Chef shares rich flavours of Palestinian heritage

Franco-Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan credits his grandmother for instilling in him a love for cooking, especially sweets like mouhalabieh – a milk pudding with variations in each region of Palestine that he dished out for the audience at the Cookery Corner of the 44th Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2025).

The creamy fragrant dessert was easy to make and had only a handful of ingredients – milk, sugar, corn starch, ground mastic and pistachios for garnishing. Kattan first heated the milk with sugar and a teaspoon of mastic over medium heat, reserving a little milk to mix the corn starch.

Like for a regular pudding, he added the corn starch mixture once the milk began boiling, stirring continuously to ensure it did not stick to the bottom. When it thickened, he took it off the fire and poured it into serving bowls.

The pudding tastes best when it is cooled at room temperature and then chilled in the refrigerator for at least two hours, he shared with the audience. It can be garnished with pistachios, rose petals and dates, pointed out Kattan, the genial voice of modern Palestinian cuisine.

“In Gaza, they use dates with cloves and add them to the mouhalabieh, but here we will smoke the dates first with incense and put in the sugar syrup we make with cloves. Incense is a flavour or smell very connected to Bethlehem and its churches,” said the Bethlehem native whose cookbook Bethlehem was released in 2024.

Paying tribute to the diversity in recipes, culture and religions in Palestine, he mentioned a YouTube series called Teta’s Kitchen that he made 10 years ago when he toured Palestine and cooked with grandmothers in their homes.

Sharjah International Book Fair 2025 was organised by the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) under the theme “Between You and a Book.”