Make hummus, not war: In the face of unspeakable destruction in Gaza, show solidarity through cooking

By Leslie Brenner

The humanitarian catastrophe that is devastating Gaza — which began with Israeli police preventing Palestinians from gathering near one of East Jerusalem’s ancient city gates during the holy month of Ramadan — is tragic, outrageous, and needs to stop.

For an American of Jewish descent who deplores the actions of Israel’s far-right-wing government, the feelings of shame, outrage and powerlessness can be overwhelming.

What can we do from thousands of miles away, besides plead for a cease-fire? We can support the civilians of Gaza by thinking about them as people. By learning about them, and trying to understand Palestinians and their plight.

Even before the current waves of bombs and rockets, the territory was suffering mightily: According to a United Nations report published last year, it has the “world’s highest unemployment rate,” with more than half its population living below the poverty line. Now more than 200 people there have been killed, including at least 61 children.

As a cook, it’s hard not to think immediately about Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, who wrote their incredible cookbook Jerusalem together and published it a decade ago. And about Tamimi and Tara Wigley, who published Falastin last year, celebrating the cooking of Palestine. (Ottolenghi wrote the foreword, explaining that with Falastin, Tamimi and Wigley “picked up the baton where it was left after Jerusalem.”)

Though saying so feels woefully inadequate for the moment, peace begins with understanding. If you don’t know anything about Palestinians, get your hands on the book. Plan a dinner of Chicken Musakhan, Palestine’s national dish. Read about the people, their culture of tahini, the way they make bread. Watch Tara Wigley talking with Cooks Without Borders about her experiences traveling and researching in Palestine for the book.

Meanwhile, make hummus — now, or tonight. Brilliant in its simplicity, it’s a dip enjoyed by Palestinians and Israelis alike. (And don’t forget that there are legions of Israelis who are against what their government is doing, just as legions of Americans deplored anti-human American policies like permanently separating families coming across our borders.) You can use dried chick peas, for the Ultimate Hummus, or use canned ones for a pretty great Cheater Version. Make your own pita bread (khobz in Arabic), or pick some up at Trader Joe’s.

Protest on a plate. Empathy, in a dip.

RECIPE: Ultimate Hummus

RECIPE: Amazing Cheater Hummus

RECIPE: ‘Falastin’ Chicken Musakhan

RECIPE: Half Whole-Wheat Pita Bread

Cooks Without Borders to host Tara Wigley — Ottolenghi and Tamimi's co-author — for a special live video event

Tara Wigley is co-author of ‘Falastin,’ ‘Ottolenghi Simple’ and other cookbooks. / Photo by Jenny Zarins

By Leslie Brenner

If you are a fan of Yotam Ottlenghi and his books (is there anyone who isn’t?), you’ll want to join Cooks Without Borders when we host Tara Wigley for a special Live Video Q & A on Thursday, Feb. 25. The one-hour event will begin at noon CST (10 a.m. PST / 11 a.m. MST / 1 p.m. EST). For participants in Britain, where Wigley lives, it begins at 6 p.m. GMT.

Wigley has collaborated with Ottolenghi since 2010, when she assisted him, working out of his flat in Notting Hill, London, on his cooking column for The Guardian. She has since become an important part of the Ottolenghi family, having worked on many of the cookbooks it has produced, including Plenty More, Nopi and Sweet — and co-authored several with the chef, including Flavor (the most recent) and Ottolenghi Simple — which is probably our favorite of them all.

[Read our review of Ottolenghi Simple.]

Wigley also co-authored, with chef Sami Tamimi (Ottolenghi’s business partner), Falastin — another Cooks Without Borders all-time favorite. You can see her in this video preparing a dish we absolutely adore — Chicken Musakhan — and other Palestinian treats with Tamimi.

[Read our review of Falastin.]

Wigley’s involvement with the Ottolenghi-sphere began when she was just out of Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, having left behind a career in publishing. After a brief stint working at Nopi, she was trying to figure out her life when she got an out-of-the-blue phone call from chef Ottolenghi, who was her “complete hero” — and she thought it was her husband playing a practical joke on her. She tells about it, including how things played out in this wonderful video.

About the Live Q & A with Wigley

Cooks Without Borders Premium Members will have exclusive access to participate in the live event on the 25th, which I’ll be hosting. If you’re not yet a Premium Member, don’t worry — you can try out Premium Membership for one month for free! Or take advantage of our special Charter Annual Membership opportunity.

YES! I’d like a Free Trial Premium Membership. SIGN ME UP!

I have so many questions I’m excited to ask Wigley, and I’m sure you do, too! Hope to see you there.

Live Q & A with Tara Wigley, Thursday, Feb. 25, noon CST (10 a.m. PST, 11 a.m. MST, 1 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. GMT). Sign up from the premium members’ home page.

What to make this weekend: Baked kofta with eggplant and tomato from Sami Tamimi's 'Falastin'

Autumn is my favorite time of year to cook. The kitchen feels cozy (even if it’s still hot outside, as it is here in North Texas), and the ingredients speak to my soul.

It feels like the perfect time — while tomatoes are still happening — to make these baked kofta from Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s recent book, Falastin.

Each kofta is a meltingly tender, intensely flavorful package made by stacking ingredients: a slice of roasted eggplant; a kofta patty made from lamb, beef, onion, garlic, tomato, herbs and spices; a slice of tomato, some rustic tomato sauce.

The aroma as they roast is intoxicating.

Garnished with fresh herbs and toasted pine nuts, it’s a dish that’s at once homey and sophisticated, comfortingly familiar yet gorgeously spiced.

Served with rice, couscous, roasted potatoes or a root-vegetable purée, it makes a smashing fall dinner.

If by some miracle every kofta is not gobbled up, they reheat brilliantly.

RECIPE: ‘Falastin’ Baked Kofta

The 10 most delicious things I made from cookbooks during the pandemic: Part I

At Cooks Without Borders, The Great Confinement has been a time for (among other things) deep dives into cookbooks — focusing mostly on volumes published within the last year, but also on cookbooks from a few years back that we hadn’t yet had a chance to explore.

The riches we’ve found in the pages of the best of them has been absolutely exhilarating, opening up entire new worlds to us.

Here are the first 5 of my 10 favorite dishes from the dozens of cookbook recipes I’ve tested and tasted over the last six months. What they have in common — besides their cravability factor — is that they are all really fun to cook.

Chicken Musakhan from Sami Tamimi’s ‘Falastin’

Traditionally during olive-oil pressing season to celebrate the freshly-pressed oil and served with pebble-textured taboon bread, the Palestinian dish known as Chicken Musakhan is now a year-round favorite in the Levant. “It’s a dish to eat with your hands and with your friends,” writes Sami Tamimi in Falastin,” served from one pot or plate, for everyone to then tear at some of the bread and spoon on the chicken and topping for themselves.” To make it, toss a whole quartered bird with plenty of cumin and sumac and other spices, then roast it and layer it on crisped pieces of torn pita with a lot of long-cooked, sumac-and-cumin-loaded sliced red onions, fried pine nuts and parsley. Spoon over with the roasting juices from the chicken, drizzle on more olive oil, dust with more sumac, and invite everyone to tear in. The dish is stunningly good.

Why we love cooking it: It’s liberating to use all those spices with such abandon.

We reviewed Falastin, which Tamimi wrote with Tara Wigley, in July.

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

These melty-soft baby eggplants with a coconutty, spicy filling come from Anjali Pathak’s 2015 book, The Indian Family Kitchen: Classic Dishes for a New Generation. Sizzled fresh curry leaves make it really special. We spotlighted this dish — finished with dabs of yogurt — in an an August story about eggplants.

Why we love cooking it: The topping is really fun to make, beginning with cooking the mustard seeds in oil till they jump out of the pan, and using the curry leaves (which freeze really well, so if you get your hands on some, buy extra).

Yangzhou Fried Rice from Fuchsia Dunlop’s ‘Every Grain of Rice’

Enticing, satisfying and fun to make, this Yangzhou Fried Rice from Dunlop’s superb 2012 book Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is a dish is a highly craveable classic — one that I’d be happy to eat every week.

Why we love cooking it: Mastery! It’s an ideal recipe to use if you want to learn fried rice technique, as it’s the best (and least fussy) method we’ve found so far. After you try it once, there’s lots of room for ingredient improvisation. A seasoned wok is required.

Our review of the book is coming soon.

‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s award-winning book

The pickled shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking has been a point of joy for us several times during the pandemic, including last weekend, when a friend requested its presence at a socially distanced Labor Day picnic. It’s shown above before being pickled overnight. We reviewed the book in June 2020.

Why we love cooking it: The technique for pickling seafood in vinegar has its roots in Spanish escabeche. A recipe Tipton-Martin found in Savannah, Georgia inspired this one. Once you’ve made it once, you can play with the herbs and spices: This I upped the pickling spice a bit and added a bit more tarragon. Or even run with the basic escabeche idea and use what it’s taught us to pickled fin fish (snapper would be great) or scallops.

Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés from Camille Fourmont’s ‘La Buvette’

Crushed rosebuds and cumin bring a beautifully fragrant and savory aspect to Camille Fourmont’s spin on the classic French sablé cookie; dried apricots add a delightful chewy high note. Though Fourmont credits pastry superstar Pierre Hermé with having dreamt up the flavor combo, it is she who put them together in a sablé. Super buttery and tender, they are exquisite. We reviewed the book they’re from, La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, in August.

Why we love cooking it: Playing with dried flower buds is a treat, and it’s always fun to slice and bake dough that’s been chilling in a log in the fridge.

RECIPE: Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp

RECIPE: Yangzhou Fried Rice

RECIPE: Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

RECIPE: Chicken Musakhan

Exuberantly delicious and beautifully told, 'Falastin' is one of those life-changing cookbooks

My cookbook shelves are lined with hundreds of earnest volumes filled with culturally faithful recipes for legions of traditional dishes. Usually the recipes work and the dishes are correct, often they’re pretty good, occasionally they’re very good. But rarely, when cooked as written, are they so delicious that they make me want to cry.

Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s Falastin: a Cookbook, which Ten Speed Press published last month, is bursting with recipes from Palastine that do just that.

Because it’s described in the headnote as “the hugely popular national dish of Palestine,” I stuck a Post-It on the page with Chicken Musakhan on my first pass through the book, as a reminder to cook it soon. But it looked so simple, like there was nothing to it — just some cut-up chicken rubbed with spices and roasted, served on flat bread with cooked onions (how great could that be?) — so I kept passing it by.

Until one evening I didn’t.

It was gobsmackingly, soul-stirringly fabulous. The chicken, a whole quartered bird, gets tossed with a lot of cumin and sumac, plus cinnamon, allspice, olive oil, salt and pepper, then roasted. Once out of the oven, it gets layered on crisped pieces of torn flatbread with a lot of long-cooked, sumac-and-cumin-loaded sliced red onions, fried pine nuts, plenty of parsley and spooned over with the roasting juices from the chicken. More olive oil gets drizzled on, and more sumac. It’s a stunning, fragrant centerpiece. Before serving it, you pull apart the chicken pieces with your fingers into two or three piece each. Put it in the middle of the table, and have everyone dive in, pulling the chicken apart with fingers, grabbing some soaky, juicy, crispy bread and sumac-ky onions, and groaning with pleasure, and diving back in.

When can we have this again??!!

I went back and reread the headnote. The dish was traditionally made during olive-oil pressing season to celebrate the freshly-pressed oil, but now it’s enjoyed year-round. “Growing up, Sami ate it once a week,” goes the headnote. “It’s a dish to eat with your hands and with your friends, served from one pot or plate, for everyone to then tear at some of the bread and spoon on the chicken and topping for themselves.”

Traditionally, taboon bread is used in the dish. Baked on pebbles in a conical oven, the bread has a pock-marked surface that are great for catching the juices. But the recipe calls for any Arabic flatbread (we used pita from a local Lebanese bakery that I’d stashed in the freezer), or naan.

I can see why Tamimi’s mom, Na’ama, made it once a week: It’s fun and easy to make, probably no more than an hour from start to finish, and a great crowd-pleaser. I’ll be buying sumac futures this week: A full three tablespoons of the spice (a powerful anti-oxidant) go into the dish.

If you’re not familiar with Tamimi, some context may be helpful. Chances are you do know of Yotam Ottolenghi and his cookbooks. Tamimi is head chef for and a founding partner in Ottolenghi’s namesake London restaurant empire. He co-authored Ottolenghi’s first cookbook (Ottolenghi: the Cookbook, 2008). Together the two — led by Ottolenghi — created a style of produce-forward, Levant-accented, slouchy-chic improvisational cooking. In other words, what they did powerfully influenced the way so many of us cook now, and the way food looks on blogs and on Instagram — seductively dissheveled, vegetable happy and casually strewn with tons of herbs.

The two chefs went on to co-author Jerusalem: a Cookbook (2012). Both had grown up in Jerusalem in the 70s and 80s — Ottolenghi, who is Israeli and Italian, in the Jewish west part of the city and Tamimi, who is Palestinian, in the Muslim east. They didn’t know each other back home; they met in London, where they were both living in the 1990s. To the Jerusalem project, each brought his delicious perspective, and they wove together a gorgeous, deep, inspired, cookable portrait of their hometown. The book didn’t shy away from politics, but its explorations managed to unify rather than divide.

With Falastin, Tamimi explores the cooking of his beloved Palestine. “There is no letter ‘P’ in the Arabic language,” begins the introduction, so ‘Falastin’ is, on the one hand, simply the way ‘Falastinians’ refer to themselves.’”

Of course there is an “on the other hand” — and that’s the substance of the book, which Tamimi co-authored with Tara Wigley, a cook and writer who also co-authored Ottolenghi’s most recent book, Ottolengi Simple, and who is an integral part of the Ottolenghi family.

Cilantro-crusted roasted cod with tahini sauce

Beautifully photographed by Jenny Zarins, it’s a wonderful read that conveys so much about the culture that you might feel you’ve been there, and fallen in love with its people. A visit to the apartment-house kitchen of the “yogurt-making ladies of Bethlehem” gives richness to a recipe for balls of labneh (thickened yogurt) marinated in olive oil then rolled in dried herbs or spices. A trip to the Jerusalem shop where Kamel Hashlamon produces tahini that’s “somewhere between a paste and a liquid and truly good enough to drink” makes us understand what separates great tahini from all the bitter crap we get stateside (Humera sesame seeds from Ethiopia, bespoke millstone made by a master Syrian stonemason, cold-pressing at 140 degrees).

The authors, refusing to tip-toe around the politics, address head-on the difficult questions that arise as they tour us around. For instance, it becomes clear that because Kamel sells to a largely Israeli (but also Palestinian) market, some feel he has “sold out.” When Kamel justifies his position by saying “We are all living in the result of the game,” Tamimi doesn’t let him off easy. In the end, though, the last image of his “small stunning shop,” with its irresistible product, is of Israelis and Palestinians standing “side by side at the counter, looking through the glass, debating little more than which halva to buy.” Complicated, uneasy, but what what a privilege it is to be let in on it in a cookbook.

From a culinary point of view, Falastin is also a rare gift: a cookbook filled with exuberantly delicious recipes, each with the special flair of a super-gifted chef, but without the ridiculous, long lists of obscure ingredients and sub-recipes that you needed to start preparing three days ago. These are approachable, thoughtfully crafted and apparently carefully tested recipes that are easy to follow, simple enough to execute and clearly designed to work for a moderately capable home cook.

If the aesthetic driver of the Ottolenghi books is herbs, with Falastin it is spices — lots of spices, aromatic, dreamy and unapologetic. Flavors in all the dishes are dialed way up. (One touch I really appreciate: Tamimi and Wigley never leave us guessing about how much salt to use — they always specify, and it’s always right on or close.)

Back to my bookshelves and all those earnest volumes. Among all the serious Middle Eastern, Levantine, Mediterranean and North African cookbooks, I hadn’t been able to find an appealing recipe for ful medames — the traditional fava bean dish that’s mostly closely associated with Egypt. There were recipes, sure, but none found any joy in the dish — which is, after all, really just doctored canned fava beans.

Tamimi has a wonderful way of elevating the ordinary. His version of ful starts by ridding the beans of their canned taste — by draining, rinsing, then simmering them in water, a five minute process that makes all the difference. Once they’re drained again, cumin is invited to the party, along with the lemon, garlic and chile. A delightful salad of red onion, sumac and parsley goes on top, along with tomato; avocado adds cool and creamy depth. Soft boiled egg, which is optional, adds another dimension.

Finally, the ful medames I dreamed of — so good I will make sure to keep canned favas stocked, so I can whip it up on a regular basis. (This is what I mean by life-changing.)

Not surprisingly, there’s a little overlap with the dishes in Jerusalem: It would be odd for this book not to include hummus, for instance, or tahini sauce. But the books complement each other really well: While Jerusalem gave us Maqluba, a one-pot layered dish of eggplant, chicken thighs and rice inverted onto a plate to serve, Falastin gives us Maqlubet el Foul el Akdhar — Upside-Down Spiced Rice with Lamb and Fava Beans. (Will be making that soon as I can source some Iranian dried limes!)

And while Jerusalem proposes Kofta B’siniya (seared lamb-and-beef patties in tahini sauce), Falastin offers Kofta Bil Batinjan — Baked Kofta with Eggplant and Tomato. Another major crowd-pleaser!

Kofta Bil Batinjan — Baked Kofta with Eggplant and Tomato

For the three of us, this was a fabulous dinner two nights running — the leftovers were every bit as delectable.

There are so many recipes I still have marked to try. Preserved Stuffed Eggplants; Cauliflower and Cumin Fritters with Mint Yogurt; Shatta (an exciting looking red or green chile sauce); Na’ama’s Buttermilk Fattoush; Roasted Eggplant with Tamarind and Cilantro; a zucchini, garlic and yogurt dip called M’tawaneh; Buttery Rice with Toasted Vermicelli; Eggplant, Chickpea and Tomato Bake (Musaq’a); Pomegranate-Cooked Lentils and Eggplants; Lemon Chicken with Za’atar.

There are baked treats that look incredible, too: Sweet Tahini Rolls, and the triangular spinach pies called Fatayer Sabanekh; Warbat — filo triangles filled with cream cheese and pistachio and doused in rose syrup, and definitely a Chocolate and Qahwa Flour-Free Torte, flavored with lots of cardamom and espresso (Qahwa is coffee in Arabic).

I love this book. I’m happy to think of its treasure-filled pages, and it gives me hope for the future — in more ways than one.

RECIPE: Chicken Musakhan

RECIPE: Cilantro-Crusted Roasted Cod

RECIPE: Ful Medames

RECIPE: Baked Kofta with Eggplant and Tomato

Falastin: a Cookbook, by Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley, Ten Speed Press, $35.