The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey

This new edition of an award-winning cookbook shares with readers the little-known but distinctive cuisine of the Gaza region of Palestine, presenting 130 recipes collected by the authors from Gaza. Cooks will find great, kitchen-tested recipes for spicy stews, piquant dips, fragrantly flavored fish dishes, and honey-drenched desserts. They will also be entranced by the hundreds of beautiful photos of Gazan cooks, farmers, and fresh-produce merchants at work, and by the numerous in-kitchen interviews in which these women and men tell the stories of their food, their heritage, and their families. Anthony Bourdain, Claudia Roden, and Yotam Ottolenghi are among the many culinary figures who have embraced The Gaza Kitchen. This third edition features tantalizing new stories and recipes, a fresh new design in a beautiful paperback volume, new photos, and an updated index.

Ebook is based on the second edition.

Praise

“Not just a superb cookbook, a collection of vital recipes from a delicious yet often overlooked cuisine, but an argument for understanding. A classic of world food.”
—Anthony Bourdain

“The recipes and stories are magically woven together, inspiring to read, to cook, and to eat. Telling us about the food of Gaza is key to understanding the people’s way of life, and this is what Laila and Maggie do so fantastically well.”
—Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, coauthors of Jerusalem: A Cookbook

“Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt truly are storytellers sharing the stories of the women, men, and children of Gaza in a way that illuminates their humanity, their dignity, their strength.”
—José Andrés, chef and founder of World Central Kitchen

“The best cookbooks inspire you to be a better chef. This one can make you a better person. Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt guide readers through the rich, subtle, and complex flavors, history, and politics of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the Levant... This is gastronomic writing at its finest.”
—Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

“The Gaza Kitchen cookbook is a vital attempt to safeguard a rich culinary heritage that has existed in the Middle East for thousands of years. In documenting Palestinian recipes and food culture, despite the ravages of war, Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt have significantly succeeded in sharing their culinary travels while bringing dignity and pride to those who continue cooking traditional meals at home in Palestine. This book is an asset to those living in Gaza and to the rest of the world who would like to participate in protecting this rich cuisine.
—Barbara Massaad, Lebanese author and photographer of the award-winning cookbooks Man’oushé, Mouneh, Mezze and Soup for Syria

“These recipes are distinctively Palestinian and many also uniquely of Gaza—with more pronounced flavors, more herby, spicy, peppery, lemony, than those of their regional neighbors. We also get from this very special book a rare insight into the intimate everyday lives of engaging people...”
—Claudia Roden, author of A Book of Middle Eastern Food

About the Authors

Laila El-Haddad is an award-winning writer, public speaker, and social activist. She is the coeditor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between (2010). Born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents from Gaza, she currently lives in Clarksville, Maryland with her husband and their three children.

Maggie Schmitt is a writer, researcher, translator, educator, and social activist. She holds a B.A. from Harvard in Literature and has conducted advanced graduate studies in Social Anthropology and Mediterranean Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Schmitt works in various media—writing, production, photography, video—exploring the daily practices of ordinary people as a way of understanding political and social realities in the Mediterranean region.

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