Obsessively nostalgic and profusely captivated by medicinal herbs, Farah Nasrawi ponders over Za’etman, a wild herb that commonly grows in the mountains and plains of Palestine. As a young boy, her father spent his time gathering herbs for his family’s own cuisine. However; what seemed to be a lucid childhood pastime is now considered a violation by the colonialist occupier; depriving the natives of the land from centuries-old traditions of foraging indigenous herbs that are a part of the fabric of Palestinian life.
Lavender, sage, peppermint, rosemary, basil….
In aroma and taste, Za’etman is an exquisite marriage of the above and more. Farah’s reverence for medicinal herb reinforces her curiosity to cultivate different methods of consuming them.
In this recipe, the Za’etman is ice-brewed, Koridashi style. This refreshing, sweetened herbal infusion is paired with a cocktail of passion fruit, orange and lime ice cubes. Passion fruit is used predominantly; for in its own genre, its piquant aroma is an amalgamation of exotic fruits. Farah combines the Za’etman and passion fruit to forge what may seem like an unlikely union, but in fact; their properties are uncannily alike.
The grand finale of your sweet and slightly sour indulgence will end with a delight of chewable sprinkles from an English-made cinnamon orange tea, that soaked up the array of zests in your drink, and that will subdue your taste buds into a dreamy state.
Hot Coco, Xocolatl and Leche Flan
Luchie Suguitan
The Philippine cuisine acquired Hispanic empire influences, through Manila Galleon, a Spanish trading ship that links trade between East and West, and ships from Acapulco Port, Mexico to Manila Port, Philippines annually. It is through these galleon, that the best kinds of cacao plant was primarily brought to the Philippines from Mexico to be cultivated to service the demands of the Spanish crown. The Spanish settlers have also introduced the use of cow products, missionaries taught its parishioners, cattle ranching to satiate their needs for dishes that uses cow products.
Spanish dishes introduced to the Philippines were those favored by the colonial elite. Dishes served in plates eaten as part of lavish fiesta meals or on special occasion.
Luchie Suguitan, a proud Filipino serves you Leche Flan, a “Filipinized” dessert consisting of milk, sugar and eggs, originally brought over to the Philippines during the Spanish colonization. She will also whisk a very traditional Xocolatl, a bitter water made with 100% pure cacao, the base of the range of other chocolate products that she makes in her very own chocolate factory in Dubai, Co Chocolat.
Ringa
Richi Bhatia
Richi’s practice oscillates between the private and the public, both – contextually and physically. Between monologue and dialogue; between absorbing and understanding a space and reiterating the meaning of a space; between acts and conversation.
Soliloquy, made in collaboration with Andrew Riad is in response to Egyptifying Petit Fours and Preserving Coptic Traditions. The work incorporates a traditional recipe made using Ringa (in the form of a salted fish); prepared a day after Easter to welcome spring by Copts. With an attempt to preserve the palatable takes the form of an edible archive. The images made across various fish markets across India and Dubai over a period of two years present themselves as thoughts and conversations. The visuals and text propose an ecofeminist lens to view consumption and hierarchy as part of a process of re-inscribing, in a way that is more in line with the relationship between the ocean and a women's role in shaping society through ethical practices of care and nurturing.
Na'nā' & Buqala
kōl
na'nā' & buqala is the kōl project's new take on the poetry and mint tea traditions in North Africa, proposing variations around the Algerian buqala ceremonial and tea without tea leaves.
The Buqala tradition in Algeria is a divination practice turned into a game featuring short, improvised poems known as "bwaqal," which are interpreted as omens. Primarily practiced by women, this ancient custom has evolved into a social event that showcases Algerian oral literature and fosters a connection with cultural heritage. Women would gather, dress up with jewelry, drink tea, exchange omens, and recite poetry. But what if the tea leaves used to prepare the very popular mint tea had never reached North Africa? na'nā' & buqala is an experience around modern poetry affirmations and tasting of mint-based drinks.
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Mastic Fizz
Salma Serry
Mastic Fizz is a culmination of Salma Serry’s research into mastic and canned foods brought into the Gulf during the 60’s and 70s. Mastic, commonly eaten as a chewing gum, loses its flavor rapidly, and gets spat out. She finds its recreational use a metaphor for the socio-economic systems of the Arabian Gulf which rely on a temporary migrant body that is rendered useless and then removed after fulfilling its function. The mastic flavor is juxtaposed against preserved cherries and bitter orange jams. These canned fruits are examples of foreign produce that have been imported/transported into the Gulf by expats around the 1960s and 1970s due to the inability to grow them in the desert environment at the time. These foods often carry flavours of home to those transporting them. Canning and preserving food also stretch its functionality over time, to ensure it stays edible over a longer period. Along with a hint of the Khaleej-ubiquitous cardamon flavour, this balances out the temporariness of the mastic, a component intended to last for a limited time. Adapted by Nahla Tabbaa, you are invited to sip and chew the gum at the same time.
Khari Biscuit, Mathri and Chakli,
Bhavika Bhatia
Thinking about the association of tea time in South Asian households as we know it, with how synonymous it has been with a fiercely passionate snack culture, Bhavika Bhatia delves deeper into understanding the connections behind the foods as we know them to be through migration, colonisation, adaptation, and finally, reclamation.
There’s something to be said for how South Asia reclaimed “Tea Time”, a meal-time adopted by the South Asians from when their land was colonised by the British rule, where the concept of an aristocratic “high-tea”, laden with sweet, delicate pastry delicacies and soft, muted cups of tea – a formal social past time for the governing White rich, was reclaimed by the local Brown inhabitants and became an informal, casual tradition of loud, spicy and savoury snacks and louder, bolder pyaalis of chai.
Barri
Namliyeh
Barri by Namliyeh encourages the act of foraging and honoring plants and their cultivation, whether they are in the wild, or domesticated in our garden patches. Namliyeh's pratice of jam and tea making embraces inconsistency and seasons to tell authentic reflections about land, aridness, seasons and foraging practices. While the original recipe incorporates honeyed foraged herbs from the valleys in Jordan during spring, the recipe adapts itself as Nahla Tabbaa treks and forages across meadows and mountain ranges. This recipe contains mountainous Tumuro tea from Upper Pakistan, Hunza, where altitudes create this potent, medicinal and aromatic tea that differs from one mountain range to another and was prepared by local Wakhi foragers. It is combined with a locally foraged Yadaa from Jabal Yanas. This simple cooler of honey and herbs invites you to taste its bold flavors and embrace nature's medicine.
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Joori Wa Loomi
Moza Almatrooshi
Moza Almatrooshi developed a rose kombucha cooler recipe inspired by her Mohammadi rose bush, which she had developed a kinship with during the lockdown. Despite restrictions easing, she was still adamant on cocooning and implementing restorative practices. While this kombucha recipe requires plentiful rose petals, Moza respected that her domesticated plant would not produce as many petals as she needed. She enjoys working with this fickle and domesticated form of nature, playing a small role in elongating its short life. Combined with the dried limes, Joori Wa Loomi transcends instant production and instead looks at care, locality and small batch produce. This recipe has been adapted by Nahla Tabbaa to include a Roo Hafza syrup, as Moza’s rose bush is in repose.
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