 My name is Arwa, I volunteer with YRF, an organization that provides relief in Yemen and advocates in the US to end the war. And my name is Danica, I'm the Yemen campaigner at Code Pink. Code Pink has been working in coalition with other organizations like Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation to stop US involvement in the war in Yemen for years. As many of you know, Yemen is experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. This is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed. However, Yemen has a rich history and culture that also deserves attention. The Beyond the War series aims to showcase Yemen outside the context of war and center Yemeni voices. You have to break stereotypes and build solidarity with Yemeni communities. Today, we have Lena Lukman with us to discuss Yemeni cuisine. Lena is a Yemeni British citizen of the world. She grew up in Yemen, Somalia and France. When she left Yemen six years ago, she discovered her passion for Yemeni food, which you will share with us today. For further information, please refer to her bio. Anyone attending can ask questions throughout the event. For those of you who are joining us via Zoom, please try and ask questions in the Q and A section and we will direct those questions to Lena after she's done. So Lena, without further ado, please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much, Erwan Danica for having me on this platform and Ramadan Karim to everyone because Ramadan is almost halfway now. And I would like to, I'm very appreciative of this invitation to come to speak on this platform. And let's take you through this amazing and unique dishes of Yemen and inspire you to go ahead and try them out and see for yourself what you would wish to see next. So once upon a time in Yemen, Yemen was called Arabi Felix. So Arabi Felix was a land of queens, the queen of Shiba and which is called Saba in Arabic and the queen of Arwa. And these lands flourished and were called Arabi Felix because of the pleasant climate and the richness of this country in agriculture, in spices, in music and in architecture, in so many other things in so many other ways. So no wonder that Yemenis brag about their food. They know that they have a very rich culture in food and they brag about it. So let's start. So let's put Yemen on the map first. So if you are here on this platform, you probably already have looked up Yemen and you know where it is on the map. But let me just walk you through it a little bit. And if you can see here, if you go on the world map, you can see this small little country which is strategically located between east and west. And it's like in the center of the globe and it connects east to west. So it's a land of very ancient civilizations and many references to Yemen are found in the Quran. Some of them are found as well in other scriptures like in the Bible where according to the Bible, Noah says that it is called refers to it as the land of milk and honey. And again, a reference to food. It is the land of Frankisans where it is said that the three wise men, when they presented the new born Jesus with Frankisans, this Frankisans came from Yemen. But today we are here to speak mainly about Yemeni food. So Yemeni food is very distinct, very different to all other food that is in the Middle East area. And this because it reflects the country's complex history of trade and the influences of migration and colonialism that have affected Yemen. So Yemenis are foodies. Yes, they like their food, they never skip a meal. Yemenis have different kinds of food for breakfast, different types of food for lunch, different types of food for dinner. So the recipes are quite different. The portions also are quite different. They brag about their food in their songs. They brag about their food in their sayings. And of course, the climate of Yemen helps because many, if you have checked out the map of the relief of Yemen, like the central part of Yemen and the eastern side of Yemen is mountainous and the rest is on the western side, on the western side you have a partial like desertic areas and then you have a big, big, big area which is mainly a coastline. So let's start with the trip of food in Yemen. So I try to make like a small map of Yemen that you can see on the bottom hand side and we'll start along the coastline of Yemen where mainly the dishes are made of fish and shellfish and crustaceans. So you have something called Sayadiya or and there is something called Mutafaya. These two dishes are like the main dishes in the Aden area which is on the southern side Gulf of Aden and close to the Gulf of Aden is part of the Indian Ocean. So the picture on your right hand side, the bottom picture is the one with Sayadiya. So Sayadiya is usually a dish with fish. It's very spicy, spicy hot and spicy spicy. It is either red or sometimes without tomatoes and it is fish cooked in rice. Then the next picture just above that is called Darabis. So it is from the Mukalla area also in the southern part of Yemen. And it is a kind of fish mince. It is very spicy as well and packed with flavor. And the special about this fish is that it is made of a very specific fish and that's sharkfish. Sharkfish, but we don't use the big sharkfish. We use baby sharks in this dish. The picture just above that is the Mukalla Hodeidi. So you can see that the Mukalla is basically a pot and the pot in this kind of region by the coastline is made of pottery like kind of pot. It is also a dish fish, fish dish, sorry, in a red sauce and very, very spicy. Of course, all dishes that have a sauce are either eaten with bread, most of the time, some of them are eaten with rice but most of them are eaten with bread. The top picture is also called Mutafaya which is also from the Aden area and it is also a sauce dish but it doesn't have any vegetables in it while the Mukalla Hodeidi, the one just beneath it has also vegetables in it. Of course, all dishes have dips and the dips are like achar, the sahabak, bas, et cetera, and there's many dips. So the next slide will showcase different dishes that are from the northern part of Yemen and the central areas of Yemen. So the very first picture on the top is the salta which is, many people think of it as the dish of Yemen but it is not actually the dish of Yemen but it's the dish of the Sana'a area and the Sada'a area and the northern part of Yemen. It is basically a broth to which we add vegetables and the very specific sauce which is halba and halba is like a fenugreek sauce. It is poured over the dish and you see the pot is a stone pot here. The first pot was a pottery clay pot and the second pot here is a very dark pot stone pot. Then so the broth is called marak in Arabic or in Yemeni Arabic and you can see how it is presented in the second picture, in the middle picture, in the pot and the halba is poured over it and it's steaming hot in general. Now the last picture is a dessert. It is called Binta Sahan. It is my favorite dessert and it is very, very hard to make. It's a very difficult dessert to make. It is a bit like milfe which is a French pastry. It has lots of layers of dough and in between each layer there is ghee so when you bake it like the different layers separate and it is eaten with honey also from Yemen and the best honey in Yemen comes from the Hadramat area in Wadi Hadramat and it's delicious and it's very hard to make and I love it and regarding Binta Sahan, Binta Sahan is eaten in different ways. Some of the areas they eat Binta Sahan before the food, some people eat it with the food and some people eat it at the end as a dessert basically. So at the end I had just an idea that we talked a lot at the beginning about dishes and food and so that's for all the people who are chefs who like to make dishes but some of us are also bakers and they like to bake bread basically. So with the bread in Yemen there is so many different breads in Yemen, so it's too many, too many that I just put one slide and I put the names like the first one on the top is Ratayb, the second one is Chobstawa, then you have the Lahouh which is made which is also from the central areas of Yemen, then you have the Mulawwah which is in the middle areas of Yemen, then you have Kudam, you have Tamiz and all these breads are made with different kinds of grains like Tamiz is corn, the Chobstawa is a mixture of like white flour and brown flour, the Kudam is like seven different types of grains, so you can look out for the names, just try them out, go find websites where you can find the recipes for these. There is more to Yemeni food than the dishes I have presented to you, so much more, so much more but I just wanted here to make a list for you guys to put on your aprons, go look up Zurbian, look up Mindy, look up Harish, look up Fitta in some areas it's called Massob, look up Asid and try them out, you have at the end I'm going to leave a slide with links, with the people who have they have recipes both in English and in Arabic and you can try them out. And since it is Ramadan at the end, I wanted just to present to you the finger foods that are eaten in Ramadan, such as the top picture on the right is Shafoot, I know Arwa like that and then there is the Badriah, there is the Khamir, some places they call it Bahumri and then there's the Catles and then there's the Samosa and you can see that, for example, the Samosas is an Indian influence, so some of the dishes in Yemen have been influenced by the migration and the colonialism but still the Yemeni food has maintained its uniqueness even if they had external influences, they embraced it and made it their own and owned their own food. So you have here a list of other foods and some drinks as well, like tea and Qashar which are the coffee husks, which I don't think anywhere else in the world, people make tea infusions out of coffee husks except Yemen and Nakea, which is a grape juice. Finally, these are the two links and some foodies that you might want to follow on their Instagram, like Fatma al-Beiti and Vanessa Meheri, Asukaina Ashami, they're Yemeni foodies and they always have something on their Instagram about Yemeni food, so you can maybe follow them and get inspired and try them out. And the two links, of course, of Ashiba Yemeni food and Sufra as well, they have lots of recipes, Yemeni recipes and some of the recipes we have talked about just now. And of course Yemen has so much more to give beyond war, beyond food, beyond many things. There is beyond coffee, there are beyond Yemeni jewelry, beyond Yemeni songs and Yemeni singers and song writers. So I've put a few names of also some people that might inspire you to go and look and then you can look for others as well. But these are platforms of people that I follow, that I've seen and it's just for inspiration to, if you wish to help him and go and see these people, see what they're doing and spread the word of all this. And this ends my presentation and I hope this was inspiring to all of you and please come, have some tea and let's have questions. Thank you so much. That was such a wonderful presentation. So yeah, if anyone attending has any questions, please put them in the Q&A section. We actually have our first one already. Carrie is asking, which of the breads are yeast-free? Are yeast-free? I don't think any of the breads are yeast-free. Probably the tamis because the base of tamis is actually, it's, let me go back and see. So it's this, I don't know if you can see my mouse, it's this one, it is the one in the middle, top, it is made of, it's tamis actually, and it's the one with corn. I think it is yeast-free. I think it's yeast-free. I think it is yeast-free. Thank you for that question, Carrie. I'm very biased just cause it's Ramadan. So I saw all the Ramadan dishes and I was wondering if you could walk us through a couple of the most popular ones for Iftar. Yes, of course. So this is the slide on Iftar. So the sambusa is like the Indian sambusas but it's quite different in Yemen. The dough is very thin and it's very crispy. It's not as bulky as the Indian ones. They're really small, we make them really like bite size or like two bites maximum. We don't make them so big. Then there is the baghia, which is a bit like falafel but it's not made with the same kind of, like the falafel is made, I think, from a different kind of grain. The grains we use in the Yemeni, let's say falafel, which is called baghia is a grain that is in Yemen, basically. It's grown in Yemen. So I don't even know the name in English, I'm really sorry. And of course, the every house has khamir, which is the bachomri, which is like a small dough, like the triangle ones, which are here on the right hand side. And my favorite, of course, is shafoot. And I was telling Erwad just before the presentation that I made shafoot yesterday for Iftar. So I don't think we have left the words or I would eat that every day. So shafoot is made from lahua, which is one of those where it's made of lahua. It's the one with the little holes, the bread with the little holes. Then we add to it a yogurt and some spices, like cumin and salt and pepper. So we add to the yogurt spring onions and chives. All these we mix in a mixer, so it becomes like green. And then we pour it over the bread, which is the lahua. And of course, the lahua just like sucks all the juices in. And then on top, we put pomegranates. Where am I going? Yeah, we add pomegranates and some green salad. And then you actually eat it the way you like, you know? If you don't like pomegranates, you don't put the pomegranates on. If you can cut, you know, the Yemen doesn't have lots of salads. So our salads are quite basic, like the normal, like the Greek salad with cucumbers and carrots and tomatoes. And we actually cut these really tiny in very small cubes. And we eat it with the shafoot. We put it on top of the shafoot, and that's how we eat it. There are some other salads, like, but that are eaten with other things. A bit different, but not really. Yeah. There's a follow-up question about shafoot. Kais is asking, are there different kinds? And does it differ in the North and South? Well, yes, it does. So the shafoot that I just explained is mainly in the Northern part of Yemen and the Southern part of Yemen where I actually come from. We eat it in a different way and we don't really make it green. So what we add into the yogurt, it's still yogurt or like kefir. What we add in the yogurt is that we add just spices. So we add garlic, cumin, and pepper, black pepper. We put it in a mixer, we mix it all together, then we pour it into the yogurt. And if you have yogurt and you don't have kefir, you can just add some milk to it, to make it a bit thinner. And then you pour it over the lahuh and we make a separate dish, which is either a red saucy mince meat or like small pieces of meat in a thick red sauce. And we pour that on top of the lahuh. And we eat it that way. Yeah, so there is a different way of eating lahuh. And actually, I think every different household has its own way of eating the shafoot. People make it in different ways. So these are like the basic or most common ways. Yeah, I love hearing about the variation and the types of shafoos. And it's interesting because the bread, that's the base. It's very similar to the Ethiopian bread as well, but slightly different in flavor. Our next question is from Alexa. And she asks, is honey the typical sweetener in yummy foods and desserts? Well, unfortunately, not anymore. Now that people know about sugar, they use sugar a lot more. But in lots of the Yemeni desserts do use honey in them, like the fattah. For example, I don't think I put a picture of fattah. The fattah is basically one of these breads, which is at the bottom, oops. The bottom one on the right-hand side, which is mulawa, and we cut it in really, really tiny pieces. We put it in one of the clay pots or one of the black stone pots. We heat it very much. We add to it butter or ghee in some areas. Then you can add to it, some people add to it bananas, some people add to it dates, some people just add to it milk, and then any of these recipes is topped with Yemeni honey. So this is one of the recipes that is using honey. Yes, definitely. Honey is a major thing in Yemen. In Yemen, we even eat bananas with honey. So you break the banana, you dip it in honey, you should try it. It tastes really nice. And you dip it in honey, and then you know you like to have your banana a day. So maybe you can try that. Dip it in honey and just eat it. Oh yeah, we love bananas. I will try that. That sounds great. Yes, it tastes really nice. Farid is asking if we're sharing recipes. I don't think we'd planned on it, but Lana, can you tell us like maybe where we can find some Yemeni recipes? Yeah, I put them on the links here. I don't know if this presentation would be shared. Yeah, I can, well, Arwa is asking the next question. I can link their accounts in the chat. Yeah, okay. So these are two links of Yemeni recipe, people who do Yemeni recipes online, but you can find, I mean, if you speak Arabic, you'll find a lot more. If you speak English, I think these two. If you want, I can copy them if I can. No, I couldn't copy it. I don't know why. Here, I can put the link in it. Yeah, if you can put the link in the chat, maybe then people can just copy it and go to it. Okay, where is it? It's here. And yeah, actually the first one, she by Yemeni food is done by Catherine. She's an American who used to live in Yemen and her husband is Yemeni. And now she lives in the States and she loves Yemeni food and she's amazing. She does lots of Yemeni recipes. But if you speak Arabic, you will find lots of recipes online. Thank you. Our next question is from Allison. Hi, Allison. That asks, do you have any favorite dishes that you associate with your childhood or growing up? It's hard to choose. I do have one of my favorite dishes is the Sayadiyah. It's the very first one I spoke about. I can go back to it. It's this one on the right-hand side, the bottom one. I love fish and I love fish the way in the rice. Yeah, it's very special to Yemen. I know that in Lebanon also, they have something called Sayadiyah. It is not exactly the same way that we do it. Once I had some Lebanese friend over and I made Sayadiyah and he was amazed that it was called Sayadiyah. And he said, we have Sayadiyah too. And I said, yeah, great. Does it taste the same? He said, no, it doesn't. So yeah, I think this one would be one of my favorite dishes. The other favorite of mine is of course, sulta. Yeah, I love sulta. Sulta is, if I start eating sulta, I can't stop. I just can't stop. Yeah, it's one of my favorite dishes as well because I lived most of my life. I left Yemen very young. So I lived outside of Yemen for a very long time. But my mom always cooked Yemeni food at home. We never stopped eating Yemeni food. So yeah, I think same for you, Arwa. Your mom still cooks Yemeni food. Yeah, I was just eating fadda. And also as someone who's half Yemeni, half Lebanese, I feel very represented. Yes, I know, I know. You can ask her that about the idea. It's different from ours. I'll make sure to do that. But this brings us to our next question. Are there any dishes, special dishes for certain events, such as weddings, childbirth? Is there any special Yemeni dish that people made for those occasions? Yes, there are some dishes that are made for these occasions. But Yemenis, they love their food. For example, Zurbian is usually made during weddings and big occasions if you invite people over. But people also make it because they want to, because they like their food. So yes, there are dishes that are made during occasions, but they are also made during off occasions. Yeah, and because Zurbian is like Sayadiyah, it is meat that is made in rice. It's a dish that is easily shared. And Yemenis like to share their food. And it is even served in like one big plate where people sit around and we pour all the meat and the rice in the middle. And you just pull to your side the quantity that you want to eat. And you eat it like that, you know, when you're sharing. And that's how we eat in like weddings and in big events. And even in funerals, we make food. Yeah, we make Zurbian and usually in funerals, people will bring you food to your house. If the funeral is in your house, you don't cook for five, I don't know, a week or 10 days. People will keep on coming with food and to allow you to mourn and not to think about food and to do anything else, basically. Yeah, they'll clean your house. They'll do the dishes. They will do the food. Yeah, there's a quite strong sense of community. Yes, that's a wonderful. Nour is asking, what is the name of the baguia grain in Arabic? What's the name of the? Yeah, it's called Dugra. It's it's it looks a bit like how can I say? You know, the the tiny black beans, but it but it is reddish in in color. It's not it's not black. It is more reddish. But it's called the. Yeah, it's very specific to Yemen. She is asking, Yemenis use lamb meat a lot. Can you talk about the different ways the meat is cooked? Yes, so the meat in Yemen is essential. You know, we had the Yemenis, even, for example, if they they have like two or three neighbors can go and buy a whole veal, a whole. Life veal and they will just go have it to the and have it slaughtered and they will share it. And it's called shirka. And this is where the word the word Hawaii shirka comes from. Well, shirka means sharing. And this is where the word comes from. So meat is cooked in so many different ways. I just didn't want to go there because otherwise it's endless. So in in in one of the slides that I showed, here, for example, this one where the man is standing. This is meat. It's called midfun. They they make like a pit with stones and they they put coal at the very bottom. Then they put the meat in banana leaves. And they they cover, of course, the the the coal with with stones. And then they put the meat over it and they covered the whole thing again with with stones and they just let it cook. So it's this is called midfun. Yeah, then there is mandi that everybody. I think many people know and you can find the recipe quite easily. And then it's this is like baked in in the oven. They just put it in in a in a plate and oven plate. And you just rub it with some spices and you cover it quite tight and put it in the oven. Then you have it in broths in all kinds of of broths. So you have it with just with onions and fry it a lot to with with a lot of spices. It becomes a bit dark and then you add to it some water and you leave it to simmer, simmer, simmer for a long time. So it becomes really tender. And that's the the one we use in Fahadzai usually. And you can cook it also with boneless, you can cook it with with vegetables like okra. And and and there it is cooked in a sauce in a in a red sauce with with okra. You can use it in something called the beef. You make lots of vegetables and you put the meat in it also as well. So the meat is eaten in so many different ways. Yeah. And in this picture, for example, this is Zurbian, the picture on the bottom right hand side. And it is meat in in rice with potatoes. It is a bit like biryani, the Indian biryani, that many people know, but we put potatoes in our in our Zurbian. And I don't know why the Indians, they never put the potatoes in in the in the rice. It tastes so much better. Anyway, maybe I'm biased. Thank you. Oh, Kais is asking, how is Ketlis made? Oh, yeah, Ketlis Ketlis is my daughter's favorite. She she made it yesterday for iftar. So this is the little balls of of potato. And inside you can actually, well, the normal recipe is minced meat. That you you do a mince and it is dry with without any tomatoes or anything. So you you make the mince with. The spices with the green chilies with the onions and you just fry it, fry it, fry it, fry it until you it cooks quite quite well, the the mince. Then you make the potatoes a bit like a mash, but you don't let it become too soggy. So you boil the potatoes and you mash them. Then you make them into small balls, like the size of your palm and you put the mince inside and you roll them so that they become. I think I have one right here. Let me show you. I have I have an actual one that we're having for today. So this is Ketlis and inside. So you put the mince inside, you roll it. And then you put it into. Some eggs and some breadcrumbs and then you fry it. That's it. That sounds delicious. And we want to make sure you get to your food. We're so when I kindly joined us to while fasting, and I think it's around if our time. So our final question and we ask all of our speakers this. Do you have any gin stories that you can share with us today and bonus points if they relate to food? Any gin stories? We love to end with a gin story. Unfortunately, I'm very bad with stories in general. I guess I'm losing the bonus points. It's not great. Thank you so much for your time. I'll pass it over to Danica now. Yeah, thank you, Lana, so much for being with us today. We really, really appreciate you. We know you have to go break your fast. So thank you. Thank you for everyone who tuned in. We loved everyone's engagement and thoughtfulness. Also, another huge thanks to Lana. Our event next or next event will occur in May. So make sure to subscribe to Code Pink's YouTube channel so you can keep up with Beyond the Beyond the War series. And if you miss any episodes, that's OK. If you go into Code Pink's YouTube channel, there is a playlist called Beyond the War where all of our episodes will be. And thank you all for tuning in and thank you, Lana, and again. And thank you so much to Arwa and Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. Thank you all for having me. And I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it inspires you to go and to find out more about Yemeni food and Yemen in general. Thank you. Thank you. Everyone, have a great day.