SOUL FOOD:

The food is plenteous, tasty and home-cooked, served buffet style. Dessert is deep dishes of Noah’s pudding, a concoction of grains, beans, fruits, nuts and spices.

Deep red pomegranate seeds shine like jewels on top. The pudding itself is the jewel of this occasion, Ashura at the Pacifica Institute.

Gracious young Turkish men deliver the pudding to the dinner tables along with coffee and tea. For them, sharing the pudding is a tradition; they will do it again tonight.

Google “Ashura,” or “Ashoora,” as these Turkish hosts spell it, or ask a dozen or so Muslims what it is.

You’re likely to get as many answers as there are ingredients in this pudding named after Noah but also known as “Ashure” — AH-shoo-REH.

Starting with the word itself, some say it’s an Aramaic form of the Hebrew word “asor,” which means “10th.”

Others will tell you it comes from the Arabic word “Ashara,” which means “10.”

Etymologies and spellings, which are in any case transliterations, come in several variations. Yet some things are agreed.

One: The Prophet Muhammad invoked its observance in the 7th century as a fast. Arriving in Medina, it’s said, Muhammad observed Jews in the city fasting and asked them why.

They told him they were remembering the day God rescued Moses and the Israelites from slavery by drowning Egypt’s pharaoh in the Red Sea. By some accounts Muhammad told the Jews, “I am closer to my brother Moses than you.”

He decided to honor the day by fasting himself and encouraged other Muslims to do so, too. Muslims around the globe observe Ashura on the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of their lunar calendar.

Hence its name. This year, the day fell on Jan. 7.

For pragmatic reasons, the Turkish Muslims at the Pacifica Institute in Irvine decided to share Noah’s pudding with the community — as is their tradition — on Jan. 15 and today.

“[Turkish families] make the puddings,” Tezcan Inanlar, Pacifica’s Orange County representative told me. “It’s all volunteer work [and] takes time to arrange and organize.”

As I talked to a number of Muslims recently about Ashura, I wondered why, given its beginnings, it didn’t coincide with the Jewish Passover. Maria Khani, who lives here in Huntington Beach, explained it this way.

“When the Prophet was in Medina the first year,” she wrote to me in an e-mail, “the Jews were celebrating [on what] happened to be on the 10th of the first month of the lunar calendar.”

And Muslims have stuck to that lunar calendar, observing Ashura on the same day.

While the Jews, she explained, “have their leap year every four years, [which has] made their Passover on a different day.”

Along with the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, Islam teaches that many other significant events took place on the 10th day of Muharram.

On this day, it’s believed, God created the sky, the mountains and the sea.

And God created Adam, who on a later Ashura repented of his sin — as did David many years after him — and God forgave them.

Likewise, Muhammad taught, God would absolve Muslims of the sins they committed in the previous year, if on Ashura they fasted with repentance and sought his forgiveness.

On Ashura, Jonah emerged from the belly of the whale that swallowed him in the deep.

Job was relieved of his many plagues.

God delivered Abraham from the fire of Nebuchadnezzar. Jacob regained his sight. Joseph was pulled from the pit his brothers had cast him in.

Solomon was endowed with royal power. The prayers of the temple priest Zacharias were heard and he and his wife had a son later known as John the Baptist.

Father Abraham, according to Islam, was born on Ashura, as was Jesus.

On Ashura, Shiite Muslims focus on a somewhat more recent event: the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Muhammad, in A.D. 680.

If you’ve heard of Ashura at all, it’s likely because of Shiite commemorations.

Many remember Hussein’s martyrdom at the hands of his rivals with what are described as passion plays and with processions that sometimes include bloody displays of self-flagellation.

Less often catching media attention, is the Turkish Muslim tradition of highlighting the safe landing of Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat, which is also said to have occurred on Ashura.

Central to their celebration is the making and sharing of Noah’s pudding.

They tell me that in Turkey both Muslims and Christians remember the story of mankind’s salvation through Noah on Ashura.

They tell me both Muslims and Christians make and share the pudding as a way of cultivating friendships in their communities. But neither they nor I, at this point, have been able to find Christians to corroborate this claim.

Some interfaith groups in the United States, though, have joined the Turkish Muslim tradition — a tradition that seems almost tailor-made for championing the benefits of multiculturalism and religious tolerance.

As the story goes, the pudding was first made on the ark out of necessity.

It combined every sort of ingredient, as I’ve said — grains, beans, fruits, nuts and spices — from its stores.

The flavor of each ingredient combines to create an overall pleasing taste, they say. But at the same time, none ever loses its own distinct taste.

Thus, the pudding is a perfect metaphor for a multicultural society, whether it be Orange County or Anatolia, which comprises most of modern Turkey.

It’s been six years since a group of Turkish Muslims founded the Pacifica Institute in Orange County. Their goal is to cultivate cross-cultural awareness and to encourage mutual acceptance and respect.

For Ashura, they have extended an invitation to join them at the Pacifica Institute in Irvine for a dinner of homemade Turkish cuisine and, of course, Noah’s pudding. One of those dinners will be at 6:30 tonight.

If you’d like to be there, call (949) 679-9339 to see if there’s still room. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet these truly gracious people while enjoying a great meal and their remarkable hospitality.

You can find a recipe for Noah’s pudding and learn more about the Pacifica Institute at www.pacificainstitute.org.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.