Beit Sitti

Tonight I attended a cooking class at Beit Sitti, which CIEE graciously provided as an opportunity for us poor starving students to learn how to navigate the waters of Jordanian cuisine. Thea and I managed to be forty minutes late to the class, courtesy of a time mix up and good for nothing friends who left without telling us. Luckily we were able to grab a cab right outside our apartment, as one of the other CIEE students had just pulled up in one, and our cab driver was one of the more speed-inclined ones, so we got there post haste.

I shway helped make this

We sheepishly arrived in the midst of some spice tasting and washed our hands and slipped into the provided aprons before joining everyone else. We missed the beginning of making maqloobeh (a chicken and rice dish) and the bread dough, unfortunately, but were able to join in on the salad and muttabal making. All of which were, by the way, delicious.

We were instructed on cutting technique- like a choo-choo train, knuckles first down the chopping board- and trusted with the very important steps of dicing up cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley and mint for the salad. We also partook in the flattening of the dough balls; I don't want to brag, but I think mine turned out the best. The hardest task I think we were put to was peeling the roasted eggplants; we were warned that if we pulled off flesh with the skin we wouldn't get dinner! A handy tip that helped the peeling go faster was to let the eggplant "sweat" - basically, mush it a bit with your hand to get the water to release to the surface. Also, fun fact: roasted eggplant looks suspiciously similar to smushed up brain.

All my shababs, pre-flip of the maqloobeh

 We also saw the first part of making knafeh, a dessert dish here, which involved "pulling" apart the angel hair and then mixing it with butter to form the bottom. Knafeh is traditionally prepared as a cheese pastry, but here it was made with a cream filling, which I actually prefer. Something about cheese and dessert doesn't quite mix well with me (unless it is cheesecake, of course, in which case yes please I will have 5 slices).

Feed me, servants

We then got to sit down and eat the delicious dinner we had just prepared. I, as a vegetarian, was exempted from eating the maqloobeh, so it was the salad and bread with muttabal for me, which ended up being more than enough because it was so delicious I went back for seconds. We also got a nice surprise visitor- their cat, which we were explicity instructed not to feed, decided that since we were ignoring it on the ground it needed to get up on our level and jumped up onto an empty chair. It then proceeded to alternate between meowing noisily for food and staring pleadingly into your soul. I think, towards the end, it was probably thinking something along the lines of "these stupid humans aren't fulfilling their sole purpose in life, which is to be my servant and feed me always". Sorry قطة!