Ode to my Grandmothers 🇵🇸 🕊️ interview with Bethlehem chef Fadi Kattan

The first instalment of a new series of recipes & interviews with my favourite chefs begins here...

Kalimera from a rather rainy Athens!

For some time now I’ve been meaning to begin a new series of emails for you all, featuring interviews with my favourite chefs and people in the food world on their grandmothers as culinary inspiration. I have rarely come across someone that works in food that has not been inspired by their granny. These women hold that intangible culinary heritage that I’m desperate to document and archive within their hands and they are usually the ones to maintain family traditions and rigorously enforce them on the rest of us.

In solidarity with Palestinians all over the world and in celebration of the beautiful new cookbook Bethlehem by Chef Fadi Kattan (Akub restaurant in London and Fawda in Bethlehem) which is being published by my own publishers, Hardie Grant, I wanted to interview Fadi for you all. His insights on Palestinian food and the beautiful way he recounts his memories of his grandmothers moved me. I hope they will move you too.

He trained as a chef in France and has founded a restaurant in London but throughout his career as a chef, he has sought to sing loud and proud of his Palestinian heritage. We spoke about how his grandmothers inspired the way he cooks and thinks about food and Fadi also shared some more insights into what it’s truly like to work as a chef and restaurant owner in his native Bethlehem.

I’m also sharing a couple of delicious weekend brunch recipes from Fadi below the interview. Tried and tested, I can attest to the glory of these Palestinian brekkies and can only hope that one day I’ll be able to enjoy one with Fadi in a free Palestine.

In conversation with Fadi Kattan

A: Tell me about your grannies - who were they?

F: My father's mother was called Emily and my mother's mother was called Julia. Julia and Emily were sisters. Emily married my grandfather and they went off to Japan but when the Americans began bombing Japan they fled to Bombay and eventually came back to Bethlehem in 1954. Unfortunately Emily died in 1967 and I never got to know her but from the stories others told me of her, I know she used to love roses so in her memory I planted roses in my garden that I use in my cooking.

A: What about Julia?

F: My grandmother Julia stayed in Bethlehem and set up the Arab Woman's Union in 1949 to provide immediate medical care to the Palestinian refugees of the Nakba, flooding into Bethlehem from other territories. Then they started employment programmes for women like a food production where women would come in and basically cook pastries - salty and savoury. It’s still going strong now. Then in the mid seventies she helped set up the first Ethnographic Museum in Palestine. She had a very long social impact on the city and the people here.

A: What are your memories of her in the kitchen?

F: I learned how to cook in Julia’s kitchen, which was always this frenzy of cooking. My grandparents would entertain a lot of people and host big dinners so the afternoons and evenings were always so busy in that kitchen. She was very particular with her recipes but also with the choice of cutlery, crockery, tablewear. It’s perhaps what marked my choice to go into hospitality.

A: You focus a lot on local and seasonal produce. Did your grandmothers grow their own produce?

F: My grandmother Emily loved the family orange grove in Jaffa and she would go there to pick oranges and lemons. That land has been confiscated by the Israeli occupation. One of my dreams is to go to Jaffa and picking one of my own oranges from my family’s orange trees there. They also had a small piece of land and I remember as a young child I would be taken to that plot where Emily had planted so many rose bushes. At Akub in London I do a Baba dessert which is infused in Fenugreek and cardamom syrup and I decorate it with dried rose petals then we spray an infusion of rose water onto it. That’s in her memory.

My other grandmother Julia would rent a house in Jerico and take us foraging for wild herbs and mustard. In Bethlehem we’d go together to an old monastery in the mountains to forage wild Za’atar but a lot of this has changed because today people have less of a link to the land. It’s being confiscated by the Israeli settlements.

A: Do you see food and cooking as an act of resistance?

F:  I think food is an act of hospitality, of joy, of celebration of love but also of resilience and resistance. For us Palestinians, food is an act of resistance because there has been massive Israeli appropriation of our cuisine. As we've seen since the start of this genocide, there have been horrible attempts to dehumanise Palestinians, and therefore, anything that celebrates our culture is an act of resistance. Whether you're writing a poem or writing a song or performing or shooting a movie, or cooking - it’s an act of resistance and an act of existence.

I would say not not even resistance - its existence. We exist. We're human. We don't need to prove to anybody we are human. We are people who live in this land. We are people who grew from this land. Our food is from this land. And that is who we are.

A: I think that really comes out in the book, you’re chronicling the people, their produce and their food. It’s not just your recipes - it’s who you are as a Palestinian and how those people and that land make your food what it is.

F: Yes. The message I try to convey with the book is the beauty of Palestinian food. Food is about the story of the land, food is about the story of my grandmothers, food is about the story of my life. It’s about the richness of the terroir in Palestine and the diversity of the terroir. I'd like to take anyone who asks me about Palestinian food by the hand and take them on a visit of Bethlehem through its recipes and through its people. That’s what I’m trying to do with my book.

A: Can you remember any of your grandmothers’ dishes?

F: I think the first memory that comes to mind is Julia making fried eggs for me with olive oil and putting sumac on top of them. There were also iconic moments that would happen each summer like the lady coming and knocking on the kitchen door with foraged prickly pears which my grandmother would peel and put in the fridge for us to enjoy later. One very specific memory is a day when she and I decided to make a jam from them. She pulled out an enormous cauldron and we lit a fire the garden and the drama in that cauldron and of course, we missed it. And we ended up making it into a patisserie because we had overcooked it, and we sold the idea to the whole family that it was meant to be like that when in reality, we’d just improvised with a jam that went wrong. A lot of beautiful memories.

A: It sounds like Julia was a great source of inspiration for you.

F: Yes, I learned with her. She also taught my mother and my mother is an ongoing source of inspiration for me. I call her to ask her about recipes and I’m terrified when my mother tries something new I’ve come up with even though she's the kindest human being in the world.

A: Are there any dishes of your grandmothers’ that you make now, in memory of them?

F: Julia loved Christmas and on the first of December she would make a Christmas cake she’d modified from her Betty Crocker book. Hers was very heavy on the spices but it also had a lot of the local dried fruits like figs, dates and apricots. When she passed away it was very difficult for me because I was very close to her but I was determined not to stop that tradition so I cooked her Christmas cake.

A: Have you done it every year?

F: I do and I make sure that my mother, my aunt, my uncle and their children get a Christmas cake too. Of course the Christmas that has just passed was the most difficult because this genocide was ongoing in Palestine. On the first of December I couldn't find the motivation to do it but then I pushed on and finally managed to do it overnight on the 23rd. It wasn't as good as it should have been because it needs to spend at least two to three weeks in the fridge resting after it's cooked but I couldn't break the tradition. I felt I owe her this at least. 

A: Are Palestinian grandmothers different?

F: Palestinian grandmothers are not very different than those of the rest of the world, their grandmothers, their full of hospitality, of kindness, of habits also of, of very determined opinions. Where they are different is sadly they've suffered a lot. Both my grandmothers’ families lost a lot of properties in what became Israel. They saw the end of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate, the Jordanian rule over the West Bank and the division of the country, the division of Jerusalem. A lot of their families had to flee because they lived in places like Jaffa or Jerusalem. They had to abandon their houses and come as refugees to Bethlehem.

All of that makes Palestinian grandmothers different in the sense that despite all of those horrors, they're still kind and loving. I don't think I've ever met a Palestinian grandmother who's not strong, powerful and resilient. They are actual heroes. They they are the guardians of our kitchen. It’s transmitted orally. It's them educating the younger generations on how to cook and what to cook and on the seasons and foraging. It’s their legacy

A: What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from your grandmother?

F: I think both my grandmothers longed and dreamt of a free Palestine but with a lot of tolerance. My grandmother Julia taught me that regardless of people's faiths and beliefs, that we should respect, support and love every human being.

Thanks all of you who have read this far. Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the recipes (below) From Fadi’s new book, Bethlehem. If you buy any cookbook this year, it should be this one.

If you have the means to, please support Fadi’s chosen charities in Palestine, Anera and Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Anastasia xx

YOUR RECIPES FOR THE WEEKEND….

GRANDMOTHER JULIA’S EGGS IN SAMNEH WITH SUMAC &

MANAKISH FLATBREADS WITH TOMATOES AND CREAM