Tiara club and hummous

I have to tell two separate stories to make our Friday culinary experience meaningful.

Tiara club

On Friday night we had Tiara Club at my home. Tiara club started in October 2008. I was newish in Durban having just moved down from Pietermaritzburg and the only Durbanite I knew was my cousin Bron. In Pietermaritzburg and Durban you are a foreigner if you did not go to a high school in the province. And you don’t make it in the social circles unless you went to certain high schools. When you meet someone for the first time, one of the questions posed in the conversation is “Which school did you go to?”, and depending on your answer you will either be friends for life or discarded as a nobody up front. Thank the Pope Boet and Son went to Michaelhouse, so they are ok, but me? I only went to Germiston High School. When the conversation about schools suddenly dead ends with me because I am not an old girl of one of the more prestigious KZN schools, I ask how many Nobel Laureates come from their school. The answer is “none” unless they come from Durban Boys (Aaron Klug), and then I tell the story of Sydney Brenner, a Germiston High School old boy who won the 2003 Nobel for Science. That usually gets me into the social circle, if I want to be there. But usually I don’t care! I am snobbish when it comes to snobs. Snobs don’t hack it for me and I coldly reject them as superficial nobodies up front.

Anyway, I was still writing up my PhD and had no time really to find a social circle of friends when I met my dear friend Michelle, who was a fellow carer of feral cats on our campus. She too was feeling like an outsider in the city, so we decided to have a group of Durban women whom we knew come together for supper one evening so that we could get some girl talk going. In October 2008, my cousin Bron and her neighbour (our dear Kiwi friend Shaz) Michelle, Brigitte (an artist friend I was communicating with online after I bought a couple of paintings from her) and I met for supper at the Keg at the Pav. And since then we have met every month.

The group has grown since then. Michelle introduced our dear Irish Friend Tracey who decided our group needed a name because when we spoke of our group we did not have a tag. We are really a book club that doesn’t share books. So she suggested Tiara club and that stuck. Last October we celebrated our first year of existence by going out to dinner wearing tiaras. Many people, particularly women, asked what we were about in the restaurant, and so many said they would like to do the same thing. And we encourage it. It is liberating and above all FUN. It is girls behaving well, intelligently and badly, depending on what the mood of the moment is. We have another two members who have joined more recently, Irene and Carrin, who have formed an important part of our girly fellowship.

Sometimes we go out to a restaurant together, and sometimes we meet at one of our homes. On Friday we met at my home. I like relaxed evenings and I also want to be part of the party and not have to worry too much about being a perfect hostess. So I decided on a meze type table that we could all eat on slowly as we shared the recent events of our lives, which usually have us in paralytic fits of laughter. Bron brought me some Karroo olives which she bought on her road trip, Irene brought mini pita breads, Tracey brought some dolmades, stuffed pepadews and falafel and I made a chilli and lime babaganoush from a recipe I found on the web, and hummus, the element of the next story I will tell.

Hummous and MDFFK

I have often made hummous because the Boys and I love it so much. It can be a sophisticated component of a meze platter, an obliging dip for chips and other more healthy things, or a humble spread ontoast for a quick snack. It is very healthy as long as you don’t overdo it because it is laden with calories. I have usually just whizzed up a tin of rinsed chickpeas with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice and its always worked. In my fridge it lasts less than 24 hours, only because it is eaten quickly, but it can stay in the fridge for a couple of days, maturing in flavour as the time passes.

While I was overseas last year I met a delightful lady from Kuwait who shared her hummous recipe with me. I will refer to her as MDFFK, (my Dear friend from Kuwait). She shared an office with me in Holland where she is completing her PhD studies. She is a devout Muslim lady who is devoted to her family and who also loves cooking and preparing wonderful repasts as an expression of her adoration for them.

She shared with me the emotions her Kuwait community went through during the Iraqi invasion of the early nineties. This war started on my birthday, so I knew what was happening from press reports that we got here and had my own narrow mental pictures of the goings on there. Its not nice sharing your birthday with other anniversaries that should rather be forgotten. But MDFFK told me of another side to this war. She told of how she woke up in the early hours of the morning to see soldiers in her street. She spoke with the soldiers asking them why they had invaded. They told her they had come to liberate the people of Kuwait – a people who were very content with the way things were at the time. She told of the individual soldier’s ignorance of the reality of the situation and how they had been misinformed in Iraq in order to get them to go into the country. She also told of how unprepared the soldiers were, that they were likely to have been newly recruited with limited training at the time. She told of the camaraderie amongst the people of Kuwait during these trying times. How they would meet on the streets after dark and plan ways to frustrate the Iraqi offensive by removing road signs and giving poor directions when asked. She tells of how she misses that part of that time.

The relationship with the soldiers was also not always adverse. They showed compassion when they could. One Friday morning when she was out an Iraqi soldier told her not to allow any of the men from her family to go to prayers that day. Being a women, her instruction would not be followed in her home, but luckily her father was not well that day and did not go to prayers anyway. Iraqi forces rounded up thousands of Iraqi men from mosques that Friday and took them to Iraq. Four hundred of those men have never been heard of again. Men who were husbands, fathers, brothers. Gone with no way of finding out what happened to them.

We had a Thanksgiving Dinner whilst we were in Holland and everyone brought along a dish that was typical of their home country. I made bobotie and MDFFK brought along hummous to die for. It was delectable and she very kindly shared her recipe with me. She used all the ingredients I usually use in different proportions, but added tahina and cumin powder. It is ntsa! I made this new hummous for Tiara club and they thoroughly enjoyed it. The boys had the leftovers on toast for breakfast on Saturday. Both Son and Boet said it was the best hummous they have ever tasted. Boet said he would give it a 9 because he might still taste a better one in his lifetime, though he doubts it