The Power of Preservation
Chef Fadi Kattan is celebrating Palestinian food culture in the heart of the U.K.
By Zahra Al Asaadi
Photos by Safia Shakarchi
Fadi Kattan as a child eating qidreh on the streets of Bethlehem. See the recipe at the end of this story.
In London, on a quiet and picturesque Notting Hill road lined with pastel-colored terraced houses and restaurants, Akub is distinctly olive green—a seemingly deliberate choice for the Palestinian restaurant and a nod to that region’s most significant agricultural product. The menu is made up of dishes that marry ingredients from different cultures, such as British strawberries with sumac, a fennel maftoul salad, and squash shish barak. Akub is the latest venture of Fadi Kattan, a Palestinian chef born and raised in Bethlehem whose name has become synonymous with modern Palestinian cuisine.
After training in hotel management in Paris, Fadi opened Fawda in 2015, a restaurant in Bethlehem that showcased local produce with a constantly changing, seasonal menu. In 2023 he opened Akub to rave reviews, and this year he released Bethlehem, a cookbook that celebrates his hometown. It shares stories of the farmers, artisans, and producers keeping the traditions and culture of Palestinians alive despite near-constant turmoil and conflict in the region. On a breezy summer Saturday, during lunchtime at Akub, Fadi sat down with us to discuss his background, the inherent challenges and resistance of being a Palestinian chef, and how he showcases his home culture’s food using British produce while keeping its identity firmly Palestinian.
Can you tell us a little about your childhood and background?
I come from a Palestinian family. I was born and raised in Bethlehem, but my paternal grandparents moved to Japan at the turn of the 20th century. They had to leave Japan in 1943 during the war, and they ended up in Bombay, where my father was born, and lived in India until 1954 before returning to Palestine. On my mother’s side, my grandfather was born in Bethlehem but raised in Paris and later returned to Palestine. I had influences from France and India growing up but with a very strong Palestinian base.
How do you think those influences have affected your cooking?
My consciousness about the importance of locality comes from growing up with my grandmother, who sourced everything very locally. In Bethlehem, before the farmers would go to market, they would pass by my grandparents’ home and say, “Today we have lubia—green beans—or eggplant,” and that would be what my grandmother would cook that day. I also had a consciousness of the importance of seasonal produce from French culture. Even though it was something we practiced daily in Bethlehem, when I trained formally in France it was the start of an awareness of sourcing produce and celebrating local traditions, which influenced a lot of my cooking. In terms of Indian influence—normally in Palestinian food when we make a stew, you add the onions and garlic and then the meat and spices. In the Indian way of cooking, you start with the spices first, and that has influenced the way I cook. From French culture, I took on the use of butter within my cooking. If I’m cooking in a place that has a very strong dairy tradition, then I would integrate that, so it very much depends on the local produce.
In terms of the origins of ingredients, how have British ingredients affected your cooking at Akub?
In the sense that seasonality and timing are different in Britain, and the quality of the ingredients will make certain recipes different. For example, for summer we are doing a filo pastry containing strawberries compressed with sumac. British strawberries in summer are some of the best strawberries in the world. I can allow myself to do that compression with sumac because the strawberries are so flavourful. If they were tasteless strawberries, I would think of another fruit. I do an arak-cured monkfish—we don’t have monkfish in Palestine; we would normally use sea bass. But we use monkfish because we work with a fisherman in the Bay of Rye and monkfish is in season now. We use British fennel in a maftoul salad, the hand-rolled grain that comes from Palestine, which we get from Jenin. British fennel has a beautiful flavor that is different from Palestinian fennel. I will still be faithful to the flavor profiles that are Palestinian, but it is important we, as chefs, respect the locality of produce. I can’t be defending Palestinian farmers if I don’t defend British farmers when I am cooking in London.
You mentioned your grandmothers, which reminds me of your YouTube series Teta’s Kitchen, featuring you cooking with Palestinian grandmothers. Do you think that way of inheriting culture and cooking techniques from elder generations is at risk? Is that why you documented it in this way?
Yes, it is. In the Palestinian scope, specifically, we have to remember there has been a series of catastrophes, and those catastrophes have led to people’s movements and have led to people adapting in circumstances that were not their habitual ones. For example, all the towns that were displaced in 1948 from the coast, their inhabitants ended up no longer living on the coast. Who preserved the knowledge of their relationship with the sea and the fish? It was the grandmothers. Even though they were in a refugee camp in Jordan or a camp in the West Bank where there is no access to the sea, that culture was preserved by the grandmothers.
Moreover, as a chef I don’t preserve Palestinian cuisine—none of the chefs do, and we have to have a moment of humility and understand this. The ones who preserve are the grandmothers who cook every day, who transmit every day. They don’t do so formally. You know how when you cook with a grandmother, what they are giving you is way beyond a recipe. It’s a hand movement or describing the sound made while cooking, or what we in Arabic call nafas [a concept referring to the spirit or unique quality that makes a person’s cooking taste exceptional]—it’s a whole experience and the most beautiful way of transmitting food.
How can you bring that way of cooking or nafas into your food?
I am not an instructor that will put a recipe in front of you and say, “That’s how you cook it.” I will cook with you. Until October 7, I didn’t think this style of cooking featured in Teta’s Kitchen was disappearing. Today I fear it is disappearing. My book was never supposed to be a documentation of something that was disappearing. I was sharing my story and my recipes—some traditional and some with a twist. I didn’t know my paternal grandmother, as she passed away before I was born, but my maternal grandmother had a big impact on me with regard to food, culture, and love of Palestine. I regret that I postponed becoming a chef until after she was gone, and I also regret that I hadn’t documented everything she did when she was still here. Today I live off memories, some of her cookbooks that had annotations on the side, some of her recipes I found, and my mother’s memory of her. That’s why I encourage people who still have their grandparents and great-grandparents to make the most of them.
It may sound trivial, but it’s so important in the face of the disappearance and systematic erasure of a people. Every single memory is important. When you look at second- or third-generation Palestinians in the diaspora, they may have lost language, may not speak Arabic, and lost a lot of the social construct, but what they do have is food. Food is still being cooked at home every day that is Palestinian, and that is powerful.
With the current situation in Gaza, as well as the West Bank, which we don’t hear about as much, people are referring to the destruction of educational institutes and archives as scholasticide. Do you think something similar is happening with food culture in Palestine, with agriculture being destroyed or the way the coast is inaccessible for fishermen?
I think what we are seeing between Gaza and the West Bank is very different, and I will never compare what is happening now, but what is happening in the West Bank is terrible. The organized Israeli settler attacks on farmers in the West Bank, the regular burning down of olive trees in the last 40 years, the burning down of vineyards, and the horrible genocide in Gaza is erasure. Not erasure of people only—it’s archives, it’s stories, it’s the agricultural realities. The Israeli government has just announced a new settlement between Battir and Bethlehem on what is a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its agriculture. This will destroy part of an agricultural tradition. I use the word terroir—terroir encompasses the land, the agricultural practice, and the human tradition of food preparation of that area. We are seeing Palestinian terroirs being demolished one after another.
It’s a hand movement for describing the sound made while cooking, or what we in Arabic call nafas [a concept referring to the spirit or unique quality that makes a person’s cooking taste exceptional]—it’s a whole experience and the most beautiful way of transmitting food.
The people responsible for the destruction of the land and the food producers are the same people who claim these foods as their food, as part of their culture and traditions. How do you reconcile the two?
It doesn’t reconcile—it is the same thing. How do I uproot you from your land? First, I steal your land. Second, I make it impossible for you to farm your land. Third, in parallel to this I create a narrative that links me to the land. I will give you an example. Sabr, the prickly pear, historically grows in Palestine. It was planted a bit like a hedge. In 1948, when the 580 villages and towns were destroyed and occupied, sabr grew again because it was a very resilient plant. If you listen to what the Israelis say, they call the first generation who was born in Israel sabra. They use that symbol of the prickly pear—it is soft on the inside and has thorns on the outside. And I think, Wait a moment, that is a plant that you demolished because it is a reminder of where Palestinian villages were, and now you appropriate it.
What we have to remember is, before 1948 we had Palestinian Jews, who became Israeli after 1948. When those people make hummus, of course it is theirs because they are Palestinian like me. It doesn’t make hummus Israeli. The worst bit of it, I expect this behavior from the Israeli occupier because an occupier is not benevolent. But when people abroad accept it de facto while at the same time, when they go and eat other foods, they will ask about the origin of those products. If you care about Italian food and where it comes from, you should care about your Palestinian food and where it comes from. You should care as much about Nabulsi cheese as Parmigiana cheese and its origins.
You wrote your book before October 7, and in it you documented the destruction of Palestinian traditions. Do you think the situation now is more urgent?
I did not try to document something—I told a story. I am not an archaeologist. I want the Palestinians to go on living on the land, to go on making wine and food, and to go on fishing and celebrating what we are. There is an urgency for the world to stop the horror. I will not embrace documenting because I still have hope that we can stop this madness. At the same time, what we are seeing in Gaza is beyond everything we can describe. And I was very conflicted after October 7 because I thought, How can I be talking about food when my people are being starved? I think it’s one of the most difficult positions to have today, which is, we are celebrating life but, at the same time, we are mourning the loss of life.
It’s interesting how being a Palestinian chef—or singer or model—instantly becomes political in a way, while being a Ukrainian chef, for example, doesn’t. Nigella Lawson, the food writer and cook, recently featured a recipe from your cookbook on her site and social media and got significant backlash for it. How does that make you feel as a Palestinian chef?
The backlash and the violent comments to Nigella were scary. I find it shocking that people allow themselves that type of violence. It seems that as soon as you are Palestinian, it allows people to unfurl all their ignorant, uncultured hate. But wait, I cook, so why are you doing this? I am very at ease with who I am. I feel bad when I see people lashing out at those who share my book. I feel even worse for people whom I would expect to share my stuff but they don’t because they are scared. I think we, as humanity, should have learned from all the horrors of the last hundred years.
I have trouble thinking of another culture or nationality where the mere act of saying, “This is Palestinian” unleashes such hatred.
I think it is more than that. It is the fact that we exist, the fact that we cook, we sing, we dance. I think most of the hatred comes from people who are comfortably silent about the genocide. The fact that I get a recipe published in a supermarket magazine disturbs the ones who are silent, because if you are an Israeli general, I know what to expect from you. My problem with what is happening now is the ones complicit in silence. If you fight for Ukrainian rights, if you fight for the rights of the environment, how can you stay silent about Palestine? If I claim I am a progressive person but then am disturbed by the existence of the Palestinians because they cook and live, that is dangerous. Maybe by telling our story, by having people come here and eat Palestinian food, people will go home with more questions about Palestine and make more positive decisions for humanity.
Photo by Ashley Lima
Serves 6-8
Qidreh
This lamb and rice dish is the quintessential centerpiece for family celebrations in Palestine. Many will spice the meat and rice and then send it off to the wood-fired oven, where the ingredients are placed in a copper pot to cook slowly, releasing the flavors of garlic and coating the rice with the richness of the lamb meat.
Ingredients
For the meat:
2-3 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
8¾ lb. / 2 kg bone-in lamb shoulder roast, cut in ¾-inch / 2 cm-thick slices of approximately 9 oz. / 250 g each
2 bay leaves
4 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1 onion, halved
1 Tbsp. coarse sea salt
2 qt. / 2 L of water
For the rice and chickpeas:
2½ Tbsp. ghee (clarified butter)
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
10-12 peeled garlic cloves
1 tsp. ground allspice
1 tsp. ground turmeric
¼ tsp. each ground cumin, cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg
2½ cups / 500 g medium-grain rice
1½ cups / 250 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and drained
For the garnish:
½ tsp. extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup / 60 g slivered almonds
½ cup / 60 g pine nuts
Instructions
To prepare the meat, in a large pot, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat and brown the meat on all sides, 5-8 minutes. You may have to work in batches, adding the additional tablespoon of oil as needed. Add the bay leaves, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, onion, and salt. Add the water and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat and cook for 1½ – 2 hours, until the meat is tender.
Transfer the meat to a plate, strain the broth into a bowl, and discard the solids.
To prepare the rice and chickpeas, w
in a large pot, heat the ghee and olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until golden, 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for 1-2 minutes. Add the allspice, turmeric, cumin, cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, and nutmeg and sauté for 1 minute. Stir in the rice and chickpeas. Add 4¼ cups / 1 L of the strained lamb broth, bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium-low.
Cover the pot and leave to cook until the broth is absorbed, about 45 minutes. Add the meat to the pot with the rice and chickpeas and set aside for 10 minutes.
To prepare the garnish, in a small frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the almonds and toast for 3 minutes. Add the pine nuts and toast for 1 minute more, until golden.
Transfer the rice and meat to a serving tray, and sprinkle with the toasted almonds and pine nuts.
