At the same time as exploring the regions of Palestine, the purpose of Falastin is to be full of recipes that work for and delight the home cook today. We really want you to cook from the recipes in our book – to find them practical and doable as well as delicious. This means you’ll find fewer recipes for stuffed vegetables in Falastin than you would in a ‘traditional’ Palestinian cookbook, fewer recipes for celebratory dishes which take half a day to prepare, and less call for hard-to-find kishek or jameed, the fermented discs of yoghurt and wheat in which to bake a leg of lamb.
However, loyalty to the Palestinian pantry – and a reliance on the ground allspice and cumin, olive oil, pulses, grains, za’atar, sumac, lemons, yoghurt,…