LUNCH FOR ARAFAT

Note: This is obviously an older piece as half of the people featured in it are dead! More contemporary posts are sure to follow…

Yassar Arafat, dressed in his usual khaki military regalia, minus his pistol, (it would be returned after coffee) arrived with his entourage, dressed in expensive, poorly tailored Italian suits. HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was hosting the Palestinian leader at his new palace in Riyadh, with a Chinese lunch that I, as his chef, was in charge of preparing. The conference taking place this week between the leaders of Fatah and Hammas, hosted by the Saudis, in the city of Mecca, a stones throw from the holiest shrine in Islam, the Kaaba, may produce similar results to the Arafat/Alwaleed meeting–very few.

Saudi Arabia is a land of contradictions to say the least. Just ask the westerners who were just sentenced to jail (and lashings and canings) last week for dancing and other vice related crime. They were arrested by the Mutawwa’in, the feared (and heavily bearded!) religious police. One day the westerners and their families were living in a furnished villa, in a secure compound, and the next they are surely dancing to another tune.

When I was working in the Kingdom my chefs used to come in bloodied after being beaten by the Mutawwa’in for being late to prayer. (how do you discipline for being late for shift?) I didn’t know whether to have them make a salad or send them to the hospital! They harangued and threatened me on many occasions for speaking to female nurses whilst shopping in Alazizia, the Prince’s supermarket. They would threaten me with their ubiquitous canes and shout, “stop this immediately! It is haraam (forbidden).”

Most Saudis have a good grasp of English and many wealthy ones with staffs use the word “immediately” quite liberally. (Bring the car around, immediately!) Westerners working in the Kingdom, usually jump to it when the word is used (it’s the money, you see). Typically though, a Saudi, when faced with getting something done in a timely fashion, will say, “Bukra, insh’allah”. (Tomorrow, God willing, maybe, probably not.) We westerners move far too fast for our own good.

Lunch was called for—immediately! The horseshoe-shaped table was set. Place settings in the formal dinning hall (custom gold encrusted red china from Christofle, with gold plated flatware) cost around 25,000 dollars per setting. There were 120 settings, you do the math. I was busy in the adjoining kitchen with Peking Duck, Spicy Crab with Oyster Sauce and Lobster Fried Rice when I tripped over one of the ten velvet covered gift boxes. There were no fortune cookies inside. They were about the size of a double briefcase and were to be presented to Arafat with a check for 10 million U.S. Dollars.

The Prince likes round figures. A year earlier he had given 20 million dollars to rebuild the largest power station in Lebanon after Netanyahu and the Israelis bombed it. A couple of years later, he generously gave Mayor Giulianni and the people of New York 10 million after the 9/11 attack. Giulianni and the Jewish Lobby got their knickers in a twist because of a comment the Prince made, suggesting the U.S. should review its policies in the Middle East–that they may be flawed. Imagine that, flawed U.S. policies in the Middle East.

An assistant and I tended the buffet; we had to make Arafat a plate, as he looked fairly addled, his palsy had really taken hold (he would be dead in a couple years). There were about 25 guests for lunch but we had, as usual, and in keeping with Arab tradition, enough for 125. I was desperate to finish up with the charade of Arab unity and go to my favorite underground pub for a beer, but thought it would be interesting to see what the gifts were.

We wheeled out the 25 desserts and a selection of 50 ice creams and sorbets, while other palace staff rushed around bringing out the mysterious boxes and the jumbo sized check– the same as lotteries use. It was like a game show. When opened to “ohs” and “ahhs”, the boxes contained machine guns and automatic rifles: an American vintage Thompson, a Colt/Browning, an AK-47 an M-16. All of them were gold plated and “symbolic”, thus unusable for “the struggle”. The one that caught my attention though–and I don’t think any body else noticed–was the shiny Israeli Uzi sub-machine gun.

I knew there was some geopolitical irony being fed at this lunch but I couldn’t figure it out, and as far as I knew, Alwaleed would be in Jerusalem the following week, visiting Ehud Barak. Contradictions? Who knows, I’m just the chef.

Mark Ceranski has worked as executive chef at Harrods and as private chef to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal along with many others. His memoir, POTBOILER: IN THE KITCHEN WITH ROYALTY, DICTATORS AND DESPOTS is being completed for submission to publisher.

This is an excerpt from a guest column I’m writing for Anne Mini’s blog, Author! Author! Anne is an author and freelance editor. You will have to go to Anne’s site, www.annemini.com to read the article (hopefully amusing and informative as that’s what I’m all about) in a couple weeks. While it’s only a menu, it may give the reader a small taste of working behind closed doors in Saudi Arabia.

A typical lunch at Prince Alwaleed’s Palace

   Western

 Salads

 Rucette white beans and prawns

Ceasar Salad

Fine green beans and Belgian Endive

Seared salmon and mache lettuce

Hearts of palm and tuna

Whole poached cold salmon with gelatin

 Hot Courses

 Roasted whole sea bass or local Harmour (a type of grouper) with various sauces

Grilled scallops with garlic, butter, zested lemon and parsley

Baked Main lobster with drawn butter

Tiger prawns marinated and barbequed

Veal loin with a lime demi-glace

Veal Milanese

Roast prime rib of beef, Yorkshire pudding and gravy

Roast chicken with truffled jus

 Vegetable Dishes

 Rattatoullie

Braised Endive

Grilled asparagus

Dauphinoise potatoes

Sauteed potatoes

Desserts

Raspberry Charlotte

White, bitter and milk chocolate mousse cake

Lemon tarte

Pear and caramel torte

Mixed fruit tartes x3

Ice cream and Sorbets (Hagan Daaz) x24

Fresh fruits cut and nature

Baked Alaska

Cream Anglaise, fruit purrees, chocolate and caramel sauces

Lebanese and Arabic Dishes

 Mesas (first courses)

 Fatoush (oriental salad)

Tabouli

Houmous

Mochtabel

Roasted eggplant with sumak, lemon and garlic

Falafel

Rolled grape leaves

 Main courses

Kebbah

Moulahia

Moulahia with chicken

Shish kebobs

Shish Taouck

Cabbage rolls

Frarej

Veal carpaccio

Lebanese pizza

Pickles

Goat and chicken kabsa

Arabic cooked bulgar and assorted gruels

 Lebanese sweets and baklava

Jello with milk-soaked white bread

Um-ali (A milk pudding concoction)

If nothing else, the Prince kept a fairly tight schedule with lunch served between five and six in the afternoon. Procuring perishable ingredients for all the meals was hit and miss, with most items purchased through the commercial Azizia super market chain. This caused numerous problems because many of the ingredients I would normally use would never be stocked by a pedestrian market. If I needed something special, the argument (with the Insh’allah palace purchasing dept.) was, the rest would go to waste. My argument was, fuck you, the Prince wants a Maine lobster for lunch tomorrow, I don’t give a shit if you have to throw the rest of the case away! Get me the bloody crustacean!

There were five lunches a week at the palace. Massive lunches were transported to his desert encampment the other two days. His Highness would, with little notice and for security reasons, inform us of a VIP’s or diplomat’s arrival. So, when say, the President of Korea showed up I had twenty four hours to throw together a twenty five course Korean buffet with the mini table grills for the Bul-kalbi (marinated thinly-sliced beef short ribs and tongue). Fortunately, there is a sizable Korean community in Riyadh and I have enjoyed the garlicky cuisine for some time so was able to pull it off.

Excluding the Arabic and Lebanese foods, I was able to execute seventeen different ethnic cuisines (not all of them great) on a rotating basis, so there would not be too much repetition. We were able to have a theme every day if need be. Ironically, because of the closeness of the Indian sub-continent and influx of Indian and Pakistani workers (who bring their cuisines) to Saudi Arabia, the Prince loved Indian as well as Tex-Mexican cuisines. Years ago, if someone had told me that I would be preparing Chimichanga burritos and Fajitas in the Arabian Desert and next to Kensington Palace, I would have laughed.

As the menus show, there was nothing too fancy as the Prince’s tastes were somewhat “pedestrian”. That said, it could be me that is completely out of touch! Lebanese food was on the table every day and it is still one of my favorite cuisines. Goat and chicken Kabsa were provided to the staff daily and always had a place on the buffet for the Bedouins who showed up daily. Rumor had it that the Prince was quite a party boy in his youth but these days he sticks to Islamic guidelines with alcohol and pork haraam (forbidden).

Once the buffet was set, the Prince would walk the gamut of food with a fork, tasting what he pleased and commenting like an Arabic Caesar; yea or nea if it was to his taste. If he really enjoyed a certain dish he would ask who prepared it and dictate to one of his personal aides, Mansour, to give a bonus anywhere between a couple of hundred to a thousand dollars to the lucky chef. If it wasn’t to his taste the chef would be reprimanded or beheaded—just kidding. This didn’t make for harmonious teamwork; to the contrary, it caused more lying and cheating than normal.

There was always enough food for seventy-five to a hundred but never more than twelve at the table. Fortunately, there was enough staff at the palace to scavenge most of the leftovers so there was not a huge amount of wastage compared to the annual yacht trip. One other habit the Prince had was the ability to finish a meal in twenty to thirty minutes, no matter how many courses. The average lunch at the palace lasted twenty-two minutes.

Bon apetite!

Just a quick reminder, I will be doing a dinner for the Puna Music Festival at Kalani on 27 May. See you there if you happen to be on the big island of Hawaii!

Potboiler:

In the Kitchen with Royalty, Dictators and Despots

What happens when a person has a steady supply of more money than God intended? He eats differently than the rest of us, for one thing, and few know this more intimately than Mark Ceranski, personal chef to some of the richest, most notorious, and controversial figures on the planet. Potboiler is Ceranski’s wickedly funny tour de force through thirty years in the extraordinary world behind the kitchen doors of Windsor Castle, Saudi royal palaces, luxury mega-yachts sailing from Cannes to Cuba, and the mega-kitchens of the hallowed Food Halls of Harrods in London.

One day he’s serving a romantic, candlelit dinner to the ill-fated lovers Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed, and the next he’s greeting Her Majesty in old jeans and sneakers because Scotland Yard mistook the backpack that held his change of clothes for a bomb – all the while making sure the foie gras doesn’t burn, the risotto isn’t overdone, and the gas grill isn’t blowing his staff into the high seas.

In Ceranski’s world “chopping block” has dual meanings; it’s a place where one can behead the chicken that’s being served for dinner as easily as one can (quite inadvertently) attend an execution – and where knowing how to prepare a good bowl of “kabsa” can keep a man out of jail. A world where “The Queen” can refer to Elizabeth II of England as well as the insufferable young playboy who wants you to procure more for his pleasure than merely the meat for the evening’s barbeque. Where a foul odor can mean anything from spoiled caviar to a dead body over the palace kitchen.

It’s an insanely seductive world where you’d better be on your toes no matter how many bottles of French wine you’ve managed to kill the night before because the English Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is dropping by for lunch. And you never know when you’re going to have to anesthetize a Russian billionaire with vodka before you assist with the removal of some Chechen War shrapnel in an impromptu operation. And you are no longer fazed when the host blithely throws $15,000 in small bills overboard for the amusement of his guests.

You just keep on cooking.

It’s a measure of Ceranski’s skill at storytelling that Potboiler is more than just a behind-the-scenes romp with the idle class. It is an enlightening and shrewd eye-witness account of geopolitical partying. Need favors for a luncheon with Yasser Arafat? What would be more appropriate than vintage American automatic weapons? Decide you want to change jobs? Try getting your passport back from the multi-billionaire Saudi prince who wants you to stay on.

The even more remarkable feat that Ceranski pulls off, however, is that though his observations are sometimes mercilessly sharp, he shares with readers his real affection for the unpredictable world of high-stakes cooking – and for the people who populate it. Whether he’s negotiating a truce between Hutu and Tutsi dishwashers battling in Harrods’ pastry kitchen or going head-to-head with Mohamed Al Fayed, Ceranski doesn’t let craziness or excess keep him from finding – and, in most cases, genuinely liking – the human being underneath.

A chef’s memoir must almost necessarily include recipes and menus. Ceranski’s does – the reader will be able to recreate in his/her own kitchen Elizabeth II’s favorite artichoke dish or the crème brulee for which Diana had a weakness. He or she will also take away the constructive culinary advice this master chef tosses off spontaneously, and generously, throughout his story.

Ceranski is probably the least known of the ‘celebrity chefs’ – discretion being a valued commodity among KGB agents, fornicating Bedouins, and celebrities healing broken hearts on the blue waters of the Mediterranean; thirty years of hot ovens, lost sleep, and personal sacrifice filling the bellies of the people who shape the planet as we know it has put Ceranski in the unique position to take readers on a preposterous, sexy/crazy culinary adventure. He is unpretentious and hilarious in the telling of a tale where there is always elegant food on the table, a bit of subterfuge in the background, and a pot on the boil.