A House With A Date Palm Will Never Starve
July 19, 2018
Hardcover cookbook with date syrup infused ink, 6.5 x 8.75 in., 240 p.
Foreword by Claudia Roden, text by Ella Shohat, recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi, et al.

With traditional and newly crafted recipes by forty-one chefs and food writers, this cookbook focuses on the many uses of date syrup, a central ingredient in Iraqi cooking.

In 2018, my Lamassu sculpture on the Fourth Plinth at London’s Trafalgar Square was unveiled. This Lamassu was built from thousands of date syrup cans, objects laden with historical significance. For decades, until the industry was decimated by war, dates had been Iraq’s second biggest export after oil.

As the Lamassu sat upon the Fourth Plinth, I invited chefs from around the world to contribute recipes using date syrup. Chefs and food writers including Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Reem Kassis, Prue Leith, Jason Hammel, Nuno Mendes, Thomasina Miers, Giorgio Locatelli and Marcus Samuelsson shared sweet and savory dishes with date syrup, now collected in this cookbook.

EXCERPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

“The reconstruction of the Lamassu, set on the Fourth Plinth, allows an apparition to haunt Trafalgar Square at a time when we are witnessing a massive migration of people fleeing Iraq and Syria. I see this work as a ghost of the original, and as a placeholder for those human lives that cannot be reconstructed, that are still searching for sanctuary. Unlike the Lamassu housed inside the British Museum, the recreation stands outside with wings raised, still performing his duty as guardian of Iraq’s past and present, hoping to return in the future.

 With so many date syrup cans, a question arises: where did all that date syrup go? This cookbook seeks to extend the space of the statue of the lamassu, beyond Fourth Plinth into your cupboards and bellies. It is a way to taste the sculpture.

 This cookbook brings together a cast of cooks—from my mother, Yvonne David Rakowitz to local London experts, like Lamees Ibrahim, Claudia Roden, and Philip Juma, to international chefs like Alice Waters—to collate traditional recipes and propose new ones that use Iraqi date syrup.

 The title of the cookbook comes from a Prophetic saying: A House With A Date Palm Will Never Starve. At first, one interprets this to mean the nutritious fruit from this ubiquitous tree in the Mesopotamian landscape. But it is about all the elements of the palm: the dates, the shade the tree provides, the fallen leaves for woven furniture, and finally, the wood that can be used to expand the house as the family grows.

 All these elements sustain life and the house. 

 And so I hope what this sculpture began can be sustained. A sculpture that became a cookbook. A cookbook that will create a wider appreciation for date syrup. A wider appreciation for date syrup that will, inshallah, help replant those disappeared date palms.

 In Iraq, it is traditional for parents to place a date in the mouth of their newborn baby, so its first taste of life is sweet: a harbinger of good things to come. 

Here’s to a sweeter future.”