Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi on spotlighting his culture

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

Chef and author Sami Tamimi says his mission is to "keep talking about Palestine", its food, culture and people.
"It helps it not to disappear," says the 57-year-old, "as a Palestinian who has a voice, as a food writer, I feel that we must use all the tools we have to keep it alive."
Palestinian food is "very important" to promote, he believes, "because we've been erased".
Israel's military campaign since October 2023 has killed over 55,600 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. This has displaced almost all the territory's residents, and caused a severe hunger crisis. It came after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli allies. Read more here.
"It's horrific, it's totally heartbreaking what's happening. I feel slightly helpless in a way," says the chef, well known for co-founding the Ottolenghi restaurant and deli group, and writing several books with Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi.
He hopes the publication of his new cookbook, Boustany – translating to 'my garden' in Arabic, and focusing on vegetable dishes of Palestine and the dishes of his roots – will help in a small way to "bring some spotlight on the country, the food, the people and the place".
Born and raised in Jerusalem (Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, while Palestine claim the city as their capital), he says: "A big chunk of the Tamimi family in Palestine as based in Hebron [in the southern West Bank], my mum's side," he explains, and his grandparents' house was surrounded by a large 'boustan', a garden filled with fruits and vegetables that his grandmother meticulously tended to.
Born in 1968, Tamimi says: "My parents didn't talk about what happened a year before. I didn't speak Hebrew until 16 or 17 because there was no interaction between Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem."
He was one of seven, plus another five half-siblings from his father's second marriage, after his mother died in childbirth when he was just seven years old.
Tamimi later lived in Tel Aviv for 12 years, working in restaurants, before moving to the UK in 1997 – "It was a bit weird for a Palestinian in Tel Aviv at the time," he notes.
Tamimi happened to be visiting Jerusalem when the October 7 attacks occurred. "I was on a work trip, everything happened two nights after I arrived. I was stuck there for a few days, and I managed to [get] to the border to Jordan and get a flight back to London," he says, "I couldn't see my family, I had to leave because it was kind of unsafe."
And so, 'The responsibility of writing these recipes and stories has weighed heavily on my shoulders,' he writes in the book.
Food and shared meal times are an enormous part of Palestinian culture, he explains. Known for their warm hospitality and strong community bonds.
"Palestinian homes are like doors open and people are welcome to [care]. Before mobile phones, people just show up, and it's really nice. [You] cook more than they need, because you never know if somebody's going to show up. You will always have to offer them food, even if they just come for a short visit.
"Everyone's kind of invited."
And although his father cooked too, "It's mainly females who cook in my culture, so I wasn't exposed to cooking as a child – I had to train myself and learn how to cook.
"When I established myself as a chef, I realised that I wanted to cook Palestinian because it's really important to keep it alive first of all, and this is the food that I enjoyed eating as well and cooking. It's my culture, it's people, the place that I came from, it's my family, it's all of that."
Like the Middle Eastern cuisines of surrounding Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, Palestinian food is "heavy on vegetables, grains, pulses, herbs, it's very connected to farming, to seasons, it's connected to the surroundings – people tend to forage quite a lot."
"If you want to compare Lebanese to Palestinian cooking, Palestinian cooking is a bit more robust, and the flavouring is slightly more earthy."
Grains and vegetables are transformed using ingredients including olive oil, garlic, lemon, sumac, zaatar, tahini, and different molasses, like grapes, dates and pomegranate. While sage, mallow, chicory, purslane, carob and cactus fruit are often foraged – a deeply traditional practice.
While 'mooneh', translating to 'pantry' in Arabic, is the process of preserving seasonal goods, typically through drying and pickling.
"Summer is quite hot there, so the season of vegetables and fruit is really short, so people find ways to preserve in the form of pickles, or nowadays they freeze quite a lot to keep things going for the rest of the year."
Couscous fritters with preserved lemon yoghurt are based on a dish his mum used to cook – "Most recipes are based on memories" – and you're never too far from a dip in any Middle Eastern cuisine. Tamami transforms turnip tops by fermenting them for a creamy dip, and shows how to make green kishk, a fermented yoghurt and bulgar dip.
Breakfasts are 'a treasured communal tradition,' he writes, and you'll still find the likes of olive oil, zaatar and tahini in the first meal of the day – "in almost every meal" in fact. Big plates are traditionally laid out and shared, and he celebrates that with recipes like aubergine and fava beans with eggs, or cardamom pancakes with tahini, halva and carob.
And sweet dishes – making use of the available fruit (think apricot, orange and almond cake, and sumac roast plums – are eaten all through the day. He smiles: "I was lucky enough to grow up in Jerusalem where you can snack all day!"