In the soup

“The garlic doesn’t pop like it does when my mother makes it,” she complained, throwing in freshly chopped pieces into the flat-bottomed pot. “Why wouldn’t it do that, after all these years?”

Hadia and I were standing in the kitchen of her Dubai apartment, staring into the green leafy mix. The children were playing in the orange tent on the 14th-floor balcony overlooking yachts below, skyscrapers ahead and the sea in the distance. It was past lunchtime.

“I will make you taste molokhia . Would you like to have it with Egyptian rice?”

I refused the rice, wanting my first encounter with this dish to be unadulterated. The dark-green jute leaves with smatterings of garlic shone bright against the white ceramic bowl. I began by tasting it off the tip of the large spoon.

“You are supposed to make it with fresh chopped leaves but I make do with these,” said Hadia, bringing out packets from the freezer with ‘Molokhia Leaves’ labels. She said I could get it at the nearest supermarket.

Though it looked like spinach, the viscous texture was unlike any green-leaf vegetable I had tasted before. Had it been the 10th century I would not have tasted it at all. Al Hakim bi’Amr Allah, the then Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, had banned molokhia because he thought it led men and women to debauchery. The eccentric ruler had also forbidden cobblers from making women’s shoes in order to keep them indoors. Thankfully, neither the women nor the molokhia remained in shackles, and the marriage of jute leaves, garlic and coriander went on to acquire cult status in Egypt.

After being stripped from the stem, molokhia leaves are minced with a mezzaluna, ‘half-moon’ in Italian, referring to the curved blade. It is then cooked with ground coriander, garlic and stock. Whether you are served molokhia with rabbit meat, prawns or an elaborate rice and herb-stuffed chicken spread depends on having a Syrian, Lebanese or Palestinian host, or your good fortune of eating it at a home in Cairo. For me, this , with a dash of heritage, was reminiscent of another concoction from a different continent.

On a cold December night in 1975, two Indians visited their German friend in East Berlin. The friend Lily had found her way back to divided Germany after her parents fled Nazi occupiers and settled along the Polish-Ukraine border. That night she served them rote beete suppe , a pink, sour beetroot soup dancing in white ceramic bowls. She had learned to make it from her mother.

It was the first time my father-in-law tasted this East European delicacy. He got the recipe from Lily that night and made it several times afterwards. But he forgot all about it when he moved to Delhi in 1983. That is, until August this year, when the sight of saurer sahne (sour cream), a leftover from my mushroom soup trial, brought back memories of that first tasting 40 years ago.

A popular dish in Eastern Europe, this pink broth found its way into Poland and Germany with people moving and settling in newer parts in the aftermath of World War II. The more elaborate versions of this soup feature a vegetable mix of beans, potatoes et al and even meat. The colour varies from shades of dark red to light pink, depending on the amount of sour cream. This soup — borscht in Russian, barszcz in Poland, baršèiai in Lithuania — has many names in different dialects as one travels across the region. The origins of this soup are just as hotly debated as the name, ingredients, the perfect way to make it and the country that makes it best. The soup I encountered through my father-in-law was a paste of ground beetroot and sour cream heated in a pan with butter and salt.

Sceptical about our impending move to another country and also fearing a haemoglobin shortage, I found solace in the goodness of beetroot and a story from before my time. Three months later, amid conversations of forgetting to wish her mother-in-law on Eid and longing for travels through Egypt in the winter, Hadia invited me into her world. The molokhia was a warm welcome into the life of a stranger in a new city we now call home.

Rote beete suppe (Serves two)

Ingredients

* Beetroot, one big bulb (or two medium or three small)

* 200g sour cream

* 2 tsp butter

* Salt to taste

Method

1. Peel, wash and clean the beetroot bulb. Chop into squares.

2. In a grinder mix the chopped beetroot and sour cream to make a paste.

3. In a pan, heat butter, add salt, and the beetroot and sour cream paste.

4. Stir for a minute and add water according to the consistency you want.

5. Once boiled, cool it. Add black pepper as per taste and coriander as garnish.

Manika Dhama is a freelance writer based in Dubai