Cooking & Dining Experience at Petra Kitchen

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Cooking & dining experience at the Petra Kitchen

"A relaxed, informal atmosphere where you will gather to prepare an evening meal, working alongside local chefs and which offers an evening of learning, fun and a very special dining experience, with each dish gaining the special flavor of a reward well-earned."
- Visit Jordan



Have you ever decided to have a cooking experience while on a vacation or business trip? If that's of interest, the next time you're in Jordan, specifically in Petra, or Waya Musa, check out Petra Kitchen . It's a great way to get to know the local fare more intimately and meet other like-minded travelers while being taught by an executive chef who might just be kind enough to provide you with the recipes for the dishes you cook so you can prepare them once you return home. Let me know if your experience is anything like this one.



Just down the block from the Movenpick Petra , enter the Petra Kitchen, to find a whiteboard with the menu of the night:
Lentil soup
Fattoush
Baba Ganuj (many spellings for this dish aka Baba ganoush.)
Tabbouleh
Tahina salata
Sambousek with cheese (Pastries both sweet and savory)
Mana'eesh bi Zaatar
Galayat Bandura (Pan Cooked Tomatoes)
Kofta bi bandura (Flattened meat with tomato sauce – beef and no wheat!)

Five tables of six to eight honorary sous chefs participate. During my visit, our group of eight travel writers commandeered one table. After a long day at Petra , several of us perched or leaned on stools even for the prep section of the night – it was a great experience, but we were tired!

A sous chef divided up the vegetables between each of our cutting boards as we prepared each dish - - -

For the Tahini salata: Cucumbers to one, tomatoes to a few, parsley to another, green peppers, onion, garlic to more. It was finally confirmed for me that garlic is a clove by section = good to know.



Two eggplants sat on a cutting board in front of my seat. I recognized the eggplant, of course, though couldn't tell what they'd done to it. It was the typical purple, they refer to it as aubergine, but it was shriveled. They explained that they had steamed it for the Baba Ganuj.

That would explain my reaction of dismay, I think, as the others laughed when I asked the sous chef to show me how, precisely, he wanted it prepared. I was not ready – not at all ready – with an upset stomach after a long and tiring day – to have the goo emerge from that skin. I've seen less gore on an operating table. It looked as though something had just been disemboweled – thank goodness it didn't smell that way!

After the chef (thankfully) cored the thing, he had me chop it into smaller sections – I can't say pieces because it was all goo – but it was properly prepped before he returned with the large mixing bowl upon which to mix together. I'll point out, though, he got to wear gloves.

The chef planned nine dishes in all, including main dish, appetizers, vegetables, salads, and desserts. He split the menu between tables, so we'd be sharing our entrees and salads with one group and the soup and dessert makers shared with us.

I liked how they organized it, so they only did one dish at a time.



When we did the meat dish, the Kofta, plastic gloves were provided as egg and beef were mixed, kneaded like dough to combine the ingredients, then the spices, then spread it out along the bottom of the large round pan. We tossed potatoes, peppers, onions into the pan like shooting poker cards to each other as we dealt at a girls' night poker game,

If you want to be sure you get your own tray back, bring a pen to make your mark – but try not to press too hard or you'll create a tear in the aluminum foil.

Once we'd sliced our ingredients for four or five different dishes – our ingredients poured each one from our cutting boards into a large stainless steel mixing bowl except when we made the meat dish (Kofta) and whisked away by the sous chef to place in the oven or on the stove to boil or to refrigerate as appropriate.



Then, we made a Tahina salad, the minced parsley that I'd come to see as a staple of my new Jordanian diet. The onions and tomatoes can be diced as finely as you like when you make it yourself – and maybe not douse it with quite as much balsamic.

When the chopping and mincing is all over, they clear the tables and have the participants sit in the middle of the room as they spread fresh tablecloths and place dinner settings.

Voila.

It's time to eat.

They time things so there's not much downtime. We had a chance to meet some of the other groups. Two extraordinarily well-behaved little girls, ages 5 and 9, pushed cookie cutters into dough with their doting father looking on. We congratulated the mom, a British lady living in Jerusalem, on how well-behaved they were. She smiled, allowed us to take photos of the girls over their shoulders, and was ready for dinner when the chef asked us to take our seats.



It's a late night after a day in the Archeological site of P etra , but not too late for a typical evening meal here. We arrived before 7 and were probably eating by 8 pm. The salads were fresh, not dissimilar to what we'd experienced at every hotel buffet we've visited during our stay – which was somehow reassuring.



The dough items were even more delicious, my wheat-eating colleagues assured me, making me sad I couldn't try them. There were both sweet and savory treats, as tasty as their pictures, I'm told. Hopefully, they'll develop even better gluten-free flours so those of us with celiac disease can enjoy them. Celiac disease is not common in those from the Middle East and wheat is prevalent in their dishes, I estimate 80% of the dishes offered as entrees contain wheat. Fortunately, the salads and meat and potato dishes can help balance the diet and, as many of my colleagues noted, there are more vegetables in this Arabic diet than most of us eat at home. Instead of 4 to 6 servings of vegetables, we probably reached 10 servings daily. No one had to worry about being constipated.



If you can participate in a cooking class and meal in a foreign land, it behooves you to do it. If you're a foodie, you'll love the experience. If you're a traveler, looking to understand the culture more intimately, it's a great way to explore the origins of the dishes as you learn intimately how each item is prepared – from steamed eggplant to minced beef and lamb fat. And it provides the opportunity for someone to laugh at someone else's reaction (like me and the steamed eggplant) which will be a long-standing memory.

None of us refused to do any of the tasks assigned – though those tearing up whilst cutting onions may have been sorely tempted.



Better still, you join like-minded people and it's typical to find something in common. For me, in addition to the British family, I met a Cardiologist at the next table, he and his family traveling from Scarsdale, NY, perhaps 15 minutes from where I attended medical school. Even 30 years after graduating, and him at another city school (NYU) we shared common colleagues and experiences.

You just never know whom you'll meet as you travel around the world – so often, it's someone from just down the road at home.

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