For Palestinian Cook Reem Kassis, The Kitchen Is A 'Powerful Place'

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Cookbook author Reem Kassis says that many foods that are considered Middle Eastern or Israeli actually originated as Palestinian dishes. Dan Perez/Phaidon Press hide caption

Cookbook author Reem Kassis says that many foods that are considered Middle Eastern or Israeli actually originated as Palestinian dishes.

Growing up in East Jerusalem, Palestinian cookbook author Reem Kassis never expected to enter the food industry. For her, the kitchen represented a "life sentence" for women.

Instead, Kassis moved to the U.S. when she was 17, first studying business at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and then at the London School of Economics. It wasn't until she had a child that she began to see the kitchen as a "powerful place" where she could share important stories about food and culture with her daughter.

"I started compiling my family's recipes and stories together, almost as a way for her to have a piece of home wherever she ended up in the world," Kassis says. "But once I did that and I started to see all those pieces coming together, I realized, yes, these are my family's recipes, these are my family's stories, but taken together as a whole, they could be the story of any and every Palestinian family."

The Salt Give Chickpeas A Chance: Why Hummus Unites, And Divides, The Mideast

Kassis says that many foods that are considered Middle Eastern or Israeli actually originated as Palestinian dishes. Her first cookbook, The Palestinian Table, chronicled the history of Palestinian food — along with some of her personal history. In her new book, The Arabesque Table, Kassis expands the focus to the cross-cultural culinary history of the Arab world.

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Phaidon Press

On her identity as a Palestinian being inherently political

It's comical because all it takes is for me to use the word "Palestinian" and anything that I want to talk about — no matter how far removed from politics — suddenly is political. But at the same time ... as Palestinians, as a people that do live under occupation, who are fighting for justice, it's hard to separate that reality from anything else that we do. Every person goes about it in a different way. I am in the food and writing world, and that's how I try to address or deal with that issue, from that angle. And someone else in a different sphere might deal with it from a different angle. ... It can be a land mine, but it shouldn't be. ... Food is the lowest common denominator we all have. ... Regardless of where you come from or what religion you are or what your beliefs are, you have to eat.But do I believe that food can bring people together? I think that's a stretch.

On the controversy about the origin of hummus

Hummus itself is controversial abroad because just a few decades ago, nobody knew what it was. When my husband would take it to school, people would make fun of him for eating this beige paste. Now, suddenly, since the late '80s, it's become much more popular and recognized abroad as Israeli. And I think that's where the controversy happens. ...