Middle Eastern food made for all
As it says on the website for this weekend’s Mahrajan Festival in Manchester, Mahrajan is “Arabic for a wicked good time.” The festival is also the main fundraising event for Our Lady of the Cedars church. Nikki Bullock is the coordinator for the event.
“It is a Middle Eastern food festival that takes place at our church,” she said. “It is primarily focused on the food and cultural traditions of Lebanon, which is where the Melkite Church is based. So every August we open our kitchen and our church to our local community and feed anybody who will come.”
This year’s festival will be held on three consecutive days, Bullock said, from Friday, Aug. 21, through Sunday, Aug. 23. One of the goals of the festival, she said, is to be as convenient as possible for the larger community to be able to attend.
Many countries around the Mediterranean have their own versions of the same dishes. Greek baklava is very similar to Lebanese baklawa, and falafel can vary from block to block in a Middle Eastern city, never mind across the region. Our Lady of the Cedars will present the best version of their own, Bullock said.
“We’ve got lamb kebabs and shawarma, kibbeh [a dish made with minced lamb and sometimes beef, pine nuts, and onions], falafel, and stuffed grape leaves. Those seem to always go faster each year,” she said. “Of course we’ve got traditional pastries — the fatayer [savory filled pastries] and the ghraybe [cookies that are shortbread-adjacent], and date fingers — all the things you think of when you think of Lebanese food.”
For the parishioners, the weeks of cooking leading up to the festival are as much fun as the festival itself, Bullock said.
“All the prep work really is a team effort,” she said. “You know, when you’re making the quantities that we are, you really bond as a team. We were joking this year when we were making the kibbeh — I think we made something like 30 trays of kibbeh in an hour and a half…. I don’t know if it’s a world record, but we just crushed it. [Making] the grape leaves is another huge, huge, huge production that requires lots of people. It’s thousands of grape leaves that we’re rolling. So the fact that we’re able to do that in a day, I think, really shows how invested everyone is and how much everyone enjoys each other’s company. People like to come and help and just spend time with each other.”
The volunteers who run the festival represent all age groups, Bullock said. “We’ve had a great influx of young people and young families. And then, of course, there are people like me that have been raised in this church. My mom taught me everything she knew; now I’m doing her job. We’re like a well-oiled machine.”
Bullock said the volunteers who put the Mahrajan festival together put as much thought and effort into creating a mood as they do the food.
“I think what I personally love about our festival,” she said, is that it’s very… I don’t know if ‘open and airy’ is what I want to say, but we’ve just thought a lot about the experience of people coming. So even when it’s really busy we make sure people have a good time. The tents are big and open. The music isn’t too loud. It’s a complete experience; we want to give people the best experience that we can. My favorite thing about the festival is seeing people sitting and smoking hookah and having their drinks and some pastries and being totally relaxed and enjoying each other’s company.”
Mahrajan Festival
Where: Our Lady of the Cedars Church, 140 Mitchell St,, Manchester, olocnh.org
When: Friday, Aug. 21, from 5 to 10 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 22, from noon to 10 p.m., and Sunday, Aug. 23, from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
More: bestfestnh.com.
Featured photo: Courtesy photo.