Noah’s Pudding

When I was 28 years old, I tried to cook Noah’s pudding for the first time in my life. That is a part of our culture in Anatolia. Due to moon calendar, every year in one specific month, we call it Ashura – Noah’s Pudding- month and we cook and eat lots and lots of Noah’s pudding. Legend says that when Noah took everyone on board when the flood started, he cooked this meal with what he had with him, just a big sweetish soup of every good food you can find in this part of the world. 

So when you are cooking Noah’s pudding, it is very important to add 10 different ingredients at least and try to keep it local as possible but include wheat for sure (here is where wheat farming started-not to mention), so I checked what I had at home: this was what I found: wheat, beans, walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, cinnamon, cloves and pomegranate seeds on top. It was a pudding worthy of Noah and his comrades on board. 

After 2-3 hours of cooking time and a lot of tasting in between, the result was incredible, I am not saying just to blow my horn but it was really delicious. As a part of the ritual, you need to distribute some of this Noah’s pudding to your neighbours. I was living in a 7-storey apartment and I had 5 extra bowls that I spared for the neighbours and I started ringing the bells for the very first time in 3 years of my time there. I did not know these people at all and they did not know me, so some of them were happy, some of them surprised but one of this was really like the ending scene of the movie Amelie. I rang the bell and I heard some breathing from the other side of the door but they were not opening the door. Most probably, they were seeing my face through the hole and trying to digest the information: `Who is this stranger?`  And then after ringing the bell for another time and when the sentence “Hi there, I brought you Noah’s pudding” came out of my mouth, the magic spell was broken and the door opened and that guy pulled the bowl out of my hand quickly and slammed the door. I was frozen. Otherwise, if I said we could break the back of the two words, we would continue behind the screen. By the way, you are improving our communication skills.

Author: Naime Surenkok