A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve: Cooking with Date Syrup: Forty Chefs and an Artist Create New and Classic Dishes with a Traditional Middle Eastern Ingredient

Prominent Iraqi-American artist-provocateur Michael Rakowitz invites forty acclaimed chefs and food writers to create mouthwatering savoury and sweet dishes using date syrup Date syrup has been central to Iraqi cooking and home life for centuries. In this unique book, a fusion of the worlds of contemporary art and food, an artist and forty celebrated chefs present delicious dishes using this staple of Middle Eastern cuisine. Their collaboration had its roots in early 2018, when Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz unveiled a winged bull sculpture made from thousands of date syrup cans as the latest commission for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square. As his winged bull sat upon the Fourth Plinth, Rakowitz invited chefs from around the world to create new and classic recipes using date syrup as a way to celebrate this ancient ingredient and symbol of Iraqi culture. Pioneering chefs and food writers including Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Reem Kassis, Prue Leith, Mourad Mazouz, Jason Hammel, Nuno Mendes, Thomasina Miers, Giorgio Locatelli and Marcus Samuelsson responded to his call by creating dozens of dishes. Their recipes range from the traditional to the innovative in a feast for the taste buds, and include everything from simple brunch dishes, salads and sides to mouth-watering mains, cakes, desserts, drinks and condiments. Easy step-by-step instructions enable the reader to make the recipes at home. Beautiful photographs of the dishes are accompanied by the artist's portrait drawings and sketches of the food. Completing the volume is a foreword by awardwinning food writer and chef Claudia Roden and an appreciation of the importance of the date in Iraqi society by Iraqi-American cultural-studies academic Ella Shohat, while Rakowitz writes about the significance of the syrup to his family and in his work. This special book will appeal to anyone who loves the cuisine of the Middle East and the politics of food in that troubled region.

About the Author :
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi American artist, and Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. Claudia Roden is an award-winning Egyptian British cookbook writer. Ella Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University.

Review :
A beautiful cookbook dedicated to a single ingredient: date syrup. In 2018, Rakowitz reconstructed the Lamassu, a major work of antiquity destroyed by ISIS, in London's Trafalgar Square. Created from more than 10,000 flattened cans of date syrup, the monumental sculpture pointed to the imperiled state of culture--artistic, culinary, and otherwise--in Rakowitz's ancestral homeland, Iraq. A House with a Date Palm grew out of the Lamassu project, bringing together date syrup recipes from the artist's mother, his friends, and a handful of chefs. The book is, as the artist puts it, "a way to taste the sculpture." No sculpture has ever tasted so bittersweet.--Andrea Gyorody "Stained Page News" Michael Rakowitz's cookbook is one of the best resources we've added to our kitchen lately. The perfect inspiration for cooking in the time of quarantine, it contains recipes from 41 popular chefs and food writers including Yotam Ottolenghi, Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Prue Leith, and Anissa Helou, as well as sketches from the artist himself to illustrate each chapter-- "Hyperallergic" [A House with a Date Palm Will Never Starve] is a cookbook as artwork, a 'culinary intervention', and history and politics are also among its main ingredients.--Cameron Laux "BBC" Dates have been central to Rakowitz's artistic practice... [and he] hopes that his book will inspire a Western appetite for date syrup and, in so doing, create business for struggling plantations in Iraq.--Figgy Guyver "Frieze" Rakowitz's ability to embody the flavour of a complex cultural heritage, the diaspora and its many intersections is what makes this book a joy to read, whether or not you plan to actually cook anything.--Holly Black "Elephant" Rakowitz's date export project showed how the Iraqi date industry has suffered at the hands of US politics. Moving beyond art and into social activism like much of his work, the recipe book contributes to Rakowitz's interest in creating awareness of this.--Harriet Thorpe "Wallpaper*"