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Friday March 23, 2007

Israeli woman’s Kurdish dishes taste great — and support her family

by dina kraft
jta

jerusalem | In a kitchen stocked with round glass jars of pickled lemons, baby eggplant and baskets of garlic and red peppers, Rimon Ajami is beginning to prepare a Passover seder for 40 people.

The client is a regular now that Ajami started a business with the assistance of a program that trains low-income women to open catering companies, offering professional courses and microfinancing loans.

“When you cook out of love it changes the taste. It’s not cooking for cooking’s sake, it’s an art form,” Ajami said of her traditional Kurdish dishes like the bulgar wheat dumpling kubbeh, stuffed vegetables and cauliflower salad.

More than two years since joining the “Women Cook Up a Business” program, which receives funding from the Jerusalem Foundation and the New Israel Fund, Ajami catering business is thriving.

She remembers the day she begged to be let into a cooking course the program was sponsoring. The family was struggling mightily — collection agents would come to the Ajami home almost daily to repossess belongings. She would pass by beggars in the street and wonder if she would soon be among them.

In the two-year course, Ajami and about 25 other women have taken classes with a professional chef, who taught them how to cook in mass quantities. They learned about economic independence and running a business from business consultants. And they were given personal counseling and coaching to help them stay focused on their goals.

The first daughter born to a Kurdish immigrant family from Turkey after four boys, Ajami has been cooking since she was a young girl. She learned most of her recipes from her mother, but likes to experiment. For example, she makes vegetarian kubbeh stuffed with mushroom, pine nuts and onion; sweet potato pancakes; and grape leaves stuffed with brown rice.

Even though Ajami has a lengthy list of orders to fill, she sits back at the kitchen table and scribbles down recipes. Here’s one for those who aren’t able to hire her for their own seders.

Kosher for Passover Kubbeh | Makes about 20

For the filling:
1 lb. minced meat
4 celery leaves
1 onion
salt and pepper to taste
1 3/4 oz. pine nuts
For the dough:
1 lb. matzah flour
4 eggs
2 cups water
1 tsp. salt
Cook meat over medium heat in a deep pan for about 20 minutes. Add diced onion. After onion becomes translucent, add chopped celery leaves. Let cook for approximately another 40 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
After mixture cools, add pine nuts and set aside.
Mix matzah flour with eggs, water and salt, cracking in one egg at a time until the consistency is like bread dough. Take a small amount of dough, about the size of a tennis ball, and mold it with fingers into an oval shape (about four inches long).
Make a round hollow hole in the dough with fingers and fill with the meat mixture. Make sure to pat the dough over to close the hole.
Fry in olive oil until color is toasty brown.
Note: The uncooked kubbeh can be made in advance and frozen.