There’s a new rise of Palestinian cookbooks on the market with the New York Times making the point that “authors and chefs are arguing for their place at the table — to chronicle recipes, safeguard ingredients and assert a sense of humanity.”
Palestinian food is still a rarity in the West, and is much more specific than the broad label of Middle Eastern or even Mediterranean cuisine. Ligaya Mishan, food critic for the New York Times, says the cuisine shares a kinship with other culinary traditions of the region, “with meals built of dishes meant to share, at tables set with bright salads of just harvested vegetables and khubz (flatbread) baked that morning, alongside bowls of cooling yogurt, olive oil and za’atar, a wild herb that is ground with sesame seeds and sumac in a blend that’s deeply floral and sour. But the particular contours of the cuisine come from the natural bounty of the land between the Jordan River and the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, today designated as Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”
Mishan continues: “Some of the [cookbook authors] use their pages to chronicle the current Palestinian plight while others focus on the food and pass over the conflict in silence; both approaches have been criticized. But if to say ‘Palestinian’ is in itself a political act, then each author is, in effect, an advocate. And all are united in the hope of making readers see Palestinians as ‘ordinary human beings with needs and wants.'”
Books to check out:
– Palestine on a Plate by Joudie Kalla
– The Palestinian Table by Reem Kassis
– Baladi by Joudie Kalla
– Zaitoun by Yasmin Khan
– Falastin by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley
