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6 to 8
ServingsMedium
By Jayne Cohen
Published 2008
Piles of finger-size zucchini hollowed out by nimble fingers with special tools; whispered gossiping punctuated by bursts of laughter; perfumes of sautéing garlic, buttery pine nuts, and the rosewater scent of her grandmother—all this was evoked for my Syrian-Jewish friend by a single word: mahshi (Arabic for stuffed, as in stuffed vegetables). As a little girl, she couldn’t wait to enter that world of mahshi, but by the time she was old enough, it had vanished.
Yet, while fe