Rose Previte's debut cookbook Maydān

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Rose Previte's stuffed summer squash with lamb and rice, from her new cookbook, Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond. Elissa Nadworny/NPR hide caption

Rose Previte's stuffed summer squash with lamb and rice, from her new cookbook, Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond.

It's early morning and Rose Previte's D.C. restaurant is still dark. There are a few ingredients on the prep table: summer squash, a can of whole tomatoes, an onion, ground lamb, rice, mint, cinnamon, and good Lebanese olive oil.

"We are going to make one of my all-time favorite comfort foods," says Previte. "Koosa."

It's a recipe from her debut cookbook, Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond.

Maydān also happens to be the name of the restaurant she's currently standing in — it's a word that holds a lot of meaning for Previte. "I learned it in Kyiv," she explains. "Everyone kept saying... 'Meet at maydan, meet at maydan,' and I was like, 'What is this?' " So she looked into it. It's a word that exists in Arabic, Hindi, and Farsi and means: a gathering place.

"Somewhere that people came together in all these different countries from Iran, to Ukraine, to Georgia," Previte says, "to either celebrate, to mourn, to rebel."

And that's what she wants to do with her food — bring people together around a table.

Maydān: Recipes from Lebanon and Beyond isn't a restaurant cookbook, though some of the hit dishes from her restaurants —she has four in the D.C. area and is opening another in Los Angeles — have been adapted for the home cook and are included. But a lot of the recipes are family dishes, from food that Previte grew up eating in her Lebanese/Italian/American home in Ohio, and food she ate in home kitchens all around the world.

"I try not to credit a country," Previte says. The recipes in this cookbook tie in the flavors of a wide region — from the Caucuses to the Middle East and North Africa. So instead of calling it "pita," or "naan," Previte uses, simply, "flatbread." She says she's not trying to wade into the fight over which country "owns," as another example, hummus.

"I try to just tell you the story of how I learned it and where I learned it."

The recipe she's preparing to make today is one she learned from her mom. Koosa is squash stuffed with ground lamb and rice and cooked in a bath of fragrant, spiced tomato sauce. It's a dish her family eats every year at Christmas.

Previte starts by coring the squash using a paring knife. "This is my grandma way of doing it," she says. "I'm just literally using the knife to scrape off the insides."

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Previte's mother catered Lebanese food from their house and her father sold Italian sausage sandwiches at street fairs and festivals on the weekends. "It was food all the time, every day," says Previte. Elissa Nadworny/NPR hide caption

Previte's mother catered Lebanese food from their house and her father sold Italian sausage sandwiches at street fairs and festivals on the weekends. "It was food all the time, every day," says Previte.

Previte grew up in a small town in Ohio — 3,000 people, three stoplights. On her mom's side, her family hails from Lebanon. On her dad's, Sicily. Both her parents were born and raised in the United States, as were Previte and her siblings.

"I think [my parents] quickly realized that if they didn't overcompensate on culture, we were going to lose it," Previte says. "Language was already lost." So they went "overboard" on the food. Her mom started catering Lebanese food out of the house — she even opened a restaurant in her 60s. Previte's lawyer/professor dad sold Italian sausage sandwiches at street fairs and festivals on the weekends.

"It was food all the time, every day."