Tastes from the Underground
Text and Photos by Justin Fornal
Every morning, Zapotec potter Margarita Lara walks from her home studio to a small pit where she mines her own clay in Oaxaca. She uses a long prying bar to break it off in large shiny chunks.
A bidding frenzy erupts among a group of female khat sellers on the outskirts of Harar, Ethiopia. Turquoise-, canary- and magenta-scarved merchants thrust green bouquets of the psychotropic plant clippings at each other while yelling out prices and bold claims of superior quality khat strains. The old city of Harar, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016, is built like a fortress, the entire city is surrounded by 4-meter-high walls, with six entry gates. Although there are several large, open-air markets behind the walls, the areas around the gates serve as their own microcosms of frenetic commerce.
Carrying a bundle of the aforementioned khat, I enter the city through the Erer Gate. But khat isn’t what I’m here for. I am visiting Harar for ovens, specifically those made from repurposed termite clay.
While in some parts of the world, wood-fueled ovens are made directly within standing termite mounds, the ovens I seek in Harar are built from a mixture of sand, straw and clay gathered from broken-up mounds. Termites build their nests grain by grain from clay that they mine from beneath the earth’s surface. This clay is a convenient standing resource for oven builders as the termites have done the work of both digging up and filtering the clay. It is treasured for building ovens as the clay can withstand incredibly high heat and can even be fired in a kiln to make bricks and pottery.
Justin Cherry, a baking historian and clay oven builder based in Charleston, South Carolina, was fascinated when I told him about the termite clay ovens.
“Clay ovens for cooking are a rare thing in this day and age,” he says. “I built mine based on a historic description of an oven used by the Salzburgers in 18th century Georgia. I would love to see how the termite clay handles heat in comparison to the Georgian red clay I used for my oven.”
While Cherry uses his clay oven to focus on re-creating traditional American Colonial cuisine, the clay ovens of Harar are used to create a number of traditional local Harari delicacies such as hanid, a slow-stewed goat meat served with an assortment of pickled salads and fiery sauces. Termite clay’s ability to retain heat makes it perfect for the type of low and slow braising hanid requires.
I am told Testie Restaurant (known for its hanid) has closed, but the hanid at Old Fresh Tech is just as good.
Back in the market, one of the first stalls I come across, ironically enough, is a woman selling bite-sized pieces of dried clay. She explains that it is a special edible clay gathered in the nearby Berassa Hills that is sold to pregnant people who have a craving to ingest dirt. The phenomenon, known as pica, or more specifically geophagy, is a common occurrence during pregnancy. Some scientists believe the craving is not specifically for the clay, but for the high levels of iron, copper, magnesium, calcium and minerals within it.
The clay ovens of Harar are used to create a number of traditional local Harari delicacies such as hanid, a slow-stewed goat meat served with an assortment of pickled salads and fiery sauces.
***
Researching regional geophagy and unique culinary dirts has been a passion of mine for many years. I smile as I take my first bite of Berassa Hill Clay. It is smooth, creamy, like biting into a bottle cap candy without the sweetness, just a brittle crumbling texture, fresh rain taste, followed by a long chalky finish. As I continue through Harar’s network of alleyways I slowly work my way through the small bag of clay lozenges, all the while feeding my cheek with fresh khat leaves and reminiscing over some of the wonderful dirts I have encountered over the years.
My mind wanders to a January morning in Kentwood, Louisiana, with genealogist and activist Antoinette Harrell. We pulled up behind a small church so she could show me a raised hillside of bright red dirt that appeared to be suffering from some sort of natural erosion.
“You see that whole part of the hill that is missing?” she asked “That’s from people taking the dirt home to eat. They have been coming here for that dirt for as long as I can remember. Folks will take home a chunk the size of a loaf of bread and bake it in the oven. If you have relatives who moved up north you might just send them some dirt in the mail.”
My jaw drops in amazement at the thought of families harvesting this stunning copper red dirt after Sunday Mass.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Antoinette, I am going to go eat some of that dirt”
“I knew you would.”
The bright red dirt had a distinct saltiness, and I found it almost identical to the dirt consumed by the rural communities of Chagga people on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Sold in open-air markets like any other spice or raw ingredient, this colorful earth is the key ingredient in the banana and beans cook up known as Kiburu. Farther south in Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains, the Luguru people eat a red dirt called udongo. The dirt is carefully filtered, sifted, washed, dried and usually eaten by itself in sticks known as pemba.
The clean creamy finish of udongo is not unlike the Tierra Santa tablets shared with me by Callita Diego, a well-known singer and chef in the Garifuna community of El Triunfo de La Cruz, Honduras. The cookie-sized clay tablets come wrapped individually in decorative plastic and are imprinted with images of Christ and the crucifixion. Callita explains that the sacred tablets are found throughout Central America but the ones that are made and blessed at the Cathedral Basilica of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in Guatemala are considered the most powerful. She makes it clear that if I don’t want to taste the clay, I can just rub the tablet on my skin to receive the sacred benefits. I opt to do both.
The Tierra Santa tablets are far milder than the bonbon tè or mud cookies I am fed in Port Au Prince by my friend Carline Pierre Noel, the Vodou Priestess Rose Carline. The clay, which is gathered from Haiti’s central plateau, is mixed with salt and vegetable shortening. While the Tierra Santa tablets that just use dried clay tend to crumble and dissolve on the tongue, the vegetable shortening transforms the bonbon tè into a drying resinous paste that sticks to the teeth and can be tough to swallow. When I ask Noel about the media’s usage of the bonbon tè’s as a symbol of Haitian poverty, she explains it is much deeper than that.
“The mud cookie is made from special dirt from a specific area,” she says. “It is not just dirt from someone’s yard. There can be good benefits. If you have an aching or running stomach, you might eat a mud cookie and it will soothe you.”
Noel’s explanation matches up perfectly with historic uses of clay as a stomach medicine. Kaopectate, an American liquid stomach remedy introduced in 1936 whose original recipe combined two key ingredients: kaolinite and plant pectin. The kaolinite was extracted from kaolin, also known as Georgian white clay. Its absorbing properties make it a powerhouse ingredient for stopping a running stomach. However, there is also a long tradition in rural Georgia of eating white dirt. Small bags containing chunks of the bone-hued substance are sold as souvenirs at gas stations and roadside attractions. Georgia white dirt is also currently sold online. I have used it to make cookies and flavor ice cream.
***
My daydreams of white clay milkshakes come to an abrupt end as a three-wheeled tuk-tuk comes careening down the narrow hillside alleyway. The small vehicle packed with five young Harari men looks like it might tip over as I narrowly jump out of the way. The cacophonous transport coughs by with a large puff of smoke. The diesel exhaust immediately transports me back to Islay, Scotland, land of the smoked whiskies.
Islay, also known as the Queen of the Hebrides is a small island with eight active whisky distilleries. The single malts of note, which include Laphroaig, Ardbeg and Lagavulin, have gained a following around the world for their signature peatiness. Peat is compressed subterranean organic material that is over 10,000 years old. It is cut from peat bogs when the first 1.5 to 2 meters of topsoil are removed. Once cut to size and air dried, peat is primarily used as fire fuel.
Much like certain woods used for barbecue, peat smoke imparts a very distinct flavor. This sweet smoky signature finds its way into Islay’s famed spirits when the barley used to make the whisky is dried using large peat fueled kilns during the malting process. The amount of peat flavor that ends up in a whisky, known as PPM (parts per million phenol) depends on a vent system that controls how much of the smoke actually comes in contact with the barley. Unpeated whiskies will keep the vents closed, using the dried peat bricks strictly as a heating source to warm the malting floor.
When fresh peat is first removed from the ground it is shiny and slick. It is similar in appearance to another subterranean material used in the process of making craft spirits: the black clay of Santa Maria Atzompa in Oaxaca. Every morning, Zapotec potter Margarita Lara walks from her home studio to a small pit where she mines her own clay. Climbing down into an 8-foot-deep pit, she uses a long prying bar to break off the clay in large shiny chunks. Although not edible, like the termite clay, this black clay is put to use in its own profound culinary rite.
Lara is one of a few potters who are making clay-pot distilling devices used to make ancestral-style mezcal. Aside from giving the resulting mezcal a more earthy mineral taste, the clay pot stills put forth the possibility that pre-Columbian Meso-Americans could have been distilling spirits before the arrival of the Spanish who brought copper stills. While helping Lara to load up buckets with basketball-sized chunks of clay, I ask if she believes the clay pot stills go back to ancient times in Oaxaca.
“I can’t be sure,” she says with a smile, “but we definitely were using this clay, so why not?”
The black clay of Santa Maria Atzompa in Oaxaca is put to use in its own profound culinary rite: clay-pot distilling devices used to make ancestral-style mezcal.
***
When I finally reach the doors of Old Fresh Tech Restaurant, my bag of clay is empty, my mouth feels like a sundried cement mixer, and my stomach is begging for hanid. As I imagine the majestic termite clay ovens inside overflowing with succulent roasted goat, I regress into one last soiled memory. It is a Tuesday in late November, and I am driving down Interstate 80 through Allamuchy Township, New Jersey, with 78-year-old hunter and trapper Bill Guilles in his heavily bumper stickered pickup truck.
“There’s one!”
Bill hollers as he puts on his flashers and swerves across two lanes of traffic into the high grass. I yelp, spilling my coffee all over my jeans. Thinking he has seen a freshly hit deer, I am surprised to find out the object of Bill’s affection is actually a 2-foot-high ant mound. Bill is happy to discover that the inhabitants have long since moved out, as he scoops the contents of the hill into a five-gallon bucket.
“What are you planning on doing with that dirt, Bill?”
“I use ant hill dirt as bedding for my foot traps,” he says. “It’s like anti-freeze. If you use regular dirt to cover up a trap in the winter, it will freeze up and you won’t catch a thing. The ants build their homes one grain at a time, and it works as well as waxed dirt.”
So, while termite clay is sought after for its ability to handle the heat, the ant dirt is sought after for its ability to handle cold.
My meal of hanid at Old Fresh Tech is a lesson in profound sublimity. After completely cleaning my plate, I get the courage to ask owner Abid if I might see his termite clay ovens. Abid shakes his head.
“You should have been here two months ago,” he says. “Wood got too expensive, so we recently switched over to gas ranges.”
I do my best to conceal any reactions of horror and shock, but fail miserably. Seeing my disappointment Abid quickly offers a solution.
“If you want to see one, Mobil Hanid Restaurant down the street still has its clay oven.”
I wipe my mouth and throw back a small shot of coffee.
“Well, Abid, I guess it’s time for hanid round two.”
