London chef Joudie Kalla’s book “Palestine on a Plate” combines cuisine, history, and politics to bring to light traditional Palestinian recipes. Here’s an excerpt from her interview in Bloomberg.
Here in the U.K., a lot of “Middle Eastern” restaurants have popped up, and they are, in fact, Israeli. And it’s all the dishes we grew up on, in Arabic names, and it’s very frustrating. I’m not anti-Israeli, not anti-Jew, not anti-anything, just anti-misinformation. I think to label makloubeh and sayyadiyeh—dishes that actually mean something in Arabic and are historically from Palestine, from Arabs—to be presented and cooked and sold as Israeli is offensive and frightening. It’s the deletion of a culture and people.
Armed with Amor 