Celebrating the food of Palestine

Palestinian cooking is rooted in its landscape. It comes from hillside olive groves and citrus orchards, from wild thyme and sumac, and from long tables set in the shade of a summer afternoon. Eat Palestine gathers these dishes and writes them plainly, so that anyone who wants to can cook them at home.

This is generous, seasonal food. It leans on olive oil pressed each autumn, on herbs bought by the bunch, on sumac and sesame, on chickpeas and lentils and grains, and on the breads that anchor every meal. A great deal of it happens to be vegetarian or vegan, because this is the everyday cooking of a place where vegetables, pulses, and good bread carry the table. The celebrated meat dishes tend to be saved for gatherings and feast days.

It is also a cuisine of real variation. Ask ten cooks how to make any dish on this site and you may well get ten answers, since the ingredients and their proportions shift from one town to the next. The versions here are one honest reading of each recipe, offered as a starting point that you are meant to adjust to your own hand and taste.

Above all, this food is made to be shared. Plates crowd onto the table together, bread is torn by hand, and everyone reaches in. The hope is that cooking these recipes brings some of that warmth into your kitchen, and that it deepens your appreciation for Palestine and the abundance of its table.

Start with the recipes