EAT MY GLOBE:

INTERVIEW WITH LINDA KOMAROFF

INTRO MUSIC

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hello everybody, and welcome to a very special episode of Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn't know you didn't know about food. And today's going to be a real first for us. We shall be having a conversation about an exhibition. This exhibit is one that my wife and I were able to visit very recently. It's called, “Dining with the Sultan: the Fine Art of Feasting.” And it is showing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art – what we affectionately call LACMA – until the 4th of August 2024. It's curator, Linda Komaroff, Curator and Department Head of Art of the Middle East of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Sybil and I found the “Dining with the Sultan” exhibit both fascinating and informative. So much so that I had to invite Linda onto my show to talk about both the act of putting on an exhibit together and, of course, the exhibit itself. Linda has been with LACMA since 1995 where she has doubled the size LACMA's Islamic art collection. She has curated many other exhibits, including the award-winning, “The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia,” and “Gifts of the Sultan: the Art of Giving at the Islamic Courts.” She is also a Fulbright Fellow, an author, and has taught at NYU and UCLA, amongst others.

SM:

So, ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to introduce to you, Linda Komaroff.

Hello.

[Laughter]

LK:

It's really nice to meet you, Simon.

SM:

It's fantastic to meet you. I can't tell you. Let's talk about the exhibit itself if we may. When does an exhibit like this begin to take shape? Are you doing it four or five years ago? Are you doing two years ago? I mean how does this. . . because I don't know much about it and it's such a beautifully organized exhibit that I'd imagine it would take a long time to put together.

LK:

Yes, it's often a labor of love to do an exhibition on this scale, because we have 250 works of art from about. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . 30 different lending institutions and private collections. I think I started thinking about it as an exhibition around 2018. . .

SM:

Oh wow.

LK:

. . . which doesn't mean it occupied all my time, but it, it, it. . . an exhibition of this magnitude does take a certain amount of time. And on the plus side, there are so many works of art from various collections that would fit it in within the parameters of the exhibition. It was more deciding what to ask for in terms of loans or what to use from our own collection, and we've included 50 works, to keep it smaller. I had to keep thinking a little bit smaller, and even 250 works is very, very large.

SM:

Yeah, I was going to ask about that because I'm sure, you know, LACMA has amazing relationships with lots of other museums around the world, you know, be it in the Middle East or be it anywhere, you know, like the, you know, the British Museum, which I'm a fan of as well. So how do you look at what what's available because they've all got such. . . or a lot of them have got amazing collections of Middle Eastern work. What do you. . . . How do you even begin at that?

LK:

Well, one could presume, because I've been working in the field of Islamic art for a very long time, in fact my entire adult life, I know the collections of other museums. And then, fortunately, so many collections are online now. And a key element to being able to borrow from other museums is to have a good relationship with my counterparts at the other museums. Because that's a starting point. It's up to the institution whether or not they'll lend. But you have to start with the curator. And you have to figure out how not to be too greedy. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

. . . and what the plans are for that other institution for showing some of the works of art that I'm requesting. So, it's a real balancing act. And then even after you've gotten the preliminary approval of the curator, its. . . some of the loan forms weren't even finalized until a few weeks before the works of art were due to ship to Los Angeles. So, it became a bit of a nail biter.

SM:

Oh wow. I mean, yeah, I don't even understand how that works. I mean, you know. But it's what you. . . .

LK:

Well, we're all part of the same community and most of the museums we borrow from host their own exhibitions and they want to borrow from us. So, it's reciprocity. But, as I said, we're all part of one big family and we understand how we need to borrow for certain types of exhibitions and how we need to be generous with our loans.

SM:

[Laughter]

I love that because what I was saying in, you know, in the next question I wanted to ask, which is about that, how are the people around the world be able to see this exhibition because I know that, you know, you can have online, you can do all of these things but people need to see this in person because it is so fantastic. And do you ever have these exhibitions moving to another exhibition or. . . . Because again, I say, I always have a lot of time for the British Museum because that's where I'm from and I live very close to it and that sort of thing. So, I'd love, yeah, because we have people from all over the world. I'd love to know if they can see this or if they're just going to be looking at, you know, online or things like that.

LK:

Well, the exhibition is traveling.

SM:

Oh.

LK:

So, it will open at the Detroit Institute of Arts on September 22nd, and will be there through January 5th. And then as far as we know, a different, the same theme, but with different objects will be shown in the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. . .

SM:

Oh, I...

LK:

. . . probably in May, 2025. So, they are mostly using works of art from their own collection, but they're following the format and theme of “Dining with a Sultan.”

SM:

Oh, fantastic. Then the people. . . .

LK:

And then there's an exhibition catalog that people can buy. You can buy it online either from our bookstore or from Amazon, which is just called Dining with the Sultan: the Fine Art of Feasting. There's some things on the exhibition web page on LACMA's website, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, which is recipes. . .

SM:

Which is fantastic.

LK:

. . . and cooking videos.

SM:

Yeah. Because I know. . . .

LK:

And that's about it.

SM:

Well, at least it's beginning to move around or some things are beginning to move around because I do want people to be able to see this and it is fantastic. Do things like the Damascus Room, will that be staying put though, or can that be? Because that is so great.

LK:

Yeah, it has been shown outside of Los Angeles. It was on exhibition for two years at a museum in Saudi Arabia, but I think its traveling days might be over.

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

So that's a huge thing to move around and three weeks to install and three weeks to de-install. So that will be staying put. So, anyone who actually wants to see our 18th century period, our 18th century interior from Damascus will have to come to LA.

SM:

Yeah, I know that both my wife and I was so kind of taken by that, that we loved it. We absolutely did.

Now, I've tried to get everything that this exhibition contains features on. And I have this from your catalogue. You've got continuity and change, the royal cuisine and etiquette from the late antique to early Islamic courts, storing and serving potable water, prefacing the feast, sourcing and preparation, outdoor feasting and picnicking, from the pharmacy, eating for health, music and entertainment, which I really enjoyed, dressing for dinner, which I loved as well, dining across cultures, Chinese Islamic lands and Italy, and coffee culture. Are these the features that you could decide that you wanted to showcase right at the beginning of the event, or is this something that, again, not knowing how you organize these, is this something that developed organically? What would you. . . .

LK:

Yes.

SM: 

How do you do this?

LK:

It's something that developed organically. To begin with, I cast a very wide net and looked at a variety of objects. But once the checklist began to come together and I knew what we would be able to include in the exhibition, I started looking for ways to organize it. Because I didn't start out from the beginning saying, I want to do this, and this in this order. It was more about, as I said, casting a wide net.

And then I decided to organize it in that fashion because it seemed to make sense to do it that way based on the objects that I knew we would be exhibiting. And I thought it would give visitors a richer experience. Since there's no signage in the exhibition that says, this is dining across cultures or this is that, it's possible that visitors aren't noticing that. But I'm not one of those curators that wants to insist on my own curatorial narrative and the way of walking through the exhibition. I want people to be. . . to have their eyes draw them from one work of art to another and take away whatever they choose to, and especially in the exhibition space we have in LACMA, there's one main entry into the exhibition and there's two from the side. So, you never know where people will be entering from. And so, I want there to be really stunning and visually striking works of art everywhere that will engage our visitors.

SM:

I love that. And because that's how I tend to go into things. I go in and I'm like the guy who looks at the shiny, brightest things first, but then gets into the little things. And that's how I spend my time. And I think if you start doing the curate. . . the narrative of this, I think it takes away from the spectacle of it. And okay. . . .

LK:

I discovered the same thing myself, that that's exactly what I do when I visit an exhibition. I usually walk through it once to see how big it is. I walk through it again to see what's really interesting to me. And then I walk through it one last time to get a sense, perhaps, of cohesiveness. But I would never want to compel visitors to see things only through my eyes.

SM:

That's great. I mean, that is terrific. And that's exactly how I think of it.

And what do you think though with hindsight? And that's a horrible thing to mention now once the exhibit is going on. But is there anything you thought, well, this would be great now if I put this in here, or are you very happy when things. . . when the exhibit comes out? I think I'd be kind of slightly worried that something wasn't put in because that's me worrying about it rather than any, what do you call it, people coming in to see it, but I'm sure, you know, you might have a different opinion.

LK:

I don’t. . . . I'm happy with it the way it is. If I did it again, I don't know that I would do it very much differently than the way I've done it. It’s. . . When you're working on something for a long time and it has a lot of moving parts, sometimes you're just glad that it comes together and it makes visual sense. I know. . . . For me, the most exciting part of it is the exhibition was how we installed our Damascus room.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

Because it's exactly the way I wanted it. I didn't want visitors to see it as a time capsule. I didn't want it to be viewed as a typical period room where you take out a fourth wall, put in glass or plexi.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

And you feel you're looking at the past, because it existed in its original home for over 200 years. And so, it changed over time. And I wanted it to become part of Los Angeles. So, the way it's installed now, you can look out one of the windows from the room and see 6th Street in Los Angeles with his palm trees and passing cars. So, it's become part of 21st century Los Angeles as well. So, thought I wouldn't show you.

SM:

Which I absolutely... Tell me about the house in which it existed first or when it first came over. Yeah, for what...

LK:

Well, it belonged to a house that was torn down in 1978 in a quarter of Damascus, which no longer exists. It's the al-Basra quarter. It was outside the historical district, so it wasn't protected. And so, everything was, all the historical buildings were torn down to make way for a road. The room itself and probably the fountain from the same house were purchased by a Lebanese dealer who took it to Beirut in 1978, stayed in Beirut until around 2010. It survived the Lebanese Civil War, so it's a lucky room. And it went to London around 2010 or 11, and that's where I first saw it. The art market for Islamic art is really in London. So, I saw it. It had dismantled and kind of a dirty state because it hadn't been cleaned yet. And so, we brought it to Los Angeles in the summer of 2012 and began studying it. And I began thinking about funding for it because it was both as an acquisition and then of course the conservation . . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . would be costly. And then we officially acquired it in 2014.

SM:

Well, I do recommend to everybody, both those in LA and those who can get by to LA quick, they should go and see this, because even if you didn't want to see everything else, and you absolutely should see everything else, but if you go and see the Damascus Room, it's really extraordinary. So, when you do go, make sure you see that first, because it's really special. It really is.

LK:

Thank you. It's probably one of the things I'm proudest of during my time here. And I was glad that it could premiere in Los Angeles as part of the exhibition because it gives visitors an idea of what the physical space might have been like for dining.

SM:

Yes, it was, it is, it is magnificent. So anybody listening and we have a lot of people who just want to listen to this and that's it and we've done a hundred episodes now of whatever we've been doing, you know, history of fish and chips or a history of everything else we do. But uh, this is an exhibit and we really want people to go and see it. So, make sure you go.

Now you do, you did tell me just before we started that you're gonna have a dinner. Is that right? You're gonna have a. . .

LK:

Yes.

SM:

. . . a dinner to which actually we're going to be in the ‘Stans I think at this time. We're going to visit Uzbekistan and all those other things to talk about the Silk Road and all of those which is close to this. So, we're not going to be here but tell us about this dinner that you've got going because that's something that. . . .

LK:

Okay, so we'll be hosting a kind of medieval banquet at LACMA's restaurant, Ray’s, on the evening of Wednesday, June 12th. All the recipes are, all the dishes are from historical recipes, which will in some cases have to be updated or changed a little bit to make sure we can have access to all of the foods. We'll have, the evening will begin with cocktails or mocktails, a tour of the exhibition, and then the dinner, sit down dinner, family style will be at seven o'clock. I could tell you the tentative menu will be, well, we'll have vegetarian dishes and fish and meat dishes. Everything will, the earliest recipes that we'll have will be from ninth century Baghdad. . .

SM:

Wow.

LK:

. . . from medieval Cairo, North Africa, and elsewhere, and appropriate fruit-flavored juices, water that are fruit-flavored. The dessert is probably gonna be an Andalusian quince pudding.

SM:

Well, I spend a lot of time in...

LK:

But, and then Daniel Newman, who's translated numerous cookbooks from Arabic into English, will be coming from the UK, and he will explain all of the dishes as people begin to eat them. So, it'll be...

SM:

Wow, and who can be invited to this dinner?

LK:

Yep.

Well, anyone who's interested, obviously it's not free, but you could write to the email address for my department is A M E, as in Art of the Middle East, at LACMA.org. And if anyone is interested, just email us and we can give you further details like costs and the actual menu if you're interested.

SM:

Fan. . . .

LK:

We have room, it's limited seating.

SM:

I'm sure, I’m sure it will be.

LK:

So right now, we think we can accommodate maybe 40 people on the interior of the restaurant. If we get a similar number, you know, more than that we might be able to have outdoor dining as well since it's in June.

SM:

Fantastic. Oh, that's great. I wish we were going to be here, but when we're done. . . .

LK:

Yeah, I'm sorry, but you're going to fun places.

SM:

We are going to fun places. I’m really excited by it. It's our first time in the ‘Stans so it's going to be fantastic for us.

You. . . . Now you do say and I, I'm going to quote from you here. So, I hope I got this right. But “for many, if not most of us, our earliest encounter with another culture is not its art, literature, or history but rather it's cuisine.” End quote.

Now, this is something I most definitely agree with, absolutely, and that's why I do, quite frankly, why I do this Food History podcast, because it's me trying to find out stuff and then I share it with other people, and that's what I do.

But tell us how that impacted most people who visited, because I say this because people don't know, I think, just how impactful the Islamic world was, and we're going to talk about coffee later on, but distillation, alchemy, all of these things and sciences like maths, algebra and astronomy, things like. . . . So, I don't think maybe people are as aware of what the Islamic world did. So, can you please just tell us a little bit about that?

LK:

Well, one of the reasons I emphasized learning about another culture through food is because people have an existing curiosity. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . about food and this way that curiosity could ease them into learning about an art and a culture that they very often in America know less about. And it's in terms of the installation of the exhibition, I felt we didn't need a lot of explanatory labels, for instance, because everyone recognizes a cup, a plate, a bowl, a ewer, spoons. And I always point out to visitors with them that maybe their spoons at home are not jewel-encrusted the way the ones in the exhibition are but they can tell that they're spoons. So, that's to me important that you have a level of comfort when you're walking through an exhibition and you don't feel intimidated because it's something that you've never experienced before. So, food is a way like the exhibition that's the cousin of this one, “Gifts of the Sultan,” that I did in 2011 and 12, everyone knows about gifts and gift-giving and likes. . .

SM:

Yes.

LK:

. . . to receive gifts. And so, in this case, everyone certainly knows how to eat.

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

And most people enjoy eating and enjoy making food for friends and family. So, I just thought it would be an easy transition. Some of the takeaways would be, of course, foods that we didn't, that visitors didn't know originated in the Middle East. Like the biggest shock to people, I suppose, is that Swedish meatballs actually come from Turkey. . .

SM:

Yes.

LK:

. . .where they're known as kofta. But, but foods and we have this on there's like a monitor of that with a map that goes through some of the foods that were introduced from the Middle East so we know lemon, watermelon, eggplant, all come. . . . They don't originate in the Middle East. Most of them come from South Asia but it's through the Middle East that they begin to be grown elsewhere. I think one of the most important things that comes of this is dining on glazed ceramic wares which we don't think about how recent that is, but it's really through the Middle East, through Spain, and then into Europe that we come to be eating on such type of tableware and it's because it's cleaner, it's healthier and relatively inexpensive. And I think in America it's probably only into the beginning of the 19th century that we began eating on glazed ceramic tableware, certainly earlier in Europe.

SM:

Oh, that's interesting. But I know because I was talking to someone earlier in fact about 10 o'clock, no, 9 o'clock about forks, you know, coming through from that area. And I, as I said, from the Silk Road, this was kind of the center of it. And you had India and China delivering things to there. And then there's the groups that went all around Europe and that was, I think, one of the special things because they brought their food from there. And I love that and I love Spain because I've been to Spain a hundred times now and that to me Andalusia is a special area for me because my family had a home there. So, these are I think just going to be great things to tell to people. I love that. Oh.

LK:

We do have historical forks in the exhibition that were excavated. They're from the Louvre. They were excavated at Sousa in Iran. It's not generally agreed upon if it's through Byzantium or through Persia that forks are introduced, but it's only really in the 16th century in Europe and then it's still not widespread that people are eating with forks.

SM:

Yeah, I always talk about the one from Byzantium where the lady goes over to Italy and has this fork and the and I think the papal thing said she will be spat on by the I don't know whether that's safe, but she will be spat on by the papal delegates for having this fork. And it's just this weird thing that I find when I was, I was doing a thing on forks in my thing. Is that did you hear something like that? Did you. . . .

LK:

No, I do know that in Renaissance Italy people had traveled with their own silverware when they were invited to a dinner and they had special boxes for that. And then we have in the exhibition from the early 12th century a portable folding fork and spoon which presumably someone brought to dinners with them. Although up until fairly recently since so much of the food, the dishes from the Middle East are finger foods. . .

SM:

Yes.

LK:

. . . people continued to eat with the three fingers of their right hand and or to use bread to sort of either as a spoon, as a fork or a knife to pick up food, which is. . .

SM:

Coming from an Indian background. . . .

LK:

. . . I would just say it's fortuitous. It's fortuitous in terms of the glazed ceramics because they're not scratched by forks and knives. They're in much better condition because they were never touched with something sharp.

SM:

I love that. Again, all of this comes together.

Now, this is something I wanted to... So, I think the Islamic tradition, I may have got the date wrong, but I think 632 CE would be when...

LK:

That's a death of the prophet.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

The Hijrah begins in 622.

SM:

Yeah, so if we carry that on to the ninth century, there's a gap in between. And I wanted to see when the, I mean, it developed at the fine dining area later on, but was there like gradual parts of it or how do you describe that?

LK:

Well, so it's really a ninth century Baghdad, which is the capital of the Islamic world where you have this burgeoning of great food culture. In. . . . Before that, you have Islam begins in Arabia and we know relatively little about the dining traditions there except they were not very varied. They had a favorite dish was boiled meat, camel meat most likely, boiled in salt water with bits of bread in it. They had dates, they had cheese, and there's an interesting account about the Islamic Conquest, related to the Islamic Conquest of Egypt in 639, that the General, whose name is Amr ibn al-As, once he settled in what will become the future Cairo, he decides to host a dinner for the nobility, the local nobility who are Coptic, and he serves a traditional Arabian dish because he's from Mecca. And there's no reaction from his dinner guests. In fact, they seem a little bit repulsed. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

. . . by the simplicity of the meal because Egypt had a much richer cuisine. They would have had fish, they would have had produce. And anyway, he hosts a second dinner and he serves only local dishes and they go away happy.

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

So, it may be an apocryphal story, but it tells us a little bit about how in early Islamic era, the food culture of Saudi. . . of Arabia was understood. So, what happens is that Islam spreads over a very large area of the Middle East and fairly rapidly all the way into Spain by 711. They begin to absorb local food cultures and especially local produce. We know that agriculture changes, especially beginning in the later seventh century, and a whole array of crops are introduced, mostly from South Asia. And so, you have new crops being introduced and you have new recipes that the Arabs are learning about. So, by the time you have the capital in Baghdad.

SM:

Mm-hmm.

LK:

And by around the ninth century, you have all of these things coming together. And perhaps one of the biggest influences is Persian cuisine. Because although we think of Iran and Iraq today as separate countries, Iraq was for a long time part of the Persian Empire.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

So, you have recipes and ideas about food and feasting coming out of the former Persian courts. So, all of these things come together and you have a gourmet culture developing at the court in Baghdad in the ninth century. You have cooking contests at the court. You have dishes that are named after caliphs. . .

SM:

Oh.

LK:

. . . or, or brothers of caliphs or their wives. You have feasts in which poets will come and will write poetry or compose poetry on the spot about the food that they're, that they’re eating. So, it was kind of a food obsessive culture. . .

SM:

I love that.

LK:

. . . in a way. And this of course is important in terms of the history of art because it gives an impetus for creating new types of tableware as well.

SM:

Oh wow, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. I mean I come. . . . I said originally my father is from India and a lot of the North Indian dishes come from Persia. So, we had Korma, which was one of the favorites which is just, oh it's stunning. And it alters a little bit when it's in India, but it's still the same kind of dish of almonds and cream and all of those dishes. So, again, when I think of that, I think of the Indian dishes that I love to cook. And even now, these dishes are still very much the northern part of India. They're very much the same. And in fact, some of them have probably stayed the same while the Persian or those areas have kind of moved on. So, I think that's very, very interesting.

What spurred that gourmet tradition in the 19th century? You're saying it's because they come from different areas of the Islamic...

LK:

Well, you have a lot of different peoples coming together, a lot of different food traditions, you have new crops and you have these existing food traditions like in the Persian Empire or in Coptic Egypt. And so, as you have a new religion and an Arab minority at first that are ruling the lands. And so they’re. . .  in a way they're being confronted by a much richer food tradition than what they had in Arabia. And so, within a generation, they've already forgotten the more austere diet of Arabia and they've, you know, they're deeply invested in the local food traditions. And as I said, they begin, you know, you have new crops being grown, oranges, lemons.

SM:

What are those new dishes, new crops? Because I wouldn't know necessarily all the ones that came in from Southeast Asia or...

LK:

There's a whole book on it, I can't name all of them. The ones that come to mind. . . eggplant. . .

SM:

Right. Yeah.

LK:

. . . for instance, is not indigenous and neither are the citrus fruits, neither are watermelon. Just a whole array of new crops. You have a change in the way lands are farmed. You have more crop rotations, so you have more produce. You have food traveling throughout this, this vast empire also. The distances seem huge. But you could have apricots coming from one place, apples from another, and they would all be focusing on where the great courts are.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

So, in Baghdad, for instance, you could probably get foods from everywhere.

SM:

I guess that's what we start to think of now with you know, London or LA and because we're now getting the produce in from every place in the world.

Let's talk about the three kind of installations you've got going on in here because they are really special.

One of the things I really enjoyed was the kind of the virtual meal experience that you had there. For the. . . our listeners, this exhibit included kind of a low round table decorated with a flower pattern tablecloth. Around the low table are seat cushions where diners, or in this case museum visitors, could sit. The table has a menu that included six dishes, so we're going to ask you about those in a moment. Some flatbread and all of these. Now these six dishes were based on historical recipes, I believe, updated and prepared and I can't get this right, although I do have a book by her, “Silk Road Cooking” by Najmieh.

LK:

Najmieh Batmanglij.

SM:

I can never get this right and her second name is. . .

LK:

Batmanglij. Batmanglij.

SM:

Batmanglij. So, could you just tell her because I say the “Silk Road Cooking” is amazing. It's a great book. But how you decided to choose her or did she choose you or how did this go on because that's. . . .

LK:

Well, first explain a little bit, because we're an art museum, we can't have food. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . or any organic materials introduced into the space. And obviously, food has a big role to play in this exhibition.

SM:

Yes, it does.

LK:

So, we wanted to have virtual food. And when I started thinking about it, I had very high-tech ideas about how we might recreate virtual food, and ultimately went with something very low-tech.

LK:

So, you described the sufra, which is a cloth or any dining surface really that is spread close to the ground or on the ground. We had to raise it up a little bit so we could accommodate people of all abilities.

SM:

So it's like a picnic blanket.

LK:

But normally that cloth would be on, yeah, that cloth, but it would be indoors a lot of times, be on the ground. People would sit not on it, but on cushions next to it. And this would become comparable to a dining table.

SM:

Right.

LK:

And the dining is a little bit different. We have those six dishes that change, but they're communal dishes. So, you'd have maybe two people sometimes more sharing from a common dish. What you described as flatbread is actually fake. That was probably the most costly element in the whole thing because we had those custom made for us. But they're very realistic looking. So, we. . . . I chose from the different historical cookbooks that I began reading. I chose six different dishes that I thought would be representative of different times and places and would combine vegetarian and meat dishes. And then I approached or we approached Najmieh. Not all, she, she. . . Her main focus of course is Iranian cuisine.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

That's her heritage. But approached her and said, here are the historical recipes. Could you figure out how to make them today? And so, she had to do a lot of research. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . because a lot of the historical recipes don't have the basic things we think of. They have ingredients, but they don't necessarily have cooking times or measurements or what you could substitute or all of those other types of things. And you could ask me later on why the cookbooks don't have that. But so, she then had to re-engineer all of these dishes. Now some of them were familiar to her because they're Iranian and some were less so. But that's what she, she did. So, once she had done that, we filmed her making the dishes. And then so we got videos, short videos, that are in the exhibition that show her making each of the six dishes, which are kind of mesmerizing. I noticed visitors just stand and stare and watch them.

SM:

Yes, I did.

LK:

And then we took still images from that. And that became the changing dishes at our virtual feast. And it's very low tech. They're basically monitors. We cut out the centers or bottoms of dishes, there are monitors underneath and the dishes change every 30 seconds or so. I'm giving away all the secrets. I thought we could have holograms back in the day when I thought such things were possible, but not really. So that was the best way of introducing food for us.

SM:

And how. . . I mean, let's go through just mention some of the dishes or all of them if you want to.

LK:

Yeah.

SM:

I've got them all written here or if you've got them. Please just tell us about them because I think a lot of the people who listen to this are also cooks, really good cooks, and a lot of them. And they'll often go, well, how come I didn't get to tell those, you know, what they were. So, if you don't mind that would be really fantastic.

LK:

Not at all, but I'm not going... But if anyone really wants to follow the recipe, you can go to the exhibition page on LACMA's website. . .

SM:

Oh, absolutely.

LK:

. . . scroll all the way down to the bottom, and the recipes are there and so are the videos.

SM:

That would be great, but just to describe them.

LK:

Okay, so we started with... Okay, well, I wanted to start with an eggplant dish, because I think of that as such a quintessential Middle Eastern dish or ingredient, even though it doesn't originate there. So, we have Badhinjan Mahshi, and in, in medieval Arabic, “mahshi” means in a sauce, but in modern Arabic it's stuffed. So Najmieh decided to bake it both stuffed and in a sauce.

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

So, she changed the recipe a little. So, this comes from a 10th century cookbook, but it's a 9th century recipe. And it's attributed to the brother of the caliph Harun al- Rashid. He was the originator of that. ‘Cause as I said, people, whether they're at the court, you know, royalty or not, they were so interested in cooking. And so, you have both men and women who have dishes named after them that they experimented with, or more likely they asked their chef to do it.

SM:

That's, oh.

LK:

They said what they wanted and that was made that way. Another one is Ma’himmas, which is from chickpeas. So, it's a chickpea broth with, with chicken primarily. This is also from the 10th century. And again, it came from a caliph in the 9th century. And it's interesting that chickpea broth was considered to be more nourishing than the actual chickpeas themselves, which were thought to be gaseous, which many of us know is true.

SM:

It's true.

LK:

But they're also thought to be more nourishing.

SM:

But I love those chickpeas because I keep, in fact, they're the biggest thing I keep in my pantry because I use them for, you know, Indian cooking, I use them for Spanish stews, I use them for everything.

LK:

Okay. And then we have a Persian recipe, Zereshk Palaw ba Gusht, or with lamb. People in LA, certainly, where we have a huge Iranian community, will know it better with chicken. But this is using, it's a recipe from the late 16th century from a cookbook. The cookbook was written by a chef at the court of the shah. So, he was cooking for the shah. And because the shah allowed him to take time off to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, he writes this recipe book and gives it to the shah as a present in return. And so, this is a tart dish. Some Persian dishes might be sweet, some are tart. This is made with barberries.

SM:

Ooh.

LK:

And as I said, it's more common for people today to make it with chicken or even duck than with lamb. But our recipe is for lamb. And if you watch the video of Najmieh making it, you'll see it’s. . . when she plates it, she adds beautiful flower petals to it to make it even more beautiful. And I should mention in the historical cookbooks, plating is very important. The flavor is important, the aroma is important, and the way it looks and color is especially important. So, we can read about that.

We have a Halva-yi Zardak, which is from a traditional Indian recipe.

SM:

Yep.

LK:

It's also still made in Afghanistan, which is kind of like a sweet carrot pudding, a very sweet one. There's a late Ottoman one, Tawuk Bureghi. It's like a regular boreg, so a pastry, but it's stuffed. In this one, in this case, we stuffed it with chicken. And this came from an end of the 19th century Ottoman cookbook.

And then the latest recipe we have, or one of them, is Khagina, a sweet omelet. This is actually a little bit earlier than the Tawuk, I guess. Tawuk, I should use correct pronunciation. The last one, the sweet omelet, it's almost like a crepe. This was compiled by a chef again at the court of the Shah, in this case, a much later Shah than 19th century Nasr al-Din Shah. And it comes from a cookbook that we didn't know that the actual manuscript had survived. It's kind of an interesting story. An Iranian scholar visiting, I think France, maybe in the 60s or 70s had come across the cookbook, had microfilmed it, took it back to Iran. A copy of it is in the National Library in Iran.

SM:

Oh.

LK:

And it's been published there, but no one seemed to know where the original cookbook was. And the cookbook was written at the command of Nasir al-Din Shah by his... Asked his chef, because his French doctor, a certain Thoulousan is the doctor's last name, wanted to know what the shah was eating to make sure he had a healthy diet. So, it's a unique, it’s a unique text which says what the shah was eating. And as I said, didn't know that had survived.

Friends of mine who are also colleagues were having dinner with another friend who is a bibliophile. And he mentioned that he knew about the exhibition. He said, do you think Linda would be interested? I have this 19th century cookbook. So, I eventually got in touch and said, sure. And then he sent me pictures of it. And I realized it's this unique cookbook.

SM:

Oh, fantastic.

LK:

And it has, this one has at the top of it. They took it off of the microfilm version for some reason, but it has probably in the hand of the friend's physician that he had been given this book. So. . . .

SM:

That's amazing.

LK:

That was like one of those weird coincidences, I guess. So those are the different recipes that I chose. Mostly because I get to do that, I picked out things that would appeal to me.

SM:

Which is great.

LK:

But then I wanted it to kind of be a meal that could take people all around the Islamic world.

SM:

So, if you do have these, if you look in the catalog, they will have the recipes in there.

LK:

The catalog has the historical recipes. . .

SM:

Right.

LK:

. . . which may be useful to people who want to re-engineer it. But if they want the updated version that Najmieh Batmanglij did, they could find that on our website, on the exhibition page.

SM:

So please make sure you do that.

Let's talk about another installation, which is a form of storytelling, I guess, looking at a mother's bread making. And this was, I think, done like a beautiful hand drawing. And could you help me with the name again?

LK:

Okay, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, and it's a work that we commissioned for the exhibition. He's in our collection. I love his work. He mostly does animations, but he also paints and draws. So, what happened was, maybe he's, I don't remember exactly when I got in touch with him, but I told him the theme of the exhibition, and he immediately said, I want to do something about my mother's bread.

SM:

Oh.

LK:

And I didn't know what he was going to do. And then over time, well, more recently, about a year ago, he started sending me some of the drawings that would make up the animation. And I was really surprised because it focuses in large part on the sufra, and with round loaves of bread on it, which mirrors what we have in the gallery opposite. And that was, again, pure coincidence. So, what he did is. . . it's very emotional. He left Iraq when, around the time when Saddam Hussein was. . .

SM:

Okay.

LK:

. . . still around probably in the early 2000s. And he never lived there again. His parents stayed there, many of his siblings did, but the family is now dispersed. And he talks about the bread and the scent of the bread as it's baking and as his mother takes it out of the oven and makes the children sit quietly at the sufra, waiting for it. It's the smell that sort of triggers all of these other memories for him, memories of feeling loved and safe and protected, especially the way anyone who's had a great childhood would say those are part of their childhood memories. It's kind of bittersweet in the sense that it might be like looking at an old photograph album where so many of the people have passed away and yet you're remembering your affection for them. So that's what this installation does. So, you sit down, you watch the video, and then behind you, you could look at all the preparatory drawings that he did, mostly charcoal and ink and he included a photograph of his mother as, as well. It's just very beautifully done. He talked a little bit about how sometimes the bread would burn his mother's hands and how beautiful he thought her hands were and so on. So, it's a very emotional piece, but I think it's worth sitting and crying through.

SM:

Yeah, I, I always, when I looked at that, I started thinking about how my Welsh grandmother on the other side began to bake bread while we were there in the, and the smell of bread, I think, is something that most people in the world, or certainly those who've been lucky enough to have this bread being cooked for them, is something that everybody in the world can share. Whether they're different scents or different things that, that I can still smell that bread that my grandmother was cooking and that's very simple I think. I love that. I did. Oh.

LK:

We also included the bread recipe. It's in the catalog and in the exhibition. It actually came from Sadik's sister, who said, everyone knows it's just basically Iraqi bread, but not everyone knows that, so they contributed.

SM:

No, I did I did take a picture of the, of what it said. Okay. Now, I know we've talked about the Damascus Room so I’m going to skip that for a bit because we've talked about it. Now, I'm going to talk about coffee, which I actually uh, I can't drink. But I’m allergic to coffee.

We actually did a whole episode on the origins of coffee from Yemen to all of those areas.

So, what you do with these visuals, I think, is very similar to what I do with, you know, just words. But I'd love you to mention, because there's so much of the food that we eat, and you've mentioned that before, I'd love to know how coffee kind of went around the world from your point of view, because I think that may be about the same as mine.

LK:

Well, so it goes from Ethiopia to Yemen.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

And in 15th century Yemen, Sufis or mystics discover that you could turn it into a beverage. And that if you drink this beverage, you can stay up all night chanting and dancing. So, it was very appealing to them. And then from Yemen, it goes into the Ottoman Empire. And it's really in 16th century Istanbul and elsewhere that it becomes this popular beverage. And I would say in Ottoman Turkey especially, and in the capital, coffee, people were as obsessive about coffee as they are in America today. They drank it as much as possible. They flavored it, they talked about it. There's poetry written about, about coffee. And like many Americans, they couldn't get through a day. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

LK:

. . . without having regular coffee breaks to do that. So, we have a really beautiful, painting in the exhibition done in Istanbul, most likely, but by an unknown French artist of a, of a, of a, of an Ottoman lady, a courtly lady drinking her coffee, being served coffee in what was probably a Chinese porcelain cup. And then we have all kinds of coffee paraphernalia opposite that. And then something you could enjoy, since you don't have to drink it, we have a scent box that visitors can lift up that has coffee scent. And I know from some of the guards that visitors have said, what brand of coffee is that? It smells really good and it's no brand of coffee. It's a hundred percent chemical recreation of coffee scent because we couldn't have actual coffee in the exhibition.

SM:

I noticed that you had at the exhibit at LACMA, you had a kind of companion exhibit outside for this Charles White Elementary group. But why. . . . Tell me how that happened and why you thought that was important.

LK:

Well, we have a partnership with them, so we do exhibitions there quite frequently. This seemed to make sense. It's an elementary school that has an exhibition space.

SM:

Okay.

LK:

And so internally, we kept referring to that exhibition as a children's table. You know, America, Thanksgiving, you have the grownup table and the children's table.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

And all the works of art there, I think there's about 60, come from LACMA's collection. And it reiterates some of the main themes of the exhibition but in a, in a more younger person friendly way. And then we, students from that school have come to see the exhibition at LACMA and we hope that others who see the, go to the kids table will come to the grownups table and see the exhibition at, at LACMA.

SM:

And do you think that the children from there, which will be what? I don't know as much about, even though I live in LA, I don't know as much about the education system. So how old are these kids?

LK:

Like 6 to 11, I think.

SM:

And do you think they'll get, I mean, get anything out of this exhibit when they go there?

LK:

Oh yes, they have workshops where they're at. They have the opportunity to recreate an object in the exhibition. I mean, it is kid friendly because kids eat too.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

And you could raise the same question you started at the beginning. Like, what is your first contact with another culture? So, you could say, what food have you, you know, what have you eaten that you think comes from a different culture? Kids know from a very early age that pizza is from Italy.

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

So, you could name any kind of food. It's a very easy way to introduce children to an, an alternate culture and one that's outside the Western tradition.

SM:

And I was going to ask then because of that and you know people in the US throughout the world, I think, well certainly the Western world, they have this notion that Islamic and is, is difficult for them to understand. And I think this is a great position for them to be in going with all our food comes from there or certainly a lot of our food comes from there.

And I was asking about the Islamic culture, how you manage to kind of put that over to people because who do have this odd view of Islam, and all of the kind of things that they're doing because that must be the hardest thing for you to do in a lot of times.

LK:

Well, I mean, it was one of the goals of that particular topic for the exhibition. People in the field of Islamic art very often will compile, or come up with exhibitions that focus on a particular dynasty, a particular region, a particular medium. And I have nothing against that, and I've done it, but I think that it doesn't reach the broadest possible audience. But if you choose something universal, like gift giving or food. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . it allows people, it breaks down barriers without even thinking about it because it's something you know and it's something you could gravitate towards and think this isn't hard. This isn't hard for me to grasp at all. And I think the, you know, I can't do anything about people whose minds are closed. . .

SM:

Yeah.

LK:

. . . to learning. But for people who approach the exhibition and Islamic art and culture with an open mind, I think they'll find that there's more in common than there are differences. And I think that's a first step.

I don't think that an art exhibition can fill the vacuum in people's heads about the Islamic world.

SM:

No, no.

LK:

But it's a first step. It opens a window and someone can say, I think I want to read this book or I want to take this class or maybe I'll buy an airline ticket and I'll travel. So that's what it can do. And then, yeah, I just think because that's my field, I think Islamic art is wonderful.

SM:

Yes, it is.

LK:

So, I think people could begin to, to learn to appreciate it just on its own.

SM:

That's great. And so please tell us again about the dinner that you're going to have and then tell us a bit about how long the exhibition will last. And then we'll move on to some other questions that we do just for fun.

LK:

Okay, so the dinner again is the evening of Wednesday, June 12th at LACMA. If you're interested in information about it, you can email A M E at L A C M A dot O R G. And if you want to get in touch with me, you could email that too.

SM:

Okay.

SM:

Great. And tell us about the exhibit, how long it's going to go on and how long, you know.

LK:

The exhibition will be on view until August 4th, and then many of the same works, about 200 of them will be on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts starting September 22nd.

SM:

Which will be fantastic. So, thank you for that. I think you've done just, it's an incredible exhibition. It really is. And I don't say that about many things. And it was fantastic. And we weren't gonna go, we were because we were traveling and we had other things outside of LA, but we had this time and we said, no, we must go. And I want to tell you and tell everyone who's listening, if you do have an opportunity to come to LA, you absolutely must go to LACMA and see this exhibition. It is unbelievable. So please do.

But now we have, we've got three fun questions and you've just got to answer these. And so, I'm gonna, okay. And if Linda was a meal, now you could mention Islamic or you could just say, I want to be a hot dog in blah blah. You can be anything you like, but if Linda were a meal, what would it be?

LK:

I was raised in a very meat and potatoes home and that's my taste so it would definitely be a meat and potatoes meal.

SM:

So, what would it come on give us a . . . Because meat and potatoes is. . .

LK:

Maybe pot roast and mashed potatoes are my comfort places.

SM:

Oh, I love those. Oh, I love all of those.

LK:

And no vegetables, just pot roast and mashed potatoes.

SM:

Would you put a little bit of gravy, nice gravy on?

LK:

I would.

SM:

Oh, that, see, I love all the, I love it from the, you know, the street vendors right up to the fine dining. So that would be, that would be a delicious thing.

Okay. If you could go to any meal during history or a meal in a particular point in history, what would it be?

LK:

I would like to go to the meal hosted by that first Egyptian conqueror, Amr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, in what became Cairo, but not the first meal, the second one, where he served local Egyptian cuisine rather than Arabian cuisine, because I think we've been a witness to history there.

SM:

Yeah, I think I would join you as well. That does sound like a great one.

If you could choose any great invention in history, what would it be?

LK:

Well, you could tell I'm not a cook because I'd say a microwave. That's the kitchen appliance I use the most. And it's mostly for, it's not for cooking, it's for reheating, takeout food. And I couldn't exist without it.

SM:

Oh. No, that's it. You. . . . I think the microwave. . . . Actually I use one here if I'm got to heat up sprouts or anything I've got, I will put them under water and I'll put them in the thing, the microwave, and they'll come up to temperature and then I'll fry them.

And finally, if people need to find you, and this is whether you, I don't know whether you'll have Instagram or Threads or whether you have an email, but if they find you on Instagram, X, I think it's called now, Threads, Facebook, where can they find you?

LK:

Well, I'm not anywhere on social media. LACMA obviously has an Instagram account, and you can try and reach out to me through that. But the email, if you want to contact me, is A M E at L A C M A dot O R G. And your emails will be answered, especially if you're interested in attending the June 12 dinner.

SM:

Fantastic.

OUTRO MUSIC

Simon:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

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We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.