Aida y Yo

I've never met a Lebanese person who does not make (or at least eat) kibbi. It is a very old and typical dish of Lebanese and Syrian cooking. I love it. It reminds me of the olive-skinned, deep-voiced, strong-willed, kitchen-able women of my family. The taste of kibbi makes me feel at home, comforted, and exceedingly satisfied. My grandmother made it often when I was a child, my mother and aunt made it reliably when we all gathered for a special occasion, and I have made it many times in my own home and in the homes of people I care about. It is a mixture of meat, bulgur, onion, and spices formed into an exciting array of shapes and presentations. Restaurants seem to tend toward a sort of football shape and home cooks often lean to the casserole setup.

The thing I noticed about Aida making kibbi is how much water she puts on her hands when pressing the Lebanese mother of all mixtures into the pan. Most of the women I know who make kibbi do dip their fingers into ice water in between presses, but mostly it's just a quick dip. You do that mostly so the meat stays cold, so that it doesn't warm too much from your warm hands. Aida almost scoops water into her hand and sort of thrashes it onto the mixture, without seeming to really notice herself. It's a simple gesture, only slightly different from my way of doing it, but it's fun to notice. Aida's kibbi had a slightly texture than mine or my family's and I enjoyed it, topped with my customary dollop of yogurt, eaten surrounded by her family - daughter, son-in-law, granddaughters, grandson-in-law(?), talking about how it can be an impossible pursuit to attempt to eat dinner at a restaurant at 6pm in Argentina (a more successful hour to pursue dinner in Argentina would be about 9pm). Aida used a casserole, one corner leaning precariously on the edge of the sink and another corner hanging off the ledge of the kitchen counter, ostensibly at risk for a good flip up once Aida started pressing the mixture into the dish with her soft, strong, 86-year-old hands.Here's the thing. I know they were soft because Aida embraced my face many times that day while looking at me as though I was a long lost granddaughter spirit love. And I looked back at her in the very same way and enjoyed her cold, slender, grandmother hands on my face, because my Lebanese grandmother passed away several years ago and my heart was nearly bursting in the glow of Aida's affection.

Aida's hands are strong because she's been making this kibbi for decades, and doing the work of growing a family, building a home, and consistently feeding everyone a little more than they simply cann... 'ok, well, ok, I'll eat some more.' When we ate lunch that afternoon, she quite literally put more food on my plate and quite firmly insisted that I eat it (because obviously I need it). The mixture of Lebanese and Argentine is a pretty solid confirmation that you will receive an inocuous assesment of your weight within twenty minutes of arriving at any Middle-Eastern and Latina woman's home. In all honesty, it's possible I ate that meal like a famished animal, because after a couple weeks of eating odd meals in unfamiliar airbnbs and affordable, loner-friendly Buenos Aires restaurants, a home-cooked meal of rice-stuffed baked eggplant and pan-fried pork and a mash of eggplant innards and eggs at the tiny table in Aida's all-purpose front room rendered me insatiable.In this front room, Aida glides from turning up the Fairouz, to the hands-up shoulder dance, to dishing up that eggplant party, to preparing the kitchen counter for our kibbi-making session. I think I'd be willing to go on the record saying every Lebanese home cook makes kibbi, in one way or another, and every one of them puts their stamp on their kibbi. It is so many people's signature dish. For time's sake, Aida wanted to make it just one level, as opposed to the sandwich setup of one compressed level of meat, a very thin layer of a bit of that mixture cooked slightly on the stovetop, topped with another compressed layer. My family always does it that way, but they really only make it when they've dedicated a couple days to cooking a special meal for a special occasion.

Aida had invited me over to make some Lebanese food on a Wednesday afternoon, her family would come over around 8 or 9 to eat with us, at the end of long work and school days, anticipating another. So Aida y yo spent a few hours that afternoon making kibbi, me asking her questions about her family and her interjecting with sweet exclamations about how pleased she was that I wanted to know. Of course I want to know. To hear someone tell their story while watching the affect of that story play out on a kitchen counter is one of my life's greatest pleasures. It is also not least of all the reasons I chose to research the home cooking of Lebanese people in Argentina for my graduate thesis, which is how I came to know (and love) and cook with Aida. But that day we felt like family. Maybe it was the kibbi. You have to get really handsy with that lamb and bulgur mix, kneading and squeezing it until it starts to really come together, until you know the mixture is primed for holding together while you roll it up in a grape leaf.I still don't put bell peppers in my kibbi. But after seeing Aida throw chopped bell peppers into her mix, I went ahead and threw some in when I made kibbi for some friends in Bariloche.

All of the ingredients Aida used for kibbi were essentially the same as what I know (and what I've written below), except for the bell pepper and using beef as the meat (we use lamb) - both of which are pretty consistent variations in Argentina and, I am discovering, much more common than I thought outside of Argentina.Cutting the kibbi is the final (and all-important) flourish before it goes into the oven. The photo above was taken seconds after Aida made her final cut and let out a big, contented sigh. As if to say, "we did it." It always seems like some sort of small triumph, putting a dish of kibbi in the oven. And then it smells stupid good in your house for the next several hours. And before long, you find yourself driven wild by the diamonds of kibbi on your plate, laying in wait underneath your carefully placed dollop of yogurt (minty and cucumber-y yogurt if you're lucky). And then the wait is over and you've taken your first crispy, edgy bite and it's all coming together and suddenly dinner is a transportive experience. That's really mostly how it goes.As we threw together the fattoush to accompany our kibbi, Aida gently and endearingly panicked just a teeny bit that dinner might never be ready and how could we possibly get everything on the table and where are those two-liter sprite bottles I bought today, we need to get those on the table too. The family started to arrive around 8, made me feel like... of course there is a random woman at home with grandma cooking. That's perfectly understandable and great and now we eat. Right around 9. Right on time.