Praise for The Gaza Kitchen, Second Edition

This book becomes more essential with every passing day. Not just a superb cookbook, a collection of vital recipes from a delicious yet often overlooked cuisine, but an argument for understanding. A classic of world food.

—ANTHONY BOURDAIN

It is a delight to be returning to this book—a real classic—in its second edition. The recipes and stories are magically woven together, inspiring to read, to cook, and to eat. Telling us about the food of Gaza is key to understanding the people’s way of life, and this is what Laila and Maggie do so fantastically well.

—YOTAM OTTOLENGHI and SAMI TAMIMI

co-authors of Jerusalem: A Cookbook

The best cookbooks inspire you to be a better chef. This one can make you a better person. Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt guide readers through the rich, subtle and complex flavours, history and politics of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the Levant. Even if you never make any of these recipes—and you’d be depriving yourself of sublime taste if you didn’t—your palate will grow through this excellent book. Part anthropology, part history, part politics, part biography, part geography, and always passionately intelligent, this is gastronomic writing at its finest.

—RAJ PATEL

author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System

The Gaza Kitchen cookbook is a vital attempt to safeguard a rich culinary heritage that has existed in the Middle East for thousands of years. In documenting Palestinian recipes and food culture, despite the ravages of war, Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt have significantly succeeded in sharing their culinary travels while bringing dignity and pride to those who continue cooking traditional meals at home in Palestine. This book is an asset to those living in Gaza and to the rest of the world who would like to participate in protecting this rich cuisine.

—BARBARA MASSAAD

Lebanese author and photographer of the award-winning cookbooks Man’oushé, Mouneh, Mezze, and Soup for Syria

Intriguing, homely, and delicious, the recipes are familiar as broadly Middle Eastern but they are distinctively Palestinian and many also uniquely of Gaza—with more pronounced flavours, more herby, spicy, peppery, lemony, than those of their regional neighbours. We also get from this very special book a rare insight into the intimate everyday lives of engaging people who grow vegetables and herbs and raise pigeons and rabbits on their rooftops even as they lament their predicament.

—CLAUDIA RODEN

author of more than a dozen books on Mediterranean cuisine