Cuisines of poverty as means of empowerment: Arab food in Israel

Food Culture


The Food Culture section of Poverty Food will provide resources on food and cuisine beyond the kitchen and dinner table. Culture, politics, the arts have all been impacted by food culture. Enjoy the links and please send those you find to us to share.

If you are interested in the sociological link between food and politics, check out
Cuisines of poverty as means of empowerment: Arab food in Israel by Liora Gvion.

This is a highly academic paper to be sure, but a fascinating look at cuisines of poverty and how food represents much more that we may have imagined.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j77l216605ug4778/

Abstract

This paper suggests looking at cuisines of poverty as practical and political systems practiced by urban and rural Palestinian citizens of Israel. It is an important and interesting case study within which political and economical considerations govern and enhance the development, change, and acceptance of culinary knowledge. Cuisines of poverty operate in two simultaneous arenas. As systems of practical knowledge, they repeatedly center on the ability to maintain the traditional kitchen, turning it into a tool-kit out of which information is recruited upon need. Simultaneously, cuisines of poverty reveal the inter-connection between the culinary discourse and the political one. It is where issues such as access to land, national and ethnic identity, and means to participation in the dominant culture are of major concern. The analysis of cuisines as operating on two complementary discourses contributes to the understanding of the relationship between food and the arena of power.

Keywords Cuisines of poverty - Domestic knowledge - Empowerment - Food - Gender roles - Israel - Minorities - Palestinian cuisine

Liora Gvion, PhD, is a qualitative sociologist. She studied at SUNY Stony Brook, USA and is currently a senior lecturer at the Kibbutzim College of Education in Tel Aviv, Israel and at the Department of Clinical Nutrition at the Hebrew University. Her major interests are the sociology of food, second-generation immigrants, eating disorders, and the relationship between food and ethnicity.

Winter stew...

Deep in the midwest, winter is a time of quiet, stillness and snow...winter white and hot food!

The old homestead would not be the same in winter without a pot of stew! The beauty of stew is that is costs very little (about four to five dollars for a family of four) and can even be vegetarian, not by design necessarily, but by what you have in your cupboard. The ingrediants could not be more simple: potatoes, carrots, an onion and a tablespoon of flour. If you want, add a little beef...or my personal favorite: spinach! You will love this served with a little crusty bread....here it is:

Winter stew with or without beef

In a large pot, add your onions and carrots and beef cubes if you wish

Let saute for about 10 minutes on low to medium heat.

Add about 3 cups of water...let simmer again on medium to high.

Add about 5-6 peeled and cut potatoes. Allow to boil...

Add salt and pepper to taste.

Make a roux of your flour and a bit of water....begin to stir into the stew.

Add the spinach at the end and let the entire stew cook on medium for another 20-30 minutes.

It really is delicious!

Now go...watch the snow fall and be still.

Ode to the Onion

Pablo Neruda

I have to share with you the most beautiful poetry of Pablo Neruda, Ode to the Onion. Neruda fans will know it and PovertyFood fans will appreciate it. Neruda himself clearly understood the concept of poverty food.

Enjoy...

Ode To The Onion by Pablo Neruda


Onion,

luminous flask,

your beauty formed

petal by petal,

crystal scales expanded you

and in the secrecy of the dark earth

your belly grew round with dew.

Under the earth

the miracle

happened

and when your clumsy

green stem appeared,

and your leaves were born

like swords

in the garden,

the earth heaped up her power

showing your naked transparency,

and as the remote sea

in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite

duplicating the magnolia,

so did the earth

make you,

onion

clear as a planet

and destined

to shine,

constant constellation,

round rose of water,

upon

the table

of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists,

but to me, onion, you are

more beautiful than a bird

of dazzling feathers,

heavenly globe, platinum goblet,

unmoving dance

of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives

in your crystalline nature.