Cooking Up the Impossible in Reem Kassis's The Palestinian Table
Tahini sauce, mujadara, kafta, and salads
Please welcome our first contributor, Annmarie Pisano, former cookbook reviewer at Hot Sauce Review. She’ll be posting occasional reviews of what she’s reading and cooking from. First up, we have The Palestinian Table, by Reem Kassis.
Through her writing and social media, author Reem Kassis has become sort of an unofficial ambassador of Palestinian food and culture in America. She’s great at this very complicated high-wire performance job, whether she wants it or not, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to go back and look at her first cookbook, 2017’s The Palestinian Table.
This book attempts to do the impossible, making sense of the post-Nakba Palestinian cuisine. Recipes and stories come from all over the region: villages in Galilee and the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and even family recipes from other parts of the Levant. It’s a broad topic, and Kassis includes everything from typical breakfasts and breads to celebration dinners and desserts, so consider this more of an overview.
All of the recipes we tried worked out well and were easy to follow, and I thought she did a great job of explaining how everything should come together. There’s a generosity at the heart of this way of eating: few forks and knives, lots of bread, and a million dishes on the table – but many can be prepped in advance, or come together easily as a side while the main event is in the oven. My favorite recipes were mostly in the kafta genre. She has a few different variations, all of which were easy and delicious, although her baked chicken flatbreads were also very good.
Or maybe there is no main event, and you just want five or seven veggie dishes with rice or bread – this book has you covered. I loved all of her salads, especially the vegetable and tahini version, and have been making her tahini sauce at every excuse for the past year. And I’ve been sending out her mujadara recipe to anyone who will listen. If you make it, please, please, invite me over.
Intrigued? Buy the book here, or check out her intro guide to Palestinian cuisine on Serious Eats. And you can buy a fantastic version of Palestinian 9-spice mix from SOS Chefs in NYC’s East Village.
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