Up a stone staircase in a seemly quiet inner city suburb of Amman, stands a stately 1920’s style house overlooking the bustling downtown.
The interior has been carefully furnished with antique furniture and paintings, the kitchen is large and tidy, with a bright orange Smeg fridge sitting in the corner, and the outside terrace has been transformed.
The new additions to the terrace are hand washing sinks carved out of stone, and a large entertaining area to accommodate a dining experience of a new kind – the kind where you help to cook your own meal.
GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE
Beit Sitti means “Grandmother’s house” in Arabic, and the location for the experience is just that. The house that Maria has turned into Beit Sitti, is the same house where her grandmother lived.
As a child, when Maria and her sister used to visit their Grandmother, she taught them how to cook the traditional Arabic dishes. After University and Culinary School, Maria had the vision to share the recipes with the world, and so, Beit Sitti was born.
Out on the terrace I wait for the Beit Sitti experience to begin. The tables are set, and in each place there lies a wooden chopping board, small knife and apron, marking the spots of the fellow participants and myself.
Jars of spices sit on another table, labeled in both English and Arabic, and waiting to be opened. The weather is perfect, the sun is warm on my back, and the midday call to prayer is bellowing from the Mosque across the road. I definitely feel like I am about to begin a true cultural experience.
THE EXPERIENCE
Maria expectedly guides us through each dish. The important and lengthy bits such as boiling the chicken and roasting the vegetables have been pre prepared, and much is done whilst we observe, but Maria allows us to get involved by allocating each person small tasks along the way.
We mix summaq with onion, learning that combining onion with the powered berry found only in the Middle East removes the onions bitterness. We whip together tahini with lemon juice, and witness how the lemon juice is a natural thickener for this multifunctional sesame seed paste.
We put salt on the eggplant to draw out the bitter fluid, as Maria explains “the rest as the vegetable effectively feels sorry for the part covered in salt, and tries to send the water there to hydrate it”. We learn as we mix together salt and garlic, that the salt is disintegrating the garlic’s tissues. Who knew that a cultural lesson was also going to be a food-scientific one?
While the ingredients appear simple, some have their own special story. The particular cauliflower that we are using is a yellow cauliflower. Most seasonal ingredients can be bought from local produce markets, but this cauliflower is an exception to the rule.
This is a particular variety is rare and more expensive, and it’s so popular it doesn’t usually make it to the market. There are so little available that the farmers don’t have to pass them on to their middle man at the market, as they can just as easily sell them on the side of the road. Days later as I drove down the main road into Amman, I saw a local man with a small wooden table displaying nothing except for five or six of these yellow cauliflowers. They are so popular; he didn’t need to travel the distance.
THE MENU
First on the to do list is the bread. Maria explains that this is the only dish we will not receive a recipe for at the end, because making bread depends so much on the type of flour, which will vary from country to country. “To know if it is the correct balance of ingredients you have to judge by the texture,” she explains, as she casually tosses salt and yeast into the bowl. I conclude that I will have to go to culinary school to learn that trick properly, but with Maria’s skill and guidance, the end result of our breads turned out like a professional work of art.
Our unexpected food science lesson eventually evolved into something that I would even be proud to serve my mum for dinner. The pre-prepared chicken, eggplant, and yellow cauliflower was mixed with rice, spices, chicken stock, and then cooked, emerging from the stove as a dish called ma’aloubeh.
While the ma’aloubeh (which means upside down)may not look so pretty to the naked eye, the final reveal where the whole dish is effectively flipped upside down onto a silver platter and the top pot removed, is where this dish presents itself as an art form.
On the first bite of the ma’aloubeh, the flavors of cinnamon and cardamom break through, accompanied by the Beit Sitti house mix of spices -a combination dried onion, turmeric, and some other top secret ingredients. These spices work together to give surprising flavor, to what otherwise may be a simple dish.
Two eggplants roasting on an open flame stove top morphed into mutable, an all time favorite of mine (though I am sure I have never heard it called by its official name before!), and served up on the table as the perfect accompaniment to the bread.
We all played our part in the creation of the fattouh. The result, a salad with tomato, cucumber, and lettuce, its pieces varying in sizes thanks to bad students (I’m looking at me)! The freshness of the vegetables combined with crunchy pita chips leaves little room for any other necessary ingredients. Simple is best, as far as the fattouh is concerned.
This is not a restaurant, but I stop short at calling it a cooking class too. Maria has created her own unique “educational experience meets cultural immersion”, and it is truly the best, if not the tastiest, cultural experience you will find in Amman.
Have you done cooking classes while travelling before? What was your experiences?
www.beitsittijo.com
Daniel says
Cyra,
Great write up on Beit Sitti! We love Beit Sitti and the experience has often been one of the highlights of travelers’ Jordan tour. It’s a perfect cultural culinary experience in Amman.
Cyra says
Hi Daniel, thanks for stopping by. I’m glad you liked it. Beit Sitti was definitely a highlight for me too. Even just the experience of being in a different neighbourhood drinking the homemade lemonade on the terrace! It helps that the food is great too 😉