Gold Foodies – Displaced By War, Restored By Food

So now I'm just washing the cucumber for the jaji and then we're gonna chop the cucumber and that's it. We add yogurt, we add a bit of garlic, we add some lemon juice. It's the best with red rice, maqluba, chicken, all sorts, really, anything. So today for dinner we have maqluba, which translates funnily enough to upside down. The reason we call it that is because. So I've got a big saucepan here. I'm actually just assembling it right now. So it consists of rice and chicken, essentially. And then what we add to it is potatoes, aubergines, cauliflower, and it's all made into layers. And then you cook it on the hob and then when it's ready, you flip it onto a big, huge charger plate kind of thing. And then it just looks beautiful. It's just a perfectly round, just pile of goodness. And right now I'm just adding the layers. So I've started with the bottom layer, which is a mixture of onions and mixed peppers and a bit of the rice. Then I'm going to add the chicken. Then I'm going to add the fried veg, which is potato, aubergine, cauliflower, and then all the rice, and that's it. Oh, and obviously with the desserts, we have the Iraqi tea, obviously. Who doesn't? So I'm originally from Iraq, Baghdad, the capital. I left the country with my family when I was one, went to Scotland. So you could say that my home is Scotland, really, because that's where I was not born and bred, but brought up. I don't really know Iraq. I haven't been there. A lot of my friends have been, but I've never seen it since leaving it, to be honest, which is quite sad. Can I just say, first of all, loads of people are shocked when they know I left it here, because, number one, I have. I've perfected the dialect, the Iraqi dialect, so I speak good Arabic, and my mom and dad made sure that I've got the language and the dialect, especially now that I have two kids of my own, I'm always making sure they speak in the Iraqi dialect when they speak Arabic. The other main thing for me, because I love food, is food, and for me, cooking Iraqi dishes all the time, that's the best. You know, just my stomach, it's important. And I'm feeding my kids. I mean, I'm not going to say every day of the week is Iraqi, but a lot of the time It's Iraqi food. My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. My family were distraught when the war started, the most recent one, but because we're far away, it makes us stick more to our roots, if you know what I mean. When we see this from like the outside, you hold on way more and way stronger to certain things. For people who lost everything in Iraq initially, they lost all the museums, all the landmarks, like you mentioned, everything, everything was gone. For people abroad, for us it's not as bad. So we didn't lose certain things, but we lost the sense of, possibly the sense of identity for a while. So that made us, you know, grip onto certain things like food and become more proud of it. So food a hundred percent is, you know, the most powerful tool. I am Muhammad Awad. I am Palestinian. I was born in Gaza, never sitting outside of the Gaza Strip. I grew up in very difficult circumstances and witnessed death and destruction up close and personnel during five major military Israeli offenses in Gaza. Life in Gaza has always been like difficult for us as Palestinians living under occupation is something unbearable. We don't enjoy the mostly freedoms people around the world are enjoying, freedom of movement. We have been under siege and the closure since 2007. Of course, we still cling to life despite all these circumstances. Please now ensure your table is folded away, your seat's in the takeoff position with your armrest down and your seat belt is securely fastened. I arrived to London in last October and this has been the first time to travel and to be away from home. London is amazing. It's a big experience. Living abroad however, is challenging. But I think immersing yourself in the new culture can be exciting. But there are valuable parts of me that don't fit in in this culture and food is essential to my identity. Everyone has different acquired tastes of food, so I always looking for the restaurants that serves my favorite Palestinian meat. I don't enjoy eating alone. So in Palestine, food means to me gathering, spending time with friends and family. So I started to invite and ask my flatmates to join and share with me with the food I eat. Not everything served in restaurants in London like exactly the same. Like home, Palestinian culture revolves around food. It's about spending time with family and friends. Food is essential to all events in our life as Palestinians. Last Friday I got up posting on Facebook and Arabic that I want Maftool. This is Maftul, one of the popular meals in Palestine I want maftool in this time before 100 days, I was getting up and just looking at my mother preparing maftool for after Friday meal. The cuisine in Gaza is rich in seafood and spices. Gazans consume a lot of meat, chicken, chili peppers. Palestine sweet treats are world renowned, normally featuring pastries, sweetened cheeses, nuts and dates. We are famous for the rice meals like mensaf, maqluba, uzi. These are favorite meals and many aspects of the Palestinian cuisine similar to the Syrian cuisine as you may know, like blood sham. But there are still traditional and fundamental elements to the Palestinian cooking such as olive oil, beans, yogurt, seasonal vegetables and quality meat and fish. But muftool is my favorite dish. My name is Abdullah Al Awayed. I've been born in the northeast of Syria, which is about 900 kilometer away from Damascus. I born in the 1980s in a small village which is everybody knows everybody. I grew up in culture where food is the main thing. It's the thing to show happiness. It used to be a very organic lifestyle where I grew up. My mom, she was the one who managed everything. So anything will be cooked in the house, it will be by my mom. Apart from the grill, it has to be done by my dad. I remember when I was kids, my mom during winter, during winter we don't have fresh stuff. So what we eat, we eat from the stuff that we've been the stuff that we saved in summer for winter. So it's like burgul burgle. It's like one of the product. I remember we could eat it three times a week and three times it's a completely different flavor from the one before. So just because it's one thing and we don't want to get bored of it. So my mom, she always play this trick. She just add one extra thing to make it burgul with different flavor. I think that's what made us like really appreciate food at the past and also like respecting food more. I came to London 2012. I think it is big change. I born in a small village. My hand will be always up to say hi to everybody. I think the city and the style of life, it's the business based on time. Yeah, just another 15 minutes, baby. So this is it. This is like I want to create meal a Syrian food based on the Syrian culture. But that it take the attention of the English people who's like always used to the English food. They haven't seen like, you know, weird smashed up like grain and like, you know, here we go. That's full madammas. I like what's full madamas. It's broad beans. It's like one of the healthiest thing. Here we go. That's made by Damascus chef. With real tea. So we decided to do something called pop up where you just cook from your house, take the food and serve it in one of the coffee shop. And we have started about here and little bit. And since then we always have the fine ingredients. For me, I'm not someone who just make food. I always, when I create the night, I call it the Syrian night or the Messim night. So what we do, we put Arabic music. When we bring the food, we talk about why the food exists, what made it exist in the. In the Syrian cuisine, why this dish is there. I think that's make it like, you know, very cultural. It's not like only you eat in like dish and you go. It's something you get like big part of the Arab culture, which is the food. So bringing it here, it does make. People are willing to try it or even just take a look. When the fastened seat belt signs are on, you must go back to your seat and fasten your seat belt securely. For your own comfort and safety. We recommend that you keep your. Love alone from the river to the sea Palestine will be free. 1, 2, 3, 4. Occupation no more. 1, 2, 3,4. Occupation no more. Actually, the maqruba is done and we're going to flip it now. So this is the plate I'm putting on top of the saucepan. But I've never done this before. Usually it's the men who do that in Iraq, because you need mussels for it, because it's quite a big. Coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and conservative future. Ra.