COOKBOOK IS FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Food is a source of pride in Syria and the culinary culture is something to celebrate
Unsurprisingly, it was a love of food that brought London-based cookbook authors Dina Mousawi and Itab Azzam together.
“We met at a dinner at a mutual friend’s house,” Mousawi says. “Itab and I had both brought dishes. Hers was so delicious that I found her on Facebook just to get the recipe, and after that, we became friends.”
Their day jobs as theatre professionals and love of their Middle Eastern roots were really what prompted them to write Our Syria: Letters from Home, a cookbook that will be published in Canada on Oct. 3.
Mousawi, who was born in Iraq and brought up in the U.K., is an actress/producer and Azzam, who was born and raised in Syria, is a producer. In 2014, they went to Beirut, Lebanon, to work with 60 Syrian refugee women on a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone. The story is set in a country ruined by civil war, in which the eponymous heroine battles a dictator for the right to bury the body of her brother. It had obvious parallels with the lives of the project’s participants.
“They, too, were living in a country ruled by a dictator, and many had brothers who were missing, with no chance to say goodbye,” Mousawi says.
The project was designed to help the women through their trauma, but friendships began to develop and Mousawi and Azzam were invited into the refugee camps for meals.
“They’d say, ‘Come to the camps. I want to cook you this or that,’ ” says Mousawi. “We would go to their homes after rehearsals and they would make these incredible foods in tiny flats — some only had camping stoves in the hallway.”
“We were just a group of women having fun and dancing and talking and cooking together,” says Azzam.
“We would chat and share stories, a lot of which exemplified these women’s strength and resilience. We went back to London and started to think about how to share those stories. And that’s how (the cookbook) began,” Mousawi says.
The book has 100 recipes, divided into categories that include meze, main courses, and jams and pickles. The introduction draws a vivid picture of the beautiful, rich, complicated history and culture of Syria. Recipes come from Mousawi, Azzam, and the women they worked with in the refugee camps, whose stories are scattered through the book.
Why did Azzam and Mousawi decide a recipe book would be the best way to tell these women’s tales?
“With theatre, we have a limited platform. With a cookbook, you can go anywhere,” says Mousawi.
“In Syria, food is a source of pride and women value the time they spend together cooking — four or five women taking the time to make a feast together,” says Azzam.
“My mum and her friends use food to create more sparks in their lives. At traditional weddings in Syria they would spend the whole night cooking, singing, dancing — making an event out of the preparation.”
Both say the book’s purpose is to shine a positive light on Syria.
“Everything that comes out of Syria is negative. All we hear about is war and death,” says Mousawi. “But it has this incredible food culture, something we could celebrate.”
At first glance, the recipes seem similar to Lebanese and Palestinian dishes. There are familiar favourites like hummus, stuffed vine leaves and tabbouleh. Azzam says the difference is in the diversity of the food.
“Syria’s bigger, so there are influences from neighbouring countries like Iraq and Turkey. It was on the silk route, so there are also hints of Armenian and Kurdish cuisine, especially in Aleppo. There’s even sweet and sour from the Far East.”
Syria also has a tradition of vegan food, and there’s a focus on cooking from scratch. The country was behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s and 1980s, so the consumer revolution never happened and processed food is uncommon.
People often complain that it’s difficult to source ingredients for recipes from “exotic” cuisines, but Mousawi says it’s easy to make substitutions. At the back of the book is a Syrian pantry section that explains essential ingredients such as pomegranate molasses (if you can’t buy it, you can make it by reducing pomegranate juice to a thick syrup) and seven spices, a staple that includes fragrant cardamom and cloves.
Azzam describes writing the book as a cathartic experience. “Food keeps me connected to home. Cooking is the only thing I do every day that keeps me there. That’s true for the women we worked with, too. It’s a daily opportunity to connect with each other and our heritage and the things we are proud of.”
She says the women who contributed, most of whom remain in the camps in Beirut, love the fact their names and recipes are in a book. “Some of them were really pleased to have this connection to the west, that people are reading about them and thinking about them.”
The book is not a charity project, although the advance and half of the royalties are donated to projects that support people in Syria.
“We don’t want people to perceive Syria and its people as charity cases. What we’ve made is a beautiful book that represents the country and its people really well.”
“I’m Iraqi and didn’t know many Syrians before this. What strikes me is that they’re very generous. You go for a quick lunch and there will be a huge feast spread out for you. And they’re proud: Proud of their country,” Mousawi says.