Kabylie, Algeria, October 2017, 40th Day ritual

taħbult, a sweet omelet withsemolina, that is given to women who have just givenbirth (topped with a mix of honey and orange blossomflowers)

tiɣrifin, pancakes preparedfor various celebrations. For the 40th day they are a comfort to the family in mourning.

KABYLE cooking

KABYLE cooking

Food (cf. Pollock 2011)

Nutritionists diet and health

Semiologists system of communication, symbolic oppositions (raw/cooked)

Anthropologists food production (economic, political, social aspects), serving rituals and sharing, preparation techniques…

mostly centered around ‘horizontal’ transmission (between co-participants/communities)

« we would have vegetarian couscous, I remember my grandma in the oldtimes, she would cook us some vegetarian pudding, she would do this dishwith wild leeks, she would cook some vegetarian porridge for us inside the house, when it snowed, with dried figs. We used to go gather figs, we wouldpluck the figs, we would take them back home, my grandma would give themto us and we would eat them. People made sorts of wicker-racks, ‘tadkent’, that's how we call it in Kabyle, a traditional shelf, they would dry all those figsoutside, and after that, when winter came, they would fill the storing jar withdried figs. At night, when we stayed near the fire as kids, my grandmotherwould give us olive oil, she would tell us tales, and we would eat those figswith olive oil. We were in good health, we didn't fall ill, this diabetes didn'texist, there was no high blood pressure, no cholesterol, nothing. But now, it's cookies and cakes, all this new food, that we find in quantities. This iswhat makes people ill, this is what they consume in excess now. In the olddays, we had bread, the kabyle flatbread. The Kabyle woman would put twoflat loaves of bread to cook, and when her child arrived from school, shegave him a portion of bread, he would dunk it in oil and eat it, with twodried figs, he would drink goat milk, or cow milk - we were in good health in those times, we thrived. But now it's not the same anymore ».

And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day withthe prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to mylips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked amorsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid,and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than ashudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped,intent upon the extraordinary changes that weretaking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded mysenses, but individual, detached, with no suggestionof its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life hadbecome indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, itsbrevity illusory–this new sensation having had on methe effect which love has of filling me with a preciousessence; or rather this essence was not in me, it wasmyself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental,mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connectedwith the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitelytranscended those savours, could not, indeed, be ofthe same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? Whatdid it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?

Marcel Proust

La madeleine

And suddenly the memory returns. The taste was that of the little crumb ofmadeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I didnot go out before church-time), when I went to say good day to her in her bedroom,my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of real or of lime-flower tea. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind beforeI tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, withouttasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image haddissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others morerecent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out ofmind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the forms of things,including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe,religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lostthe power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place inmy consciousness. But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after thepeople are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile,but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smelland taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waitingand hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, inthe tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure ofrecollection.

Power of food, link to remembrance, joy, resilience, eternity.

Imagine you are a migrant, or a persontrying to reconnect with her vanishing

culture and language…

on your journey, among your few immaterialpossessions, there is (the memory of) food, and

there is language

App Scenario

• Taos is a young woman, she’s starting college, she’s homesick and would like to cook the traditional recipes her Grandma Zahwa usedto cook for her

• Thankfully, she has her Zahwa App, where shehas her Grandma’s voice explaining her recipein Kabyle,

• She sets the app, and starts gathering the ingredients, she’s feeling happy

• Last spring, she went to the village for a few days, and asked her grandma for her tameqfult recipe…

• They set up the ingredients, Taos took photos of all the stages while Zahwa cooked the recipe, as well as the final picture of the dish.

• Then, after having eaten, in front of warm coffee, theywent through the photos, selected the ones theyconsidered the best and Taos recorded her grandmaexplaining the ingredients, utensils and stages of the recipe in Kabyle.

• Then Taos took a picture of Zahwa, and set up herprofile for future recipes.

• She uploaded the recipe, kept a copy on her phone, and shared the recipe online.

• Now, every time Taos wants to cook tameqfult, she has her grandma’s recipe, voice, gestures.

• Taos speaks her language fluently, even though she isbilingual in Arabic now, but she’s happy to listen to hergrandma’s speech, especially as Zahwa addedinformation about the significance of this dish.

• But Ines is not so lucky: she was born in France sixteenyears ago, and her parents haven’t spoken to her in Kabyle, because they thought this would help herintegrate. She can understand the language, but feelsinsecure speaking it. She’s so happy that her cousin Taos sends her their grandma’s recipes! She can learnthe language of food, and be fluent at least in the kitchen. And this makes things easier with her mother, who can be so annoying at times when she says Inescannot go to such or such party – her mum, who isnow also interested in recording her own recipes in Kabyle…

Tameqfult

Tameqfult is a main dish based on semolina, a ‘couscous’. It is a type of couscous cooked in the

spring with fresh vegetables.

Ingredients and Utensils

Cut the vegetables

Moisten the semolina …

… and steam it

Arrange the vegetables in layerswith coarse salt in between …

… carrots, then green beans, then onions, thenpotatoes, then onions again, then zucchini

… and put everything to steam.

Meanwhile, when the semolina is half-steamed

Drench it with water, and let the water drain for ten minutes, and then put the couscous

back into the large dish…

… then add some coarse salt…

… and eliminate all the lumps by rubbingthe couscous between your hands

Since this gesture is not easy to understand if you’venever performed it, here is a mini-video.

Then put the couscous back on the fire to steam…

… and when it is cooked put it back into the large dish and eliminate the last lumps, adding

olive oil and coarse salt.

Serve the couscous with the vegetables on top, and provide olive oil and salt for those

who’d like to add some

How is Zahwa different fromthe usual documentation of recipes?

• My experience for 20 years: first a way to varygenres, given my involvement in working withwomen– Get the MAN forms I was expecting, the syntactic

structures too

– in natural speech

– studied language during activity, and post-activity + discussions on cooking then & now (woman and daughters-in-law)

– left videos (for souvenir)

• Northern Arapaho, Wind River Reservation(Wyoming)

– Yolanda Hvizdak & Berta Monroe

– Sadie Bell

– Allison Sage

• Hän, Fairbanks (Alaska)

– Ruth Ridley

• But with Zahwa:

– self-documentation of recipes (autonomy),

– with a smartphone (light, everyday-life technology),

– with immediate saving and sharing possibilities(immediate use and diffusion),

– and a potential for intergenerational transmission, not only of cooking skills and cultural materials, but of language, especially in contexts of languageloss and revitalization

https://zahwa.aikuma.org

Please join our Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1298901220188099/

ZAHWA – Food is Love

• Reference

– Pollock, Nancy (2011) The Language of Food, in Nick Thieberger (ed), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork. 235-249

• Acknowledgements

– In Kabylie: Tounsia Rabia, Cherifa Mettouchi

– In Wyoming: Yolanda Hvizdak, Berta Monroe, Sadie Bell, Allison Sage, Finn Thye

– In Alaska: Ruth Ridley, Siri Tuttle, Jonathan and MacKinley.

Amina Mettouchi(EPHE and CNRS, Paris)

aminamettouchi@me.com

Mat Bettinson(University of Melbourne)mat.bettinson@gmail.com

Steven Bird(University of Melbourne)stevenbird1@gmail.com