TV Chef Adds World of Flavors to Arab Cuisine
Writer:	Neil MacFarquhar
Source:	The New York Times
Date:	Monday, 7 January 2002

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 3 —

     For their annual feast marking the end of Ramadan, the Teffaha household boldly decided to defy tradition, scratching stuffed lamb off the menu and penciling in a roast turkey.

The problem was how to cook it. Riffling through old Lebanese cookbooks failed to unearth a recipe. No one in their building had ever tried to cook a bird. Then an excited neighbor called one day at noon and yelled that they should turn on the television immediately, because Chef Ramzi was preparing that very thing.

Ramzi Shwayri, Lebanon's first television chef, is changing the face of Arab cuisine. The chef tinkers with traditional recipes and introduces foods once experienced only vicariously.

"The chef sort of said this is the American turkey you see on sitcoms," recalled Ghassan Teffaha, a 24-year-old student, pausing to savor his family's holiday feast all over again. "Watching so many people eating turkey, we wanted to try it. My mom learned how to do it from his show, and it turned out to be a really good one." 

Starting in 1994 with just a local broadcast, the 30-year-old chef has blossomed into a regional phenomenon, his live satellite broadcast on Future Television now considered mandatory watching from Muscat to Marrakesh and beyond.

"Chef Ramzi," the cookbook, is in its 10th printing, with more than 160,000 copies in circulation. (In the Middle East, marketing statistics remain anecdotal, but a book selling more than 5,000 copies is considered a runaway best seller.) The cookbook outsold every other book in 1998 and 1999, according to various publishers, even surpassing vastly popular religious treatises that discuss things like the afterlife. It remains in the top 10.

Watching "Chef Ramzi," the television show, feels vaguely like eavesdropping in an extended Arab living room. Chef Ramzi fields calls from anybody with a food question. (The station adds two operators while he is on the air.) 

On one show, a bee plopped into a cream dish. He scooped it out with a large spoon and proclaimed it unlikely to sully the dish.

A woman from Saudi Arabia called to complain that for the sake of hygiene, he should have tossed out the whole thing. The Sudanese woman who called next argued that bees were mentioned in the Koran as exceptionally clean insects with their own souls, so he should have left it. A Syrian man then phoned, wondering if they could drop the philosophizing and just cook.

"It's not just frying and onions and meat," Chef Ramzi said over a meze lunch, an ever-expanding battery of small dishes containing beans, salads, dips and cold cuts. "I feel it's a cultural program, about food, cooking, the history of the dish, old Lebanese recipes."

Arab nations squabble about food along with everything else, so Chef Ramzi discovered that favoring a Lebanese method would prompt a flood of calls from say, Egypt, complaining of bias. He makes sure to mention the alternatives. 

He avoids dishes containing wine or pork out of respect for Islamic dietary laws. So many callers asked for a wine substitute, however, that he developed a recipe from vinegar. Even novices asking how to boil rice find a patient teacher. 

Chef Ramzi, which is what everyone on Beirut's streets calls him, did not set out to become a famous cook. He was the third of four children born in Beirut to Greek Orthodox parents. In 1957, the older Mr. Shwayri started Al-Kafaat Foundation, which teaches vocational skills to troubled or handicapped youths. 

The son, forced by the civil war to finish his education in France, studied economics and law at the University of Lyon. He spent summers studying cooking or working in restaurants with the idea of improving the foundation's catering department. He now runs it, supplying hundreds of cooks and restaurant workers to the re-emerging hotel industry. The chef considers that his main job and the time involved proscribes opening a restaurant.

He wrote the cookbook because the Lebanese, emerging from the war with a craving for varied recipes with a soupçon of things foreign, could not find anything serious on the market. That and questions from his show determined the contents.

The book falls partly into the cooking-for-idiots category. "Break the egg over the frying pan," reads about a third of the recipe for a fried egg. "I get asked," the chef said with a shrug.

But the 824 recipes go on to detail everything from falafel to sushi to brownies. (Because Chef Ramzi insists on picturing every dish, the Arabic-only book runs 572 pages and weighs 5 pounds.) It also boasts 157 pages of desserts, which helps explain the 66 pounds he has gained since starting the show.

His wife, Tanya Jamous, a 25- year-old dentist, has largely booted him out of their kitchen, both to get a smidgen of her own cooking credit and to make healthier meals.

The Arabic-only show is usually broadcast three days a week — one day for Middle Eastern dishes, one day for something foreign and one day for dessert. Chef Ramzi's popularity spawned imitators, but none are live and they lack his verve.

Next, Chef Ramzi wants to cross beyond the Arab world and its diaspora. A cookbook of old Lebanese recipes is due out this summer in Arabic, French and English.

He respects the basics of all Middle Eastern dishes, but raises some hackles with innovations like using pistachio nuts frequently instead of almonds.

"Women have become comfortable with his methods and are using them more and more," said Warde Fawaz, the owner of Walima, a renowned Lebanese restaurant. "He gives people ideas and he is changing the taste of Lebanese food, but it is not always for the better." 

After more than 1,000 shows Chef Ramzi says his most difficult task is to convince Arabs to experiment.

"They know how their mother used to do it, and their grandmother, so for them this is a holy recipe, they can't change it," he said. "I tell people not to be prisoners of your recipes — you have to let your imagination take over, and they are starting to."

§ Links:

• The New York Times