Making meals and memories

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This article was published 14/06/2021 (1888 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s nothing like home-cooked food to trigger a moment of nostalgia. For Yousef Almbaidin, the taste of mulukhiyah, a soup of leafy greens, takes him right back to his childhood home in Jordan, where jute mallow, the main ingredient in the dish, was picked fresh from the backyard garden.

“My grandma started growing (the leaves) in her backyard and taught my mom how to do it and while she would be picking it, they would have conversations,” he says. “Since I was the oldest sibling, my mom would also make me do the same with her… the dish itself isn’t special, but it’s the memories I have of picking it with my mom, that’s what’s meaningful to me.”

Almbaidin, 22, is the oldest of four siblings and moved to North America by himself at the age of 17, eventually settling in Winnipeg to attend university. This Friday, he will be sharing his family’s recipe for mulukhiyah while telling his story of migration as part of Embrace, an immersive virtual theatre performance and cooking class.

The show is the brainchild of Hazel Venzon, a local actor, writer, artistic director and co-founder of Unit Productions. Embrace was created in Whitehorse, where Venzon worked at the Yukon Arts Centre, as a way to highlight the personal stories behind the recent influx of Filipino migrants to the area. While conducting research for the show, she experienced first-hand the power of food in bringing people together.

“I was holding interviews with perfect strangers that were new Canadians and I was always welcomed inside their home immediately,” Venzon says. “I found it so welcoming and I wanted to really offer that to the wider public.”

The debut performance featured Filipino newcomers talking about their experiences of coming to Canada while walking the audience through a traditional dish. Back in Winnipeg, Venzon has adapted the concept for the pandemic and is focusing on the food and stories of young immigrants and refugees from the Middle East, through a collaboration with Sawa Theatre and writer Qudus Abusaleh.

Almbaidin is joined in the cast by Ameen Alnaser, a Syrian refugee who will be making kunafah, a cheese pastry dessert; and Suzan Palani, a Kurdish immigrant who will be cooking vegetable dolma, a side dish of stuffed grape leaves.

Palani’s childhood memories of home are bound to the borders of the Al-Tash refugee camp in Iraq, where her family lived for more than 20 years after being displaced by Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. She was 4 1/2 years old when she arrived in Canada with her family and has a strong desire to connect with her Kurdish roots.

“I never really got to experience it because I was in a camp,” she says. “This dish reminds me of my family and the importance of my culture and that need to want to learn more about my culture.”

Like Almbaidin, Palani has memories of picking grape leaves with her mom to make dolma — although the tender greens didn’t come from a backyard garden.

“There’s actually a lot of places in the parks in Winnipeg that grow them; if you see Middle Eastern women gathering somewhere, that’s probably what they’re picking,” she says with a laugh. “Nowadays they sell it in jars, so it’s easier to gain access to, but… I remember picking it with my mom and that was a really important memory.”

For Palani, 25, dolma is a metaphor for life. While cooking isn’t her strong suit, learning to make the dish through dedication and perseverance has paid off.

“Obviously, cooking doesn’t compare to a lot of hardships people go through,” she says. “But you can accomplish a lot of great things if you just keep at it, if you’re persistent, resilient.”

Getting an accurate recipe from her mom was the first challenge, “Moms never measure anything — it’s just a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” Palani says. “So I was just watching my mom for like a week make this dish; anytime she took a pinch, I would grab a measuring cup.”

Almbaidin can relate. He also learned to make mulukhiyah by feel and spent a lot of rehearsal time testing out exact measurements for the audience.

Viewers will be able to cook along with the cast of Embrace by following recipes to be posted online (at unitprod.ca) or by ordering a meal kit with pre-portioned ingredients for a minimum $10 donation — proceeds of which will be donated to Ka Ni Kanichihk, a local Indigenous healing and learning program. Those who sign up for the meal kit will be invited to participate in the Zoom broadcasts, which will be livestreamed on June 18, 19 and 20 at 5:30 p.m.

Even with pandemic restrictions, Venzon wanted to include an element of audience participation.

“The success of this show is the (relationship) between the cook and the participant; there’s a bond that happens,” she says. “I’m hoping for that same feeling of actually doing this together, but in your own home.”

Much of the rehearsing for Embrace has happened virtually for the group of first-time actors. Each person will be performing their segment separately in a set built to be a working kitchen in the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s digital studio space.

Even though Almbaidin, Alnaser and Palani haven’t spent much time in the same room, connecting through the similarities and differences of their respective journeys has been a highlight.

“It’s been amazing and humbling too,” Almbaidin says. “I want to share my story so people can know there’s other people experiencing the stuff that I went through. And Suzan and Ameen’s stories, which are amazing… (come) from the heart because it’s actually stuff that happened to them — it pulls you in and makes you feel a percentage of how they felt during that time.”

Embrace is free to attend and tickets or meal kits can be reserved at eventbrite.ca. After registering, a link to the livestream on YouTube, Twitch or Facebook will be sent on the day of the performance.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney