Biscuits & Sandwiches - Syria: Recipes from Home by Dina Mousawi & Itab Azzam

#FiftyTwoCookbooks Week Eighteen

Since 2011, 14 million Syrians have been forced from their homes, and over half of that number have fled their country entirely. The result is the largest refugee crisis in the world. The five countries bordering Syria have taken in the vast majority of those displaced: many more have ended up further west in mainland Europe.

This is a topic dominating the news cycle at the moment: the Illegal Migration Bill is currently snaking its way through the UK’s legislative process, an effort by the current administration to tackle the issue of small boats crossing the channel by criminalising those who risk the journey. You will have your own opinions on this. I have mine. 

Every single one of the 20,000 or so Syrians who have settled in the UK has their own story to tell, and it is often a story that’s best told through food. I was reminded of this not only because of this week’s book, a beautiful collection of stories and recipes by Dina Mousawi and Itab Azzam – but also because of a duo of connected coincidences that I experienced in the last seven days. 

Firstly, Bee Wilson deservedly won the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Award for Best Food writer for her work in The Financial Times and The Guardian, in particular this piece in which she candidly discusses how food can help us cope with grief. Alongside her own story she shares the tales of four others who have sought solace through food, including the story of Faraj Alnasser, who fled Syria with his family at the age of 16 and finally ended up in Cambridge three years later. 

I’m fortunate enough to know both Faraj and Bee (who has been a kind, enthusiastic and supportive patron of my cooking since 2013). During the peculiar summer of 2020 Faraj spent a few weeks with us in the kitchen at Vanderlyle, helping us prepare our to-go meals before launching his own business, Faraj’s Kitchen, cooking the food of his homeland for the lucky folk of our now-shared home city. 

I’m unsure as to whether it was down to fate or luck or planetary alignment, but on the same night that Bee collected her award, I looked up into Vanderlyle’s dining room midway through service and was overjoyed  to see Faraj coming through the restaurant’s doors, this time joining us as a guest for dinner. Entirely unplanned but completely appropriate were the Syrian rosewater and pistachio biscuits that I’d read about in this week’s book and had worked into our petit fours service to close the tasting menu. I’m not sure how authentic they tasted, and Faraj is far too polite to suggest they were anything other than delicious – but in that moment I felt extremely fortunate for the security of home, and that at no point have I had to recreate echoes of a previous life through the medium of food.

 

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For reasons that were clear only to my younger self, I didn’t often eat the packed lunch that my mum lovingly prepared for me each evening for the following day at school. It might have been the overwhelming warm-cabbage-humidity of the school dining room that quashed my appetite, or the smell of other children’s lunchboxes, or perhaps I was just a fussy eater during my formative years – but the bin was a more regular recipient of my sandwiches than my belly. Even now I find the traditional English packed lunch desperately underwhelming: the acceptance of sub-mediocrity is a wasted opportunity to eat something delicious. There is a chance, a small one, that familiarity may be breeding contempt – but in all honesty, I can’t think of another country on earth (apart from maybe the United States, but even they have cutesy paper bags which hold a greater degree of promise than a stale-smelling lunchbox) that devotes so little attention to the potential delights of the midday table.

Sidebar: if you’re seeking the apotheosis of this, you could do a lot worse than watching The Lunchbox, a cinematic and gastronomic delight

.Things might have been different if my cheese sandwiches had taken the form of those from this week’s book. Arabic flatbreads - easily procured on Mill Road - loaded with labneh cheese, fresh salad, black olives  and plenty of herbs. So vibrant, so tasty, so simple, so much more than the sum of its parts and leaving me nourished in every way. Learning new recipes doesn’t have to be time-consuming or life-changing: sometimes it involves simply seeing things in a different light, in a new context, with fresh eyes made more receptive thanks to chance meetings with amazing people.

Thank you, as always, for reading. Next week’s book is The Momofuku Cookbook by David Chang. If you would like to make a reservation at Vanderlyle, we still have a few tables left over the next few weeks. Reservations for July will be made available on Tuesday June 6th.