hello and welcome to a new column here at i was cooking. family meal will be a recurring segment where i pick either a complex recipe or a themed multi-course meal to tackle. the goal is to work with all new-to-me recipes, especially ones from my underused cookbooks, and share with you the process + tips for challenging moments and how to handle them.
i’ve noticed that for a long time now, my cooking skills have stagnated. when i look back on the times i developed most in the kitchen, it was during periods when i was pushing myself to cook as many new foods as possible, like the time i went vegan for five weeks in high school or the summer after sophomore year of college i lived in my first sublet in central square in cambridge.
these days, for the sake of time and budget, i find myself cooking a smaller handful of familiar recipes over and over again, hesitant to expand my tastes or seek out new recipe writers. i’ll be writing family meal as a way to challenge myself to try new things, to kind of honour the concept of the “sunday dinner,” to cook with seasonal produce, and to find cause for celebration even when there isn’t one.
falastin: a cookbook by sami tamimi and tara wigley
for the january menu, i decided to tackle recipes from sami tamimi and tara wigley’s falastin, a cookbook of palestinian recipes from sami’s homeland. if sami’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s a longtime business partner of london-based israeli chef yotam ottolenghi, and the two have collaborated on opening around six delis and two restaurants around london as well as co-written two acclaimed cookbooks, ottolenghi and jerusalem.
falastin is sami and tara’s deep dive into contemporary palestinian cuisine. rather than being an encyclopedic or historic record of palestinian cooking, falastin is geared towards the home cook with access to a global pantry, focusing on giving new breath to traditional recipes that might otherwise seem inaccessible to us.
in my experience, i’ve found that western audiences like middle eastern food in restaurants but don’t consider it as something to cook at home. i think a big part of this is the perception that a lot of arab food is labour-intensive and requires foreign ingredients that might not already be in your pantry. for those of us who are eating “vegetable forward” meals or completely meatless meals, arab food can seem very carb and meat heavy.
falastin turns these perceptions around. sami and tara offer recipes that vary in ease and cooking time, giving a wide range of meals that can be made on weekdays as well as those that are worth tackling for larger celebrations. in this book, you’ll only find one stuffed vegetable recipe (despite how stuffed vegetables are a cornerstone of palestinian cooking) and instead loads of recipes that deploy the vegetables and spices common to palestinian cuisine in faster-to-assemble sheet-pan dinners.
for the most part, the recipes rely heavily on fresh vegetables and lots of lemons and olive oil, meaning that you won’t have to make a hefty up-front investment towards new spices. in fact, if you’ve ever made a pumpkin pie, chances are you already have most of the spices you’ll need to get through this cookbook: black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg are cornerstones of middle eastern savoury dishes, and along with some ground coriander and cumin, you’ll be easily navigating your way through the recipes.
arab cuisine being meat-forward is a misconception, thanks to the way restaurants focus on mashawi, or grilled meats. home cooks, on the other hand, rely on vegetables, grains, and legumes to make up the bulk of their meals. the meat recipes in falastin take up about 90 pages in the 330 page cookbook, with an entire chapter devoted to “veggie mains.” the rest of the recipes have plenty of notes on how to serve different dishes together to create a filling meal, whether meat is in the picture or not.
in the book, the authors’ restaurant backgrounds quickly become evident in the way each ingredient is treated with so much care. in the shakshuka recipe, instead of tossing chunks of feta into the sauce like i did in my recipe last week, the cheese is instead marinated first and then tossed in. each dish gets colourful, crunchy toppings: in the muhammara recipe, you are asked to save a few walnuts to scatter across the top. several recipes instruct you on how to artfully drizzle olive oil, zaatar, and spicy homemade chili sauces and pestos onto dishes to give them more depth. you end up with restaurant-quality dishes on your own dining table.
the most heartening aspect of falastin is the way the authors weave stories from palestinians within each section of the book. sami and tara meet with farmer collectives, seed-savers, community cooks, restaurateurs, exporters, all in an attempt to highlight the very different opinions each palestinian holds about the occupation, and the different path their life has taken because of it. it goes to show that the occupation is inextricable from the food: to write about the food you have to write about the farmers and to write about the farmers you have to write about the land and to write about the land you have to, you must, talk about israel. the palestinians interviewed all have found their own way to provide for their families and communities, to both keep tradition alive and to push boundaries forward in spite of the occupation. the book ends with this quote:
Getting people talking, getting kids asking questions; it’s a really important part of the process of making change happen.
i think falastin succeeds at achieving sami and tara’s mission, to just get people talking, to see this way of life outside our own, to think of the complexities that come with being palestinian.
if you are considering purchasing falastin (or literally any other non-essential goods) please consider delaying your purchase till after this week’s general strike/boycott ends on jan 28.
the recipes
Cauliflower and cumin fritters with mint yogurt (p. 67)
this was by far my favourite recipe. i’ve never had cauliflowers like this and can’t wait to make them again, hands down one of the best sandwiches i’ve ever had. lots of other bloggers love this recipe and have posted it online, too.
Winter tabbouleh with a blood orange dressing (p. 104)
i liked the tabbouleh the first time i had it but it was a LOT of chewing thanks to the kale and cabbage and bulgur. i ended up freezing/reusing the remaining ingredients in other recipes, but i did really love the spiced bulgur here.
Spicy roasted new potatoes with lemons and herbs (p. 137)
great oven potato recipe. would make again.
Roasted cod with cilantro crust (p. 204)
i have iffy feelings about cooking fish at home and that’s on me. this is a good recipe, but i likely won’t revisit it unless i can buy fresh caught white fish.
Muhallabieh with cherries and hibiscus syrup (p. 327)
muhallabieh is not something i grew up with and didn’t feel particularly attracted to. i found myself wishing i was eating panna cotta instead. the best part of the recipe is the hibiscus syrup, which will be great in cocktails or atop some panna cotta or just plain vanilla ice cream.
sami’s been sharing loads about palestinian food and culture, especially in posts from October and November 2023.
i realise that writing about palestinian recipes i made last week is futile when there are 500,000 people in gaza on the verge of starvation due to israel’s siege on the strip. there is no “buying” our way out of this — this being the occupation, this being the genocide. i write this because this is what i feel i can offer right now.
just like a lot of you reading this, i spend hours every week mired in the grief of my instagram feed — which is necessary, to witness the ongoing genocide and to not stop talking about it — but i also want to have a space to channel that grief and rage into action.
in the real world, i engage with public protest and phone calls to politicians as much as i am able to. when i’m tapped out, i try to engage with palestinian culture, like cooking their food, or watching palestinian films, or learning about their arts, in order to keep from falling into hopelessness.
through this piece, i wanted to share with you that same thing: sustenance, enough to maintain our longterm solidarity for palestinian freedom.
as always, thank you for being here.
My girlfriend and I are obsessed with Falastin—it's a great cookbook, and you wrote so beautifully about the culinary and cultural contributions it makes.
I think it's quite important, vital even, to acknowledge that Palestine is more than a politically contested place; it's also a home for people, and where so many rituals around food and caring for others and caring for the earth are practiced.
I love this! So excited for the new column, and so appreciative of this message 💖