Chef Aziza Hamdan‘s kitchen is “magic,” filled with the smell of aromatic spices like the tangy and herbal Zaatar and olive oil simmering in the oven.
The sounds of the food sizzling and bubbling under Hamdan’s hands mixes with the Palestinian music playing in the background, all in the hopes that “people feel like they’re in a true Palestinian kitchen,” says Hamdan.
The local chef has been offering Palestinian food workshops to kids and adults in her home or at the mosque since she graduated from Nova Scotia Community College’s (NSCC) culinary arts program in 2019.
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Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Hamdan says she’s holding workshops for adults and kids within her own home with a limit of 10 people, including herself, in keeping with the province’s COVID-19 protocols. Social distancing is also a rule she enforces in all her classes.
When it comes to children’s workshops, she only takes in six because Hamdan says “it’s hard to keep them physically distancing.” Before every meeting, she calls her workshop participants to go over COVID-19 screening questions with them.
In the workshops, she teaches people how to make traditional Palestinian food like falafel and musakhan, which features a roasted chicken baked with spices and onions served on taboon bread.
Musakhan
“I’m responsible to show the world about everything that’s Palestinian right from my kitchen. So the people (can get a taste and feel) of the culture through my clothes, food, and music,” said Hamdan. “I want to show the world how rich Palestinian culture is.”
But more than that, Hamdan wants to teach the next generation of Palestinian-Canadians about their culture, especially as the occupation and annexation of Palestine continues by the state of Israel.
This is why she holds cooking workshops for kids and asks them questions about what city or area their parents are from, and to have them be proud of that.
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Hamdan also hosts a small gathering of Palestinian women at her home once every week to share recipes and make food that’s unique to different regions in Palestine.
By chronicling recipes and teaching others, Hamdan seeks to safeguard the Palestinian identity from erasure.
“My goal is to transmit the culture through the use of my kitchen,” she said.
Hamdan is one of many chefs worldwide, who are working on reclaiming and documenting Palestinian food, with Chef Joudie Kalla, author of “Palestine on a Plate” and “Baladi” being one of the leading figures.
On her website, Kalla says “there has been a huge surge of Middle Eastern food in recent years and few cookery books that focus on the food of Palestine.”
As a result, she published her first book, “Palestine on a Plate” in 2016 to put Palestine on the world’s food scene.
“This book will show our traditional methods and cooking before my grandmothers were forced to leave Palestine at the time of the Nakba in 1948, and only knew this way of cooking, evoking the vibrancy and romance of Palestine,” Kalla said.
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The “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” is a reference to the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.
Another key contributor is artist and chef Mirna Bamieh who launched Palestine Hosting Society in 2017, “a live art project that explores traditional food culture in Palestine especially those that are on the verge of disappearing.”
This larger movement, which Hamdan is part of, seeks to resist the force of colonization through the preservation of cultural treasures, like food recipes, so that the next generation of Palestinians continue to remember who they are–descendants of mothers and grandmothers who keep traditions alive through food and celebrations.
“In Palestine, in Eid or in festivals, we have gatherings and we prepare food together with friends and neighbors, so I try to bring that same experience in my home with the other women,” Hamdan said. “In Palestine, we are all a family. We are all connected.”
She hopes to eventually publish their recipes in a book, so she can share them with the wider community.
Hamdan is also working on translating the recipes into English, so she can start offering workshops for anyone who’s interested and does not speak Arabic.
In the meantime, people can view her work here.