Ancient Mideast tastes mingle in stuffed holiday dishes
In the Middle East, just as in the Western world, the end of the year is a time for stuffed dishes — and for debating who started each long and rich tradition.
In the West, the end of the year is the season of stuffing. Cooking websites and TV shows come up with endless stuffing recipes — BBC Good Food alone offers 26 of them, ranging from the traditional sausage, sage and onion to vegetarian alternatives.
Kitchens in the Middle East are no different. Stuffed vegetables, ground meat and spices in thin dough, and stuffed dates all claim a place of honor at Middle Eastern tables.
“Arabs in general — and Palestinians in particular — love to stuff our food,” says Reem Kassis, the author of “The Palestinian Table,” which was published by Phaidon last October. The book contains 150 recipes as well as engaging information on the culinary heritage, daily life and rich cultures of the Middle East.
Daughter of a Muslim mother and Christian father, Kassis was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family revered for both its cooking and its highly educated women. Kassis had a fast-paced corporate career before she started writing about Palestine’s culinary heritage. “I think my entire childhood is a series of ‘scenes’ of collective cooking. It’s ironic because this is both why I wanted to stay away from the kitchen as much as possible and pursue a professional career but also the very reason I ended up finding my way back to the kitchen today,” she told Al-Monitor in a Skype interview from Philadelphia.
