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Books 02/17/14 9:41am Home Cooking, Middle Eastern Style: Tanoreen’s Chef Shares Her Recipes in New Book by David Chiu Featured, Food, News & Features No Comments

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Olives, Lemons & Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking was released last week. It’s filled with more than 100 recipes for soups, salads, breakfast dishes, main courses, sides and desserts. While the recipes reflect traditional preparations that Bishara learned cooking with her family in Israel, there are also contemporary flourishes and influences from other cultures, such as the tagine djaj (chicken tagine), a popular Moroccan dish, and salmon in pesto, which Bishara started cooking when she arrived Recent Posts in the U.S. Warm Up Wednesday

Bishara’s book isn’s just a compendium of recipes–it’s also a personal scrapbook of sorts, with Words and Whiskey reminiscences of her Palestinian upbringing in the town of Nazareth in northern Israel. “I have endless food memories from my childhood,” she writes, “but the most vivid has long remained the summers I Show ‘Em How You Shoryuken spent with my four brothers and sisters at our grandparents’ homes in the villages of Rama and Tarshiha.” Plan a Hassle-Free Party With Divvydown

We spoke with Bishara about the book, Middle Eastern cuisine, and her life in Nazareth, and she shared Sleepless in Brooklyn a recipe from the book, for samak tagine, with us. The Economy of Words: A Conversation Your interest in cooking came from your mother? with Peter Mountford Yes it did. My mom was a schoolteacher but she was a fantastic cook. It was like her joy. She had five kids and we always had parties around. We have a big family She always entertained, she loved doing it. The Happy Dre Day basic [influence] came from my mom. But after that, it’s coming to New York too and being exposed to so many different kinds of foods, cultures. Check out The Tip Sheet our curated weekly events email for the best shows, classes, concerts, movies and more around Brooklyn (and sometimes beyond).

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One touching story from the book is your memory from childhood of your mother and OMG Eat This Now: Cinnamon Bun at River father preparing a dish called maftool–which is similar to couscous–in which your father Styx volunteered to peel the pearl onions himself so your mother wouldn’t cry. It’s kind of It’s not quite so burnished in real romantic. life–the filter I used when I took It was like that. My mom was a schoolteacher and entertained a lot. My father loved to eat. They had that these is a little out of… MORE» relationship. He helped her out. Back then, men did not do that in the Middle East, they did not cook. It Annaliese Griffin was a very nice atmosphere between my parents.

You also recall the times when your family would eat lunch under the olive trees in your mother’s hometown of Rama. Search the blog... We used to go out to harvest the olives when it’s in season. We would spend three days in the village and go under olive trees and spend a whole day there and take our lunch with us. We grew up spending Search summers in my mother and father’s village. They both did a lot of the harvesting thing, they used to do that all the time–all the vegetables, all the grains, olive, olive oil–they did everything from basics. They never bought anything. Booklyn While the recipes draw from traditional Middle Eastern cooking, they also reflect a modern sensibility and influences. Words and Whiskey That’s part of living in New York. It gets you exposed to so many different things. You start having the Mon February 24, 2014Working courage to change things around a little bit with all what’s available to you. And if you have good tastes, it as staff editor for the New York works. I don’t think anybody should be scared from trying new things. But the original recipes are the Times is enough pressure to make anyone turn to drink,… MORE» same. I did not change them.

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Chicken “Pizza”

It may seem like picking children, but is there one particular recipe that you like to cook at home? At home, my son cooks for me (laughs). What I enjoy really is not cooking a specific dish at home–it’s really being together and cooking together. I don’t like to spend hours in the kitchen cooking by myself. In general, it’s the ambience and atmosphere that make the meal enjoyable.

Fried fish is something people like to eat out, but it should be eaten at home. It’s nice to have it right from the fryer and into your plate hot and crunchy. This would create an atmosphere of three or four hours of fun in a house: having a drink, eating fish, making the salad, the whole thing.

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Rawia Bishara, Tanoreen

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