639: Sami Tamimi’s Palestinian Garden

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. I have this kind of privilege of writing a beautiful book like Bustani, talking about my memory, which I think, again, they're really, really important for others to read, not just the Palestinian kids, but also people that don't know anything about Palestine. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Sami Tamimi is a Palestinian chef and cookbook author based in London. He is the co-founder of the Odolenghi Restaurant Group and the co-author of the award-winning cookbooks Jerusalem and Palestine. And now he has a beautiful new cookbook of his very own, Bustani, a celebration of vegetables from my Palestine. It's a pleasure to have Sami in the studio to talk about his path to writing Bustani and the rich Palestinian traditions of agriculture and foraging. Sami Tamimi, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm curious, when you come to New York, is there anything that you seek out to eat?

1:38I always go to the Oyster Bar in Central Station. Because I think it has this kind of strike of old and new, and I love seafood. And I always sit on the bar and have some oysters and a glass of bubbly. So this is one of the places that I kind of tend to go. I love that. I feel like whenever I go to the Grand Central Oyster Bar, the people watching is so good. I see all these fashionable, older women that I hope I'm looking into my future self when I see them. I want to look like them as well. Yeah, it's our future selves. But what I like about it is also all the servers are kind of really old age, which is really, really nice.

2:20It's kind of unusual. And they're quite attentive as well. But also they are kind of, you know, they can push you just kind of, okay. Yeah, they're like the classic thing of New York is like kind but not nice, you know? Like they look out for you, but they're not trying to win you over necessarily. No, definitely not. You're here in the U.S. right now for your book tour. I'm curious if you've had any like events or conversations so far that you've particularly enjoyed. Every chat that I have, it's kind of a new adventure. and I never kind of prepare for what I'm going to be saying. And I just take it there and then.

2:58So, so far it's been really, really good. And it also depends on the people that come to the event. And I like kind of slightly bigger kind of events because I just kind of find myself talking a lot more because you have to kind of address a lot more people. So it's been really good so far. I've been to Boston, did a couple of big events there, one in Cookbook and the other one was in Sofra, which the lovely Anna, she's the owner and the mentor behind it, hosted me for dinner and they cooked so many dishes from Bustani. And it was really lovely. Is it fun when you get to see other people cooking your food and you get to eat it instead of having to cook it too?

3:55I'm always slightly nervous because it's the first time that people had their hand on the book. And cooking the dishes, I need to be quite kind of nervous because, you know, it's my work and I've been working on it for so long. And I know that all the recipes work, but the way people interpret things, and Anna and her team just did an amazing job, I think. Yeah. Did you have a favorite dish from that dinner that you ate? She did the eggplant mtabbal, which is two layers of eggplant, one with yogurt tahini and the other one with tomato. And just got all the flavor right. It's so delicious. That's one of the recipes in the book that I flagged for myself because I love eggplant and I can't find like enough different ways to cook with it.

4:47So I'm glad that it lived up to your expectations. Yeah, there are a few eggplant actually recipes in the book. Yeah, I saw. I love that. And I'm really excited to talk about this book, Bustani, today. Your previous book, Falestin, is one of my favorites. And this book really is rooted in, it seems, your memories from your grandparents' garden in Palestine. And I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit, maybe like close your eyes, When you picture that garden, what are you seeing or hearing or feeling? Most of the time it was really hot summer. Yeah. But it had really lots of shady places, especially under vine trees.

5:24I remember hot oozing figs picked from the tree and just kind of bite into them. Tiny little cucumber kind of tastes a bit soily, kind of a little soily in a way. plums. I used to also pick some quince and kind of share them with one of my siblings. And they're really hard to eat. I totally enjoy the flavor. They're quite fragrant as well. Yeah, I always love the smell of quince, but I'm nervous to cook with them because I'm under the impression that they can't really be eaten raw. Is that true? I've been eating them all of my life. Maybe they just have to be really ripe because they're so astringent, you know?

6:09Yeah, you know, sometimes I really kind of thinly slice them and add them, toss them in a salad, and it works really well. But yeah, I get your kind of point about cooking them. They're quite hard and sometimes grainy. I love the phrase, hot oozing fig. So delicious. One of my favorite things to eat. And I'm lucky because I have a house now in Umbre in Italy. And when I walk the dogs, there's so many different types of fig trees. And it's a bounty because they belong to no one. And you just kind of pick them and eat them. I love that. I grew up in Los Angeles and we had a fig tree in my backyard.

6:50And then when I moved away as an adult and I realized how expensive figs were in the supermarket. And they're not as good. They're never hot and oozing. No, but also they're never ripe enough. Yeah. It depends where they come from as well. But I have a tree in London in my garden. Really? Yeah. And because we've been having a hot summer, thanks to global warming, they are ripened. But I can't get to them because the birds and the squirrels and the pigeons get them before me. Yeah. I feel like that's always the problem with growing your own food. I want just one or two. Yeah. But they always get them before me.

7:32Have you tried putting them in the plastic clamshell that tomatoes would come in or something? I've seen people put little cages around them. I tried in the past couple of years ago to put paper bags and it doesn't affect them. Yeah, they gnaw right through that. No, they don't. But we kind of trimmed the tree and it's quite high at the moment, so you can't really get to the figs. I have this kind of long stick that I can, but... It's an eternal fight. So I'm curious, like when you first started kind of developing this idea in your head to create this book, Bustani? It started with COVID, this lockdown.

8:17We just wanted to run away from the craziness of being in a big city like London. And we packed ourselves half of the house and the two dogs, and we drove all the way to Umbria in Italy. And we were just kind of trying to stay there for a few weeks and we ended up staying for eight months. And when you're in a situation like this, you just feel a bit kind of, it's almost like a bubble. You can't really see anybody. You can't talk to anybody. I was like talking to my siblings all the time. But then you feel really homesick and you feel like you are kind of away from all the things that you love, the food, the flavors, the people.

8:54and it was spring and quite a lot of time to reflect and think and walk long walks but then I started foraging for things because you know it's a I mean I remember when we were kids my mom and dad used to take us to different part of Palestine but also the hills in Jerusalem and pick all sort of greens and herbs and and berries and because the climate is so similar you actually get the same things and my partner jeremy thought i was i was totally crazy and he's like why are you doing you're gonna poison us and like he enjoyed eating these dishes and it was a kind of connection to everything that i wanted it made me so close to the family in the home and i call Jerusalem home still after so many years living away.

9:47And I enjoyed the process of cooking them and eating them, but also more so to go out and forage for them. And after a while, I was just kind of writing notes. I wasn't even planning on doing a cookbook. And only when we got back to London like eight months after, I started thinking, I mean, all these notes are really important and they have memories and stories and background kind of in history. And I started kind of tickling the kind of idea of having another cookbook and I started working on it. And I've been talking to friends about it. And somehow it got to my editor, Lizzie Gray. And And I remember her kind of calling me saying, I hear you work on something, whatever it is, I want to publish it.

10:43And this is what kind of this is how it all started. You're like, who told you? How did you find out? I didn't get that. I was so excited that she came to me and said, OK, I want to publish it. And this kind of gave me the push to start thinking, what is it? I mean, how do I want to present it? In a way, I wanted to do something completely different from Palestine. But at the same time, I wanted to kind of share a little bit of me and a little bit of my memories and a little bit of the family and the way I grew up. And it's really important, especially now with everything that's horribly happening back home, that people can actually read, go back and read it.

11:35And especially I was thinking the other day to young kids, Palestinian young kids that never been to Palestine. And all they know about Palestine is people being starved and killed. And it's an important memoir in a way, but also it's an important piece of their history and my history to be able to write it in a way that connects with people. I mean, food is the best way to connect. We all understand food. We all connect to it. We all understand it. The whole cooking, eating, and sharing, it's a kind of human language that doesn't need to be kind of translated to anything. And through a cookbook, I started the whole thing in Palestine, but also in Bustani.

12:29You can write about a lot of things through recipes and cook. And people really want to focus more about where this dish comes from and what kind of history. Why is it called this way? What kind of memories or traditions? And I have this kind of privilege of writing a beautiful book like Bustani, talking about my memory, which I think, again, they're really, really important for others to read, not just the Palestinian kids, but also people that don't know anything about Palestine. Yeah, I think it is like a living, breathing document book in some kind of way, because it's talking about these cultural practices that the food is rooted in, that are trying to continue, and your own background as well.

13:19And something that I was really struck by by reading the book is just how much agriculture and foraging really anchor Palestinian food and also how the Israeli government has been trying to limit access to those things. And I was interested how you kind of held both of those truths when you were writing the book, if that was something you were thinking about. I mean, thank you for that. It's a really good question. But also, a lot of people ask me, why did you write such a book in such a time without reflecting on what's happening? The book was already finished, first of all, before October 7 happened.

13:53But also, I wanted to show another side of Palestine and Palestinian, which is really as important. It wasn't always displacement and killing. And Palestinians are naturally rooted in, you know, they are farmers. They are rooted in the land. They are talking about foraging, and this connects you to the land, to the surrounding, to the season, to what grows around you and what you want to eat from it. But they're also experts in preserving and treating each ingredient as it should. It's not just kind of picking something and just go and eat it. It's also how to make the best out of it. seasons sometimes can be really really short especially the summer so the figs tomatoes they are there for one minute and then they disappear yeah and they want to celebrate them so you see them in everybody's garden but also everybody's selling and everybody's buying them and you don't buy like one or two or one kilo they buy 20 30 kilos of each thing because they know it's going and they want to make sure that they enjoy it in different ways.

15:09They cook them in different ways, but also keep them for the rest of the year by preserving them, bottling them, drying them. Nowadays, they also kind of freeze things. And pantry, which we call mune in our kind of culture, plays a big part in the whole eating and cooking experience. Little jars and little kind of containers, they come really handy when you serve a meal, especially for a gathering, because these things, they totally enhance the whole experience from, you know, like the sumac onion, which are slightly pickled on top of a stew. to olives, pickles, cheese, quite a lot. Gazan dukkha, which is toasted and ground wheat with spices and sesame, which goes on top of a lot of things, but you can also just serve it with olive oil, where people just kind of dip their bread in oil and then the dukkha, which is a bit like the zatar mix.

16:20And these things are kind of reflective of how tradition, but also the respect to what grows around goes really, really far. And as a Palestinian, our land is shrinking. People have less and less access to things, and they go to the shop instead of growing their own bits, like the little garden that they used to have or the little plot of land that they had. And a lot of these different kind of ways of preserving are disappearing over the generation because kids don't know how to make them. Mom didn't do it, so the kids kind of... So they eventually would get lost. I find it really important that we document these things for the future generations.

17:15Yeah, I think it is so important, especially when cooking or preserving can be more of an oral tradition. If you don't have access to be able to show and demonstrate, then the knowledge is lost in that kind of way. Again, yeah. I mean, also because a lot of these ways of cooking and the traditions are passed down through generation. When you can't pass it down to, you know, your future children or grandchildren, it gets lost. But I wanted to touch also on the fact that foraging is a big thing in the Palestinian cuisine and culture. Israel comes out with all these kind of laws to prevent people from foraging.

17:59Yeah, I know like Zatar specifically is very... And Akub and Melo, it's quite a lot. And I think it's just making it hard for people to basically practice their kind of indignity and their way of living and respecting the fact that these traditions and these dishes have been passed down through generations for so many years and just kind of make it humiliating in a way. Yeah, I think going off of what you're saying, I saw a documentary called Foragers by Jumana Mana that came out a couple of years ago that's specifically about how za 'atar and like other herbs are being restricted on like how Palestinians can forage them.

18:38And I think if people are listening and they want to learn more about that, I can link to it in the show notes. But I think it's really important to look at like these traditions that are being kind of cut off and ask like, why is this happening? like what is the intended goal in that kind of way. And I think also in this book to be talking about how foraging is a deep cultural practice and supporting the fact that it should be something people have access to is really important as well. Yeah, I mean, the Israeli excuse is like they forage too much and then they kill in the environment, while at the same time they are unrooting, burning olive trees, bombing at the moment, which is the worst thing you can do for the environment.

19:18and it's a tiny little country. Yeah, and also the people in this documentary, for example, they care so deeply about the land. They forage only what they need. They're not taking in large quantity. I think that is such a superficial excuse, and I think it really is about control. But also, you know, I see it as these people, the indigenous Palestinians, have more understanding to the land and what grows around than people that came from Europe and occupied the country. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. If you're one of those last-minute shoppers, you might know the feeling. Ideas are running low and the clock is ticking.

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21:13Terms and conditions apply. Hi there, it's Matt, co-host of the show. We are currently running a This Is Taste listener survey, and we'd love to hear from you. Do you have a guest request? A restaurant you wish we'd visit to talk about on Three Things? What about a lesser-known cookbook author who deserves a spot in our studio chair? You can let us know by clicking the link in our show notes to complete the survey. It will only take a couple minutes, I swear, and will help us continue to make the best show possible. That's the This Is Taste listener survey. Link in our show notes. You talked a little bit about this idea of preserving tradition.

21:51When it came to the recipes in this book, how much did you want to kind of keep things traditional as opposed to having more kind of contemporary takes or your personal take on it? I am very loyal to the traditional dishes. And I love preparing them and eating them. But I'm also aware that modern kitchens don't cook that way. People don't want to spend three hours doing vine leaves and then it'll disappear in five minutes or spend three days doing one dish. My style of cooking is always kind of trying to change it. But also I want to believe that if things didn't happen the way they are back home in Palestine, food will evolve because it was always evolving.

22:36and it stopped since 1948 because what's happened. But also, I just see that there are so many wonderful Palestinian cookbooks out there and they all have almost the same set of traditional dishes that maybe 10 % of the dishes get cooked by people. and my way of looking at it is I don't want to ruin the dish. I don't try to kind of distract it from what it is. The essence is there but I kind of build on it. Sometimes I just take ingredients from the same dish itself and just put them on top instead of kind of... Quite a lot of our dishes are delicious to eat but you end up with this kind of brownish pages stuff on the plate which for me, I mean, I relate to it and I have the emotional kind of attachment to it.

23:39But when people buy a cookbook and go out and do the grocery store, groceries and cook the dishes and you end up with kind of a brown base stuff on the plate, it's not, it's kind of, you know, they don't really relate to that. Do you know the term ugly delicious? Yes. I feel like - But how many ugly delicious can you do? Yeah, you need the photo. You put some herbs on top or something. Exactly. Or take some of the elements like the chili or the peppers or the herbs and just put them on top. But also I like the fact that I can, I want to think I don't have the authority, but kind of just do it my way in a way.

24:20but also elevate them to be suitable for modern-time kitchens, for people that don't have as much time as, you know, my ancestors. Yeah. And it works, I think. Is there a recipe in the book that you think kind of encapsulates this idea of taking tradition and showcasing it and maybe having a kind of tweak in it? yeah for example the the couscous and tomato cakes which i previously published it in in jerusalem and it's a it's a very very simple dish my mom used to make it for us when we were kids it's kind of this it's almost like a tomato pasta which is it's kind of warm and sweet from the tomato slightly acidic and I wanted to bring it back but in a different form because I think over the years people been kind of writing to me how their kids love the fact that you know you can just give them that and they're happy but I wanted to kind of upgrade it but bring it also slightly up to adults to also enjoy it so I decided to make them into little patties and added a lot chili peppers and herbs and we fry them and they're so delicious and golden.

25:43And I serve them with like a bungee preserved lemon and capers and dill yogurt. So good. And they are so nice. Every time I serve them, they're like so simple, but it's so delicious and so comforting, not just for me, but also for the people that have it. And what I love about it as well is kids still love it. And then now they're getting to love preserved lemon and other things too. Yeah, exactly. Is the book entirely vegan or vegetarian? I was aiming for vegan. Yeah. But I love cheese. And yogurt. Yeah. Bread is really important. I've featured it quite a lot. But also when you do baking, eggs are really important.

26:30And I didn't want to use any kind of alternatives. People can do that with the recipes if they like, but traditionally there were not kind of alternatives to eggs and butter and cheese. So I kept it, you know, kind of traditional. Yeah. Did you ever think about wanting to include like some meat in the dishes? No. No? No. Do you eat meat at home? I eat meat. I tend to eat less and less kind of meat, but I am not a vegetarian or vegan, so I enjoy it. But I can spend like two, three months without. Yeah, I do think it's a really nice focus to be doing a vegetable book that really is consisting wholly of vegetables and doesn't have the flavoring coming in from like another kind of meat or something.

27:33But I also think that meat, for me, the way I see it is two dimension, where vegetables have like six dimension or more because they are more kind of flexible and they are more versatile and you can be really creative. And as a chef that's been kind of cooking with us for so many years, I find that it's like Christmas, like a playground. You can just do whatever you like. And combining the tradition with the new kind of ideas makes me super happy. Yeah. I think also as cooks, like there's something about the season of vegetables and the fact that they're often not available year round that it makes it so much more exciting to get to cook with them when they are available.

28:19Definitely. and I talk about it a lot. People are losing, especially in the West, like in America and in Europe, where we don't have seasons. We don't know what's in season. People don't really know what's in season. They just go to the supermarket and fill up their basket with all sorts of products coming from all around the world. Yeah. And they buy them because they look pretty or because they just kind of feel like strawberries, but actually it's not in the season. And this is the beauty of seasonal. You wait for it for the next year. And when it comes, this whole excitement and using it, but also known that this is a seasonal thing that kind of grows in your country.

29:04Yeah, I just had my first peach of the summer maybe two weeks ago. And I don't eat peaches out of season because they're never as good as you want them to be. And I think a bad peach is really disheartening. and now I buy so many, kind of what you were saying before about how people would buy kilos and kilos of something because I know that they're going to be gone. And I'm curious if there are any summer produce ingredients that you're really excited to be cooking with right now. I included, I mean, now it's all the stone fruit. Yeah. Strawberries are still really good. I tend to do like an ice cream or a kind of eaten mess, but my way with sumac and pomegranate and rosewater and mastic, which is really kind of bring me close to home, but also it makes it a little bit more exciting, exotic in a way.

29:58Mastic is almost like piney, right? It's slightly piney, slightly lemony as well. Is it a resin? Yeah, it is. Tree resin. Yeah. Wow. I don't think that's something I've ever cooked with before, but I've eaten pastries and desserts that have it in it. Yeah, I mean, Middle East, a big part of the whole Balkan as well, use it. And Greece is quite big. And they add it to even stews sometimes and also bread and baking. Any milk pudding or milk-based pudding will have mastic because it kind of thickened the pudding, but also gives it this kind of really, really mild, piney, lemony flavor. Okay, I'll have to seek it out and find something to do with it.

30:45Yeah, go ahead. It's not really hard to kind of use it. If you're making just bread or, like, say, a loaf of cake, just add a bit of that kind of... I always grind it with a little bit of caster sugar or just sugar. Yeah, how does it... It comes in, like, a block and then you grind it up? No, they're like clusters. They look a bit like little tiny crystals. Oh, yeah. Oh, they're beautiful. Yeah. Wow. And you need to find a good kind of quality ones because they can be quite a bit kind of strong. So on the vegetable, like the savory side, if you're eating a lot of strawberries and stone fruit, I imagine you do a lot of good things with tomatoes.

31:37I guess tomatoes technically a fruit. I always have tomatoes because English tomatoes kind of come quite late. So I buy tomatoes from the Middle East that come kind of all the way to London. And I always have them on the counter for almost two weeks because if you leave them at room temperature, they gain back the flavor that they should be kind of... Yeah, that they should have on them off. And I love using them. Just a simple salad, let's listen to them. But also, I included so many tomatoes recipes in the book. And this tomato salad that I have in Bustani is one of them. It's just a celebration of tomatoes.