"And as long as you have some heat and a frying pan, you can do anything, can’t you?" he says. Easy for him to say. As evidence, he turns yellow onions into luscious onion confit-cooked in butter until they’re caramelized, then combined with cheese on homemade pizza-baked in the barbecue pit.
Baghdad has always been a city where Iraqis eat very well at home, but not very well in restaurants, which serve almost none of the labor-intensive dishes cooks pride themselves on. In our bureau, though, where the sound of car bombs and mortars regularly drive home the fact that a war is going on, it’s much more than about the food. "It’s all about morale," says Dale. "You eat well, and it just makes life sweeter." It’s on-site therapy, perhaps. And a lesson that life is so precarious, sweetness can be savored in the most unlikely places.
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