Hospitality beyond borders
Europe´s Kitchen Madrid with Arpad Dobriban

Since Arpad Dobriban was unable to travel, he developed a special menu which he sent to Madrid by post. 16 guests met at the Goethe-Institut Madrid to eat and discuss together while Arpad Dobriban was present live via Zoom and guided his guests through the evening and his dishes.

Poems by Mohammed Z. Rahman

Pancakes, like fruit, fingerprints and snowflakes hold that peculiar quality of being predictably unpredictable. To honour Arpad Dobrian’s celebration of imperfection in European Fruits, Mohammed ate the three jams on pancakes to compose three poetic sensory responses.

​Albaricoques

Fresh breeze gasps
freed by the twist of a lid,
startled the glum winter.
Sunshine in a thin paste,
a tart melody trills
from another season.

I think about the summer gone,
the places I could have been.
Spread it on the pancake
and with a sizzling tongue
vanish into a syrupy chorus
of orange cymbals.

​Ciruela Amarilla

Ripe honey laced over
plum-pip Cyanide
starts the morning.
Countless imperfect fruit
boiled down, nude
their taste stark and bodily.

Layers of soil folded into sugars
turned by whatever biomagic
and bubbling pot.
Grounded through the mouth,
I flee the city
a short haul flight as long as I chew.

​Naranja Amarga

Hard pectin, bitter and alive
heaves against the spoon
resists its fate.
I carve it from the jar
it makes rude gestures,
flame-like limbs of zest.

A citrus twang bounces
across the pancake,
guitars and banjos
as the teaspoon terraforms
a small mountain
into an amber field.