EAT PALESTINE
“FALASTIN IS A NEW KIND OF PALESTINIAN COOKBOOK: a contemporary collection of over 110 recipes we hope you’ll cook, eat, love and make your own. It’s the culmination of Sami’s lifetime obsession with Middle Eastern food and cooking and Tara’s decade-long obsession with the same. Sami was born and raised in East Jerusalem, relocated to London in his late twenties, and was a founding member of Ottolenghi, while Tara was raised in London and adopted into the Ottolenghi family.
The recipes come, therefore, from all sorts of places. Some are those Sami grew up with and which will always remind him of home. His father’s easy za’atar eggs, for example, or his mother’s buttermilk fattoush. Others are those most Palestinians grew up on: classics such as chicken musakhan (see right). We haven’t felt bound by a set list of ‘traditional Palestinian dishes’, though. We’d rather shine a new light on an old classic than re-create it verbatim.
“ We’d rather shine a light on an old classic than re-create it verbatim ”
If was Sami and Yotam’s joint effort to celebrate the food of their home town and bring it to a wider audience, then is Sami and Tara’s focus on the food of Palestine. Speaking in general terms about ‘Middle Eastern’ food is rather like saying ‘European food’, or ‘Italian food’: it does not pay heed to all the distinct people, produce and dishes which distinguish one country from another within a region. It doesn’t allow for the importance of sumac in a dish such as chicken to shine, for example, or reveal how many Gazan dishes have the trio of dill, garlic and chilli shaping them. Keeping our focus exclusively on Palestine allows us to explore not only the food of this
