Kevin Bludso with Noah Galuten (Penguin Random House). Bill Addisonīludso’s BBQ Cookbook: A Family Affair in Smoke and Soul I knew then that my ancestors were trying to tell me something: my community back in California needed an Arab street corner bakery.” Yes, we did, and we needed this book too. “I remember,” she writes, “the revelation that a bakery can spark life even in places where life had been most depleted. A later piece details a family trip to Lebanon and her father’s ancestral home in Damascus, Syria, that lit her professional pursuit of baking.
Part 1 opens with memories of summertime family visits to Los Angeles but segues to her grandmother’s exodus from Palestine in 1948 during the creation of Israel. She writes forthrightly of her family’s immigrant experience and the nuances of isolation, assimilation and resistance she’s faced to achieve a sense of belonging. Subsequent chapters detail vegetable-rich feasts and meatier dishes ideal for family or company: djej mahshi (chicken stuffed with spiced rice) shakriyah (spiced lamb and yogurt stew) clay pot shrimp scented with garlic and dried dill in the style of Gaza and dinner party centerpieces such as stuffed squid in arak-spiked tomato sauce.Įqually compelling are the essays that frame each section of the book. Detailed, lucid instructions for delving into the baking customs of Belad al Sham (the Greater Syria region) anchor “ Arabiyya,” including Assil’s secrets to mana’eesh fragrant with za’atar and olive oil, ring-shaped ka’ak crusted with sesame seeds and tutorials on spinach-stuffed fatayer and other savory turnovers.
She pours the whole of her experience into her first cookbook. Beyond converting Reem’s to a worker-owned model in an effort to capsize hierarchical restaurant models, Assil has the courage to be outspoken on many topics: among them Palestinian rights, the intersection of food and social justice, and the many ills of capitalism. She was a labor and community organizer before becoming a full-time chef, and she brings an activist’s soul as well to her culinary career.
If you know of Reem Assil - and of her restaurant Reem’s in San Francisco’s Mission District, inspired by the tradition of corner bakeries across the Arab world - you’re probably aware she brings more to the food space than first-rate baking skills. Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora
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