The Way to Your Heart

There's a new cookbook published.

PC sent me a review:

So, I had to check it out. Previously, I had blogged about a restaurant with Palestinian-themed dishes.

The cover:

Palestine:

On her 2009 trip, she couldn't get in to Gaza as, well, she couldn't as it was shut, she claimed.  Maybe there were Hamas-instigated hostilities?

A review notes:

...when Khan returned for research trips for Zaitoun (Arabic for “olive tree”), she was shocked by how much the situation had deteriorated since her first visit in 2009. “It’s so much more dire than when I used to work on it,” she says. “I think history is going to look back on what’s happened to Palestinians in the last century with…” she pauses, choosing her words, “with a lot of shame, actually.”

Another review provides a bit of a warning:

The recipes are interspersed with Khan’s recollections of her travels in Palestine, which follow (I think) some kind of geographical trajectory. I found these interesting but their relation to the rest of the book – helpfully ordered by courses, beginning with starters and winding towards desserts – was occasionally somewhat confusing.

Nigella Lawson is aware that it is

 a politically engaged and hungry travelogue

Yes, there are politics in the book

but there are great recipes as well that can be adapted. How many are exclusively "Palestinian" rather than Middle Eastern (or even Jewish), I do not know.

Just be careful about kashrut requirements when cooking.

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Displaying My Barbecuing Skills

My wife who, among a few other cyberspace activities, manages Kosher Cooking Carnival (here's the latest), found some lamb chops I bought almost a year ago while going through the freezer.  But Pesach is in a fortnight and so, everything that is chametz or from last year's hechsher is deemed as "to-be-eaten-or-otherwise-disposed-of" which means they have to be cooked.

So, she challeneged me to display my skills at the barbecue.

Here I am:-

(photo credit: Batya Medad)

Will let you know how they turned out.

Maybe my wife will, too.

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No, This Time It's A Muslim Nose Joke

Reported:-

Cafe owner ordered to remove extractor fan because neighbour claimed 'smell of frying bacon offends Muslims'

This doesn't sound kosher.

The story:

A hard-working cafe owner has been ordered to tear down an extractor fan - because the smell of her frying bacon 'offends' Muslims. Planning bosses acted against Beverley Akciecek, 49, after being told her next-door neighbour's Muslim friends had felt 'physically sick' due to the 'foul odour'.

Councillors at Stockport Council in Greater Manchester say the smell from the fan is 'unacceptable on the grounds of residential amenity'. The fan has been in Beverley's Snack Shack takeaway in the Shaw Heath area of the town for the past three years.

Mrs Akciecek and her husband Cetin, 50, - himself a Turkish Muslim - work more than 50 hours a week buying, preparing and cooking hot and cold sandwiches and hot-pots for their customers.

Today mother-of-seven Mrs Akciecek said she plans to appeal against the decision.

She said: 'I just think it's crazy. Cetin's friends actually visit the shop, they're regular visitors, they're Muslim people, they come in a couple of times a week.

'I have Muslim people come in for cheese toasties. Cetin cooks the food himself, he cooks the bacon.

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A Disappointment: A Cookbook With A Bitter Taste

My wife, among her several blogs, started off the Kosher Cooking Carnival.

So, when I spotted this title (here)

The Settler's Cookbook

I figured one of our number (there are over 300,000 of us in Judea & Samaria and another 200,00 in East Jerusalem neighborhoods which the Arabs, et al. consider to be disputed as well), although my term for a civilian Jewish resident in a community in Judea and Samaria is revenant, was making a culinary contribution to the world.

However, it turns out that the author is Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

And she's quite political. Here she comments on Gaza, writing:

So that’s that then is it? Gaza is done and dusted? Very satisfying, I’m sure, for the Israeli leadership and their devoted allies at the BBC.

And why does she use the term "settler"? Here -

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s family history is one of constant displacement and repeated relocation, in which the feeling of being settled has come not from putting down roots, but from taking up a pot and creating a feast that tastes and smells like home.

Well, my wife can comment on the recipes, but I'd just like to say that I am not a "settler" because I have come home, land of my fathers and mothers, where my kings, priests, prophets and heroes walked and achieved deeds of religion, culture, philosophy, morality and economic values.

Yasmin's food might taste good, but her politics leave a bitter taste in my mouth.


P.S. She's also known as Yazzmonster