HYTHUM KISWANI

53, commercial real estate broker, Playa del Rey

Recipe: Maqluba

I’M A FIRST-GENERATION Palestinian, immigrating to Northern California at the age of 9. This was just around the time of the Iran hostage crisis and, safe to say, it was not easy for a brown kid living in the ’burbs of NorCal. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Persian; I was lumped in with anyone from the Middle East as Iranian, so I got a lot of bullying but with an enhanced cultural/racial component.

Fast-forward some years, and there was some form of assimilation but not enough for my liking. Thanksgiving dinner became a frustrating event for me. I was desperate to feel less abnormal — to just fit in and feel like I belonged — so I’d beg my mom and dad to have a typical American Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. My requests fell on deaf ears for a few years, but eventually a compromise was had: Sure, we’ll have turkey, but we’ll still have traditional Arabic meals meant for celebrations. So we’d usually have Maqluba. The dish has become a staple of my Thanksgiving meal because of the time and energy required to make it, the wonderfully intense aromatic flavors, and the link to my Palestinian heritage. It’s not found in other Arabic cultures. As such, it’s really a manifestation of families incorporating whatever ingredients were around in the kitchen to provide food for their family.

Now Maqluba is one of my favorite dishes. I usually request my sisters make it for me when I visit, and I, in turn, cook dishes from my travels for them. Maqluba varies by recipe: Some add garbanzo beans, others eggplant, and some put a plate in the pot to isolate the meat from the rice. One constant is that it’s a very tasty dish, full of flavor and with wonderful aesthetics and presentation. My mom and sisters all have their own way of preparing it, and I’ve borrowed the best of all of them — with my own touch.