The flavors of Bethlehem

The first time I finally managed to cook zucchini flowers stuffed with fresh cheese, it was because of a gift. For months, I had been poring over the recipes in Fadi Kattan’s wonderful new cookbook, Bethlehem: A Celebration of Palestinian Food. That’s in part because I live in the Holy Land, and I buy my fruits and vegetables every Saturday from the same market in Bethlehem that stands at the heart of Kattan’s book. Yet time and time again, I couldn’t get up the courage to attempt his recipe for stuffed zucchini flowers, fearing the buds would fall apart. Every Saturday, I asked the vegetable vendors about their flowers, as if in wait.

Then, one Saturday morning, a vendor showed me that he had lovingly removed the yellow flowers from the zucchinis that he was selling so he could offer them to me as a gift. I accepted and immediately returned home and followed Kattan’s suggestion, stuffing them with fresh Nabulsi cheese and frying them. For the first time in my life, I ate the tender flowers. By then it was no longer about food. It was about gratitude.

In Bethlehem cooking and eating are always about relationships, and it is this world of human connections that Kattan, himself a proud Bethlehemite, has lovingly brought to life. The result is not only a cookbook, but the story of Bethlehem told through its food.