“NEIGHBORS, THEY COME AND THEY GO”. . . BYE-BYE & FAREWELL (perhaps) & BEST OF LUCK dearest EVELYNE B. (a.k.a. our quiet, discreet, sophisticated, generous and quite adventurous and travelling next door neighbor for the past 15 years who just recently moved far away exactly 7 days ago on December 21st, 2017 to return back home to Lebanon before travelling around the world once again, for new discoveries, career opportunities and life adventures) ! WE MISS YOU ALREADY.
And to top it all off, our other neighbors, here in the lower-east side of Paris 12th, each living in smallish apartments, will all be moving away soon too (or are at least planning to move away soon).
A few months ago, one of my oldest friends, neighbor and work colleague, Jean-Marie, moved to Marseille; the youngest upstairs neighbors Olena & Ivan will be off to London, in the United Kingdom for glorious careers next March; the other next door neighbors Delphine & Vincent and baby-girl Jeanne are just waiting for their home under construction to be finalized and completed in northern Paris; the friends and neighbors across the garden, Emma & François and little Victor are still looking for a larger home to buy in the suburbs; and I just found out that my buddy Frank, just down the street, is looking to buy a real home with a garden and probably a white-picket fence, in Brittany; and other friends like JLC and FF already have a country-house down south, is that a foot in the doorstep of departure ? … SO WHO’S NEXT ?!
I’m not saying that I see everybody all the time. We all work, sometimes so much that we hardly bump into each other, but there are always exchanges and quick visits and that ‘reassuring comfort’ of knowing that they’re all nearby for an occasional shared drink and nibbles or shopping or taste-testing of recipes and just friendly chit-chat to share the latest news and/or occasional complaining. Oooh those soon-to-be-empty friends’ apartments . . . too bad, so sad.
Anyways, getting back to Evelyne and to the many members of her family that I’ve met over the years. Mother, brother and many sisters (Madona, Christine, Roula and some that I haven’t met, with her nieces (that I often called little cackling chicks) and nephews, etc., often visiting for several weeks in the cooler Parisian summer season because it was so much hotter where they lived (like in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar) and often cooking (I remember the wafting scents from their kitchen window and trying to figure out what spice blends were being used) and of course all the incredible amount of sweets and savory foods and delicacies and bags of spices that they would bring back for me from far-away lands and markets so I could continue being surprised and continue to experiment and cook stuff.
About twice a year, I’d get a box of store-bought MAAMOULS from Lebanon. Maamouls are a type of icing-sugar coated, dried-fruit and nut filled granular shortbread cookie. Many Eastern Mediterranean countries have their own versions, often using special wooden molds or cookie cutters to create the round or dome-shaped cookies with decorative patterns (but I used the insides of citrus juicers instead to make these).
One day last summer, I said to Evelyne and Madona, as they were waiting for the elevator : “Tomorrow I’m making maamouls for you girls” … their answer, with lots of giggling : “What ? How could you know how to make maamouls, have you even tried before, do you even have the special molds ?!”
You see, back in Greece, we also make holiday cookies called KOURABIEDES and MELOMAKARONA (alongside the simpler and more common KOULOURIA) during the holiday seasons, always prepared for Christmas and New Year’s Day and the Epiphany. A MAAMOUL is something in between the first two, which is why and how I understood the principles and could figure it out myself with very little documentation or recipe references.
*some paper, a pencil (with eraser), a calculator, some experience and some patience are enough to get the job done.
In many near and middle-eastern countries, these sweets are prepared for Ramadan and Eid, Lent and Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah. It’s a cross-cultural, cross-religious, multi-country, frontier-less cookie spanning the Eastern Mediterranean shores of a region sometimes still referred to as the “LEVANT” spanning Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, Israel (with Greece sometimes included for historical reasons).
A MAMMOUL has a grainier or sandier shortbread cookie texture (because of the semolina) with a soft and sticky sweet center (due to the pureed dried fruits like dates or figs and nuts like almonds, walnuts or pistachios), a slightly spicy (cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, clove) and floral taste (orange-blossom or rose water), usually lightly sprinkled or heavily coated with icing sugar … It’s a multi-step cookie that is prepared for special occasions so of course it takes time, but they can keep for weeks !
This was the girls’ answers and verdicts when they tasted them : “George, your version reminded me of our grandmother’s cooking back in Lebanon, a long time ago when she was still young, with the taste, the texture, the blend of flavors and the aromas of our childhood”.
I was HAPPY to hear that, so HAPPY NEW YEAR to all (whether close-by or far-far away . . . :)
