A trek through Lebanon's Mountain Trail opens the doors of hospitality

In 2009, Hana El-Hibri took a trip, a trek along the Lebanon Mountain Trail. She spent a month being welcomed into home after home, experiencing hospitality and an ancient cuisine that most people have never heard of. The result of that experience is Mayylu! Discovering Lebanon's Hidden Culinary Heritage, a book that's much more than a cookbook.

Evan Kleiman: Tell us about this trip and about the trail. 

Hana El-Hibri: In 2009, I was invited to be part of the first team to hike the entire Lebanon Mountain Trail, from north to south, for the first time. This was a journey of discovery for me, the result of which was my first book, A Million Steps: Discovering the Lebanon Mountain Trail. There were many unexpected discoveries that I encountered that didn't have to do just with nature and the sights. My most intriguing discovery was actually so many dishes that I had never heard of. That seed was planted from that very first trip. 

What was also really wonderful for me in this experience was the warm hospitality in the mountain villages and the generosity of spirit, accepting strangers into your home, and so on. It was very heartwarming to have that feeling throughout the 30 days that it took to hike the 450 kilometers of the Lebanon Mountain Trail.

When I got the book, which your son hand-delivered to me, I immediately started flipping through the pages, which is what I do whenever I get a cookbook and I generally go from back to front. What struck me was how simple yet absolutely unusual so many of these dishes were and the interweaving of the stories of the people who are living in a particular place. How they interact with the materials that they have on hand around them, sometimes cultivated, sometimes wild, is so intriguing. Can you talk a little bit about the foraged material?

I'm so glad you brought that up. As you noticed, I call it a food book and not a cookbook because it's about the story of the food and its relevance and the land from whence it came. For me, even though I love hiking, I am pretty much a city girl and I was not at all familiar with foraged edibles. What I discovered was that this is actually an integral part of the diet of these villages. This is part of what they rely on. I had heard of none of these plants, to tell you the truth. I went and foraged with some of the ladies whose specialties are wild edible plants. This is really something very precious. As you know, in most rural areas, recipes are handed down orally. My fear was that if one does not record it or archive it, these recipes may be lost.

Author Hana El-Hibri was invited into homes and introduced to unfamiliar dishes while hiking through Lebanon. Photo courtesy of Gilgamesh Publishing.

Like you said, this isn't just a cookbook, it's a record of a way of life. Tell us about the clay vessels that Sana Jabbour in Assia uses.

When I heard about this lady, she's been making these clay vessels since she was a little girl. I thought they were just regular clay vessels. Then, when I went to visit Sana, I told her, "How long have people been cooking this way?" She said, "Since before the time of Christ." I felt that was a bit of an exaggeration, that maybe some people get over-enthusiastic about their craft and they exaggerate. I actually researched it and it is close to 5,000 or 6,000 years old, this very same type of clay pot. 

The unique thing about these clay pots is that there is no glaze and that all of the components that go into the making of the pot are all from the earth from this particular village. The interesting thing about it is this is a craft that only the women learn. Sana learned from her mom and her mom learned from her mom. They start learning at an early age and it's exclusive to women. Sana jokingly says, "I let my husband help with the furnace but that's about all he's allowed to do." Nobody touches the clay but the women of the village.

It was actually a form of barter. They used to barter their vessels to buy grains and buy all kinds of things that they didn't have in their village. It was like a currency for them way back when.

One thing I found so interesting about the making of the pot is that they use crushed crystals in the clay. 

Yes, these crystals have very special heat-preserving properties and they're only found in this town. 

Tell us about the chicken that is in this pot. 

This particular pot, and one really needs to see the picture to understand what I'm talking about, I call it the first pressure cooker because it has a little valve at the top and they seal it with dough so it's hermetically sealed. They usually do this type of cooking in the winter, when they have their winter stoves going with the wood and they have a lot of coals that come out so they bury the pot in the coals. This is a method that I've seen in several other countries in other areas in the world, like in South America, Africa, even certain parts of Asia where they use coals and clay and they immerse it in the ground. They dig a hole and they cover it with the coals and it slow-cooks. It's kind of in-between a pressure cooker and a crock pot. The taste is so different from anything that I've had. So yeah, it's pretty special. 

Bulgur seems to be everywhere in these mountains and used in ways I've never seen. Can you describe zinkol?

Cuisine is always a dynamic and evolving process but originally, there was no rice in Lebanon and the staple was wheat, so it was burlghul-based dishes. That's why there are so many kinds of kibbeh. Usually, people think of kibbeh as a mixture of burlghul and meat. But in the villages, they have a lot of Lenten variations of this including pumpkin kibbeh. Zinkol is a mix of the burlghul (the cracked wheat) with herbs and flour.

It's kind of like a bulgur gnocchi, in a way.

That's a very good description of it. There are variations of it but the most basic is burlghul with flour and herbs and a little bit of onion and so on. 

It just looks and sounds so delicious, and pretty easy to make, too.

Yeah, that's the beauty of most of the recipes in this book. They're really very simple recipes but the combination of ingredients is what's so different. Everybody has heard of tabbouleh, right? It's parsley with burlghul, tomatoes, mint, and onions. Well, there are five kinds of tabouli in the book that have totally different variations from the regular tabouli and it's all a matter of what is available in that region at that time.

Zinkol is a mix of burlghul (cracked wheat aka bulgur), herbs, and flour. Photo by Hana El-Hibri.