For my next dish I interviewed my grandmother on my mom’s side, Vivian Abady. She grew up in Egypt but was exiled due to her religion as a young teen. After Egypt she moved to Milan and then Curacao. Speaking to my grandmother, especially about food something she holds very near and dear to her, was defiantly an interesting experience. I was able to notice the shift in her voice when she spoke about food versus the situation around her at that time in her life. Today, my grandmother is always cooking and inventing new recipes as she never really follows any recipe books. I wanted to see where that creativeness came from. When asking her about a dish that she made she spoke about these Middle Eastern meatballs, “Alkafta” in Arabic. She gave me parts of the recipe but did not remember the full thing as she changes it a little every time she made it. I wanted to try and emulate what she does. I made the recipe like she said and for the parts she missed I filled them in with different flavors that I thought would go well with the meats. When I sent her a picture of them they looked very much like hers.

Yet, when I looked up alkafta recipes they were nothing like my grandmothers. Where mine was based in a wine sauce, all of the alkafta recopies were based in tomato. At fist this frustrated me because I thought I was not doing justice to her Egyptian heritage. But through listening and transcribing her interview I actually realized that this recipe is very similar to her life story. It has aspects of Egyptian flavors in it, but that is not the entire thing. There are other flavors that really stand out in the dish. Similarly, although my grandmother lived a portion of her childhood and teenage life in Egypt, that is only a part of her story and it is vital to show all parts of it.