Reem Kassis: how I brought my Palestinian heritage to the table

The Arabesque Table tells of Kassis’s Palestinian family, while giving a modern twist to such dishes as fatteh, lentil soup and pistachio cake

Before writing The Arabesque Table, Reem Kassis thought that its predecessor, 2017’s The Palestinian Table, might be her only cookbook. To start with, she didn’t think of herself as a food writer. After she left her home in Jerusalem in 2005, aged 17, she was ambitious, ticking boxes for a fast-track corporate career: a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania; an MBA; a postgraduate degree at the London School of Economics; stints at the global management consultancy McKinsey and the World Economic Forum.

But growing up in a food-obsessed family of excellent home cooks meant her mother had sent her off to university with olive oil, za’atar and instructions to write down everything she made. On moving to the US, then London in 2011, Kassis was surprised how little was known about Palestinian food – and people. Putting together the proposal for what would become her first book also prompted a change of priorities. “There are thousands of people who could do the job that I was doing,” she says, from her home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “But how many people could be the mother to my children that I am, and also safeguard this culinary treasure and share it with the world.”