HOMELAND TRADITIONS
Reem Kassis’s The Palestinian Table is more than a collection of her family’s traditional recipes, it’s an ode to her heritage, from her childhood home in Jerusalem to the mountains of Galilee.
Reem Kassis's The Palestinian Table is a collection of her family's recipes and an ode to her heritage.
Growing up, there was the food we ate at our kitchen table in Jerusalem, and the food we ate at my grandmothers’ tables in their villages. It was delicious, it was made with love, and it was our food. But the thought of these foods making up a Palestinian table was an elusive notion at the time.
Not until I left home for another country did I grasp the undeniable importance of food to national identity and the intricacies associated with defining it.
On my journey to bring these pages to your hands, I came to a quiet clarity: there is no single Palestinian table. The Palestinian table spans our entire geography from the mountains of the Galilee to the valleys of the south, from the coast of Yaffa all the way to the West Bank. It is scattered across the globe and built from memories of a time when most of us lived in the same land. In spite of our political circumstances and global dispersion, what ties all Palestinian tables together is more than just good food; it is the notion of “home”, the spirit of generosity, the importance of family, and the value of bringing people together.
One of the few things I regret about living abroad is that my own daughters won’t get to enjoy that same kind of slow lifestyle with a bevy of aunts, grandmothers, and family cooks coming together around a Palestinian family table, laden with food, steeped in laughter and conversation, and boasting the stories and knowledge of generations. Through the recipes and stories in this book, however, I hope that they can carry our history, our food, our culture, and our home wherever they go in the world and never be too far away from a Palestinian table.