Family Chef: Najla’s kabsa from Syria
“As long as I have my health and my family, every day is a special occasion for me,” says Syrian mother Najla as she cooks a family favourite in her new home in Turkey.
Najla and her family knew it was time to leave their home in Idleb, Syria, when tanks and fear replaced the serenity of home. Their once-quiet street had become a war zone, and Najla lay crouched in a corner of her living room cradling her children in her arms.
They packed their bags and left for Turkey that night, arriving in the Boynuyogun refugee camp. That was four years ago.
Now pregnant with her third child — who will be born a refugee in Turkey — Najla explains, “In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined that I’d raise my children outside of Syria, but we find ways to cope.”
One of the ways she makes refugee life more bearable is to speak on the phone with her mother and sisters, who are still back in Idleb. She hasn’t seen them since the night they fled. “We don’t have the luxury to chat and share stories like we used to, but I’m still glad there’s a way to hear my mother’s voice, to talk to her about my pregnancy,” Najla says.
The rest of the time, Najla keeps herself busy by practising her cooking while her husband Nidal works in a grocery store. Kabsa, a popular dish made with rice, meat and vegetables, is a favourite of her children.
“We usually serve kabsa on very special occasions in Syria, but here I make it regularly because my children love it,” she says.
Like thousands of other Syrian refugees in Boynuyogun camp, she buys the ingredients using electronic vouchers provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) in partnership with the Turkish Red Crescent. These vouchers allow her to choose her own food, making it easier to recreate the tastes of home.
She starts preparing the kabsa by placing the chicken into a deep pot and topping it with cloves, laurel leaves, a whole onion, black pepper, red pepper and cinnamon. She adds water and boils the chicken, tearing it into little pieces when it has fully cooked and saving the broth.
Next, she makes the sauce, chopping onions and red and green peppers into small pieces and mixing them with olive oil for five minutes in a separate pot. To this, she adds half a kilo of grated tomatoes and lets the pot simmer for five minutes, before mixing half of the chicken into the sauce along with the chicken broth.
It’s at this point that Najla reveals the secret ingredient that gives the dish its flavour: a dash of special kabsa spice, a blend of several different spices that typically includes cardamom, black pepper, cloves, saffron, cinnamon, nutmeg, black lime and bay leaves.
All that remains now is to add a kilogram of rinsed rice into the pot with everything else, leaving it on the stove until it has cooked through. “As long as I have my health and my family, every day is a special occasion for me,” Najla concludes, as she adds the remaining chicken and dinner is served.
