Our conversation today is with Laila El-Haddad also known online as Gaza Mom who introduces herself as wearing many hijabs, she is a journalist, an activist, and a writer to name a few. El-Haddad is well-known in the culinary world for The Gaza Kitchen, a non-traditional cookbook co-authored with Maggie Schmitt and endorsed by Anthony Bourdain. El-Haddad tells us how The Gaza Kitchen came to life, and how she and Maggie had to move fast as soon as one of the many sieges on Gaza was finally lifted to begin working on their project which she described as a very organic experience where one person would introduce them to the next which really highlights the tight-knight welcoming community in Gaza.

El-Haddad won a James Beard award in 2025 for her personal essay and recipe A Cuisine Under Siege in which she shares her personal loss of her aunt Um Hani in an Israeli Airstrike and her final memories with Um Hani while cooking and documenting her recipe for Gazan sumagiyya. The piece ends with El-Haddad regretting that she did not accept Um Hani’s offer to teach her her grandmother’s sumagiyya recipe, telling her to keep it for another time. “Another time never came, and never will.” she remorsed.

El-Haddad is widely known for The Gaza Kitchen which will soon be out in its fourth edition, but she shares with us the story behind her first book Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between. Gaza Mom is a compilation of personal essays from her life as a journalist and a new mom working in Gaza with Al-Jazeera News Agency while she was raising her son Yousef and could not go back to see her husband in the U.S. as there was a blockade on Gaza and the Rafah border was closed. She started a blog during the blockade called Raising Yousef to stay connected with her husband and friends in the U.S. Essays from her blog were later compiled into her debut book archiving her life at important timestampa in Palestinian history including the Second Intifada , the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinian elections in 2006, and the beginning of the ongoing siege on Gaza.

El-Haddad also shares her memories of visiting the martyred professor Refaat Alareer’s class at the Islamic University in Gaza when Alareer was introducing personal essays to his students. She and Alareer co-edited Gaza Unsilenced which is an anthology compiled of writing by Palestinians and their lived experiences during the 2004 war on Gaza. Listen to the full conversation with Laila to learn more.

You can learn more about Laila and her work on her website lailahaddad.com and also learn more about The Gaza Kitchen on thegazakitchen.com

All Photos are the courtesy of Laila El-Haddad

Our conversation today is with Palestinian chef Ruba Khoury the founder and owner of Dirty Lemon Bar in the 11th district of Paris. Khoury is a second generation Palestinian as her grandparents were expelled from Palestine during the 1948 Nakba. She tells us how she began her passion in food and drink as she assisted her mother in hosting family friends and guests at their home: “It was a very natural experience as a young Arab girl, helping your mom when you have people over, help to serve tea and cookies or help make the food, kind of hosting people.”

Khoury opened her bar in Paris wanting to break away from the strictness of the Parisian restaurants and create a space with community as the heart of her concept, hosting events meaningful to the community : “We do book readings, book signings. talks either with journalists or other chefs, always about topics that are important to us, like Palestine and female empowerment. I tried to create a space that is not just food and drinks. There’s more to it.”

I tried to create a space that is not just food and drinks. There’s more to it.” - Chef Ruba Khoury

Khoury shares the challenges of opening her own place in Paris as a young female non-French chef , obtaining a bank loan to get her business set up was not easy even though she had been living in the country and got her culinary training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris , with only one of the 10 banks she applied to finally accepting her application: “For them, as a non-French and female chef in Paris, I definitely got a lot of backlash.”

“For them, as a non-French and female chef in Paris, I definitely got a lot of backlash.” Chef Ruba Khoury

Khoury also shares the story of how she entered the Arab Top Chef Season 9 and how she developed a friendship with Chef Julian Rishmawi, another Palestinian chef who was also in the competition.

You can stay updated on Chef Ruba on her Instagram account (@ruby_khoury) and watch her in Top Chef Season 9 on MBC 1 on Arabsat or on Shahid streaming services.

You can find her bar on Instagram (@dirtylemon.bar) where you can find their latest flavors and events.

Our conversation today is with Palestinian chef Julian Rishmawi, born and raised in Bethlehem.

Julian trained in the Culinary Arts Program at Bethlehem University, but his story began much earlier with his father Ra’ed Rishmawi’s famous, where he learned the soul of bread and the discipline of the craft. Julian learned discipline and passion from his father as he shared with us: “He didn’t own a bakery, but he worked like someone who did with so much pride.”

Carrying the flavors, memories, and spirit of his hometown, Julian built his career across different countries and kitchens, always bringing a part of Palestine with him.

“The (apartheid) wall can separate cities, but it never separated our spirit… that’s why I cook with so much emotion and memory because when something blocks your path, you learn how to create your own .” Chef Julian Rishmawi

Subscribe for all the latest interviews with Palestinian chefs and cookbook authors.

Julian is currently a contestant on Season 9 of the Arabic edition of Top Chef, airing weekly on MBC (Available on Arabsat and NileSat) and on MBC’s streaming service Shahid.

Today, we speak with Julian about his love for cooking and baking, his journey from Bethlehem to the competition, and the stories that shaped him as a chef.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to I come from There newsletter, I am back to spamming your emails. It has been a long time since the last post, so here are some updates, before I fully introduce you to our guest for today’s podcast. sarah duignan, phd and I have had a conversation Preserving Palestinian Cuisine During Genocide for Anthrodish Podcast which you can listen to here. And if you are into the anthropology behind food, I definitely recommend listening to her podcast episodes. Also, if you in the same realm, do apply to be a guest on Anthrodish.

I also spoke to Isabela from Feminist Food Journal back in June about reporting on food during an Israel-made famine and much more. You can listen to the full conversation here, and next week, there will be a photo diary also shared on FFJ. I do not usually share many photos as I have been off of social media for several years and have been controlling my digital footprint in terms of images, so this will be exclusive.

Also, coming soon on Radical Books Collective will be a conversation with Bhakti with a focus on the role of cookbooks and social media in preserving Palestinian culture.

Soon there will also be an interview with Reem Assil Palestinian-Syrian chef, cookbook author, and social justice activist.

I eventually want to have an archive here for Palestinian food and culture.

Our guest for this podcast is the brilliant Lebanese chef and cookbook Lina Saad which you may know from her Substack All That’s Lebanese. Lina is humble enough to name herself as A Lebanese Chef, but she is actually THE Lebanese Chef. Her love and dedication to her homeland and culture really shows in the way she writes about food and explains the intricacy and depth of Lebanese foods to those who may just be familiar with Lebanese grills and mezzes. She has authored the cookbooks: Turath Lubnan: Lebanon’s Heritage, The Land of White, and Ramadan Express. Listen to the full conversation with Lina and delve deep into the authentic flavors of Lebanon.

I spoke with Palestinian-British activist and chef Joudie Kalla who has authored two of the earliest Palestinian cookbooks published in English: Palestine on a Plate - Memories from my mother’s kitchen and Baladi- Palestine a celebration of food from land and sea published in 2016 and 2018 respectively. Kalla’s Palestine on a Plate is the first cookbook to openly have ‘Palestine’ in the title, and many publishers had requested Kalla to give up the title for them to publish her book, but Kalla remained adamant to give tribute to her homeland and to the women of her family from who she inherited her love for cooking.

Kalla shares with us her views on the importance of activism for Palestine, sharing recipes and food online during a genocide, and how people with platforms can advocate for Palestine.

You can learn more about Joudie Kalla and her work on her website Palestine on a Plate.

Tune in to listen to the full conversation with Joudie Kalla.

This week, I spoke to Hisham Assaad the multi-talented Lebanese-Palestinian food photographer, food stylist, culinary tour guide, and the author of two cookbooks: Bayrut and Taboon where you can find his food lifestyle pictures from the streets and souks of Bayrut and Lebanon . Hisham began his food blog Cook in 5 Square Meters (Cookin5m2) in 2013 where he started sharing food writing and recipes along with the political updates of Lebanon during the time of each post.

Hisham has recently contributed a moving piece called Moghrabieh in the Camp to Vittles sharing a family recipe and their communal culture around the dish in Dbayeh a Palestinian Refugee Camp where his family lives near Beirut.

In our conversation, Hisham speaks about his experiences with food and family, cultural appropriation of Palestinian and Lebanese cuisine, why his cookbook Taboon was not picked up by Western media, and much more that I do not want to spoil, so tune in!

In an insightful conversation with Tess from Slingshot books, she shares with us how Mona Zahed’s cookbook Tabkha came to life; written on her phone while displaced in a tent amidst the genocide in Gaza and reaching across the world to the tiny publishing house through the mutual aid group Coffees for Gaza where Tess did not think twice about taking on the project as she put it: “It’s a no brainer. It took me less than a second to say yes to this project …If a woman in a displacement tent in Gaza in the midst of the genocide wants a book made, you make her book for her, end of.”

“If a woman in a displacement tent in Gaza in the midst of the genocide wants a book made, you make her book for her, end of.”

She shares that Mona wanted to fundraise for her family and save her recipes by documenting them in Tabkha: “Literally she felt that she was saving her recipes, extracting them from the rubble.”

“Literally she felt that she was saving her recipes, extracting them from the rubble.”

Tess highlights the significance of including two Palestinian illustrators in the second edition of Tabkha who gladly shared their creative talents for Tabkha to now feature illustrations from 22 artists around the world.

Listen to the full conversation with Tess and pre-order your copy of Tabkha.

I came across Clarissa on X where her bio describes her as a vegan who used to write a vegan blog and who is now using her account to spread fundraisers for families in Gaza. I found that interesting and went on to check her blog Vegan in Bellingham which she used to share vegan recipes and restaurant reviews for eight years before the genocide in Gaza began and she changed her platform’s content altogether. Listen to Clarissa’s story and reflections on the journey she went on from being an author of a vegan blog to advocating for the Palestinian cause.

Palestinian Chef Sami Tamimi joined us in today’s podcast to share his journey and experiences with food starting with his memories in the Old City of Jerusalem where he grew up with his family. His cookbook titled Boustany translates into “my garden” and Sami shares memories of his grandfather’s “boustan” (garden) in Hebron, Palestine. Sami’s first solo cookbook Boustany is now available to order through his website. Sami’s Boustany highlights the relationship between Palestinians and the land from which they forage, harvest and cook. All recipes in the book are vegetarian and about a half of them are vegan.

I invited Mona Zahed the author of the cookbook Tabkha: Recipes from under the Rubble for a podcast interview to speak about her life in Gaza and her cookbook, but due to the current situation in Gaza, having a stable internet connection for a call is a luxury and going to a public place to connect to internet is a risk as crowded places are targets. I have previously interviewed Mona as part of a written interview for The New Arab in which you can also learn more about Mona and her journey with Tabkha.

Slingshot Books the publisher of Tabkha on behalf of Coffees for Gaza now is publishing the second edition of the book with pre-orders open on their site. You can also donate towards the publishing of Tabkha, so that all of the proceeds from the sales can go towards Mona and her community. The second edition of the book contains two new recipes and illustrations that were not included in the first edition. Each of the 22 recipes is illustrated by a different talented artist. This book not only supports Mona, but also the families that are supported by Coffees for Gaza.

Last week Mona shared that she made bread and dough from pasta as sourcing flour has become very difficult and expensive especially in Northern Gaza. This week she shared that her neighbor passed out from hunger and Mona went to share some bread with her. This is the sad reality in Gaza; hungry people sharing food with each other.

A happy moment for Mona was when she received a copy of Tabkha which was sent to her with a medical envoy to Gaza from Australia. This is a cookbook with a message, a cookbook that supports 25 families in Gaza. Get your copy, gift a copy, and cook with Tabkha.

Note: This is a volunteer led project from editing, design, illustrating, and marketing, so including the book in your posts, notes, and social media really helps. If anyone would like professional photos of the book for a post, feel free to contact me.

For remote volunteer opportunities with Gaza Great minds foundation click here.

To join the Gaza Great Minds Book club or Gaza student encouragement group message them on X or Instagram.

Ahmed Al-Najjar was a university lecturer at the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza before the genocide began. As Israeli bombed the university, and no international reporters and media outlets were let into Gaza, a need for English-speaking correspondents was needed to report the daily atrocities of the genocide in Gaza. Today, Ahmed spoke with us on the deliberate famine that Israel is causing in Gaza. As humanitarian aid agencies are announcing the depletion of their resources in Gaza, Gaza’s children are turning into bones.