Sami Tamimi: your host

Palestinian home cooks tend to be women. Palestinian cookbooks tend to be written by women sharing the recipes they have, in turn, learnt from the women in their lives. Stories of wise ums and tetas – mothers and grandmothers – and aunties pepper the pages of the traditional Palestinian cookbook. This Palestinian home cook and chef, though, lost his mother when he was young – Sami’s mother died when he was just seven – and he spent much of his childhood being shooed away from the kitchen by aunties and sisters.