Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen

Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published Date: July 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1408883846

A dazzling cookbook with vibrant recipes, captivating stories and stunning photography from Palestine

‘A moving, hugely knowledgeable and utterly delicious book’ Anthony Bourdain

'A big bowl-full of delicious Palestinian recipes, plus lots of insightful and moving stories... Great stuff' Yotam Ottolenghi

'A zingingly evocative collection of personal stories... Calling it a cookbook does it a disservice. Zaitoun deserves to be read as much as cooked from' Observer Food Monthly

Bursting with the freshness and brightness that is characteristic of all Levantine cuisine, Palestinian food is fragrant, healthy and delicious. From a colourful array of bountiful mezze dishes to rich slow-cooked stews flavoured with aromatic spice blends, it’s a cuisine that represents the very best of modern Middle Eastern cookery.

In this beautiful Palestinian cookbook, food writer Yasmin Khan shares recipes and stories from her travels through the region. On her journey she harvests black olives from the groves of Burquin in the West Bank, hand-rolls maftool – the plump Palestinian couscous – in home kitchens in Jenin and even finds time to enjoy a pint with workers at the Taybeh brewery, which is producing the first Palestinian craft beer. As she feasts and cooks with Palestinians of all ages and backgrounds, she learns about the realities of their everyday lives.


Zaitoun includes herb-filled salads, quick pickles, fragrant soups, tender roasted meats and rich desserts, and has a special focus on vegetarian versions of Palestinian classics. It has recipes for olive, fig and honey tapenade, roast chicken stuffed with pine nuts and raisins, and pomegranate passion cake, among many others. And surrounding the recipes, there is a chorus of stories from those who love, live and cook with Palestine in their hearts.

Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2019.

Author(s):

Winners of the Palestine Book Awards

  • They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom
  • I Sing From the Window of Exile
  • Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity
  • Transnational Palestine: Migration and the Right of Return before 1948
  • Among the Almond Trees: A Palestinian Memoir
  • Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza
  • Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial
  • Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes : Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body
  • Psychoanalysis under occupation: practicing resistance in Palestine
  • Power born of dreams: my story is palestine
  • Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization
  • Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies
  • Places of Mind: A life of Edward Said
  • Except for Palestine: The limits of progressive politics
  • A history of Palestinian Islamic Jihad: Faith, awareness, and revolution in the middle east
  • Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands
  • Against the Loveless World
  • The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
  • Life in a Country Album
  •  There Where You Are Not