A Jew cooks Palestinian squash
Not a good week, right? An Egyptian immigrant firebombed Jews in a public park for the crime of peacefully marching in solidarity with Israeli hostages held by Hamas. In Gaza IDF troops opened fire on Palestinians near a food distribution station, with wildly varying reports of casualties.
In the midst of so much confusion, sorrow and anger, does anyone really need to read about a Jew cooking Palestinian squash?
My answer is yes. Now is exactly the correct moment to share my experience growing and cooking a variety of squash developed from seeds harvested in the West Bank.
Kousa is grown throughout the Middle East. It is pale green or striped, with a bulbous end tapering down to a narrower neck. When you order stuffed squash at a Lebanese restaurant, chances are it will be made with this variety.
I bought my seeds online from the Experimental Farm Network, which grew them in partnership with the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library. The library, based in the village of Battir about three miles east of Bethlehem, is dedicated to finding and reintroducing crop varieties that formed the basis of Palestinian agriculture, and preserving the stories about them.
I first learned about the library when I read an essay by its founder Vivien Sansour, a Palestinian-American writer, farmer and artist. I asked Vivien to write two columns for the Forward , and her pieces perfectly captured the connection between her people, their land and their food.
It’s a terrain, she wrote, “that has endured so much pain and extracted an extraordinary amount of beauty at the same time.”
I planted the seeds when the soil warmed early in spring. The plants grew like something from The Land Before Time, with dark green leaves shadowing yellow blossoms, all of it hiding an abundance of fat squash.
I picked my first ones last week, and turned them into two dishes. I cored some and stuffed them with a mixture of their own minced innards, a little onion and dill, then roasted them in a pan filled with a little water and white wine. The common Middle East preparation kousa mahshi calls for a rice stuffing, often with meat, and a tomato sauce, but I just wanted to taste the squash.
Similarly I did a stripped-down version of kousa bil zeit, cutting the squash into batons, spreading them out on a parchment-lined baking pan, and roasting them in a very hot oven with loads of extra virgin olive oil, a little garlic and salt.
In both cases, the fresh squash, harvested at around six inches long, were remarkably sweet, with a slight, complementary bitterness in the colorful skin.
None of this solves any geopolitical problems. It doesn’t get Hamas to release the hostages, or Israel to stop land appropriation and settler violence in the West Bank.
But If there’s any hope that the violence will someday end, it will come when both people are able to see the humanity in each other. This past week, I came across two voices that pierced through the unbearably sad news and pointed to a way through.
I spoke with Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother Vivian Silver, a veteran peace activist, was murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“Israelis need to see the Palestinians as equal, and the Palestinians need to see the Israelis as native,” Zeigen said during our discussion, which was part of a fundraiser for a documentary on his mother’s life.
That echoed what the Palestinian-American entrepreneur Mohammed Husseini said on the website for the Realign for Palestine campaign.
“Our fates are tied together, no amount of violence will make one side disappear or give up,” he posted. “The choice isn’t between resistance and surrender. It is between survival and destruction. I choose survival.”
There are Jews who spend their days denying Palestinian culture exists. And there are Palestinians who insist all Israeli Jews are simply on extended tourist visas from Poland. But no one’s going anywhere.
Survival, as Zeigen said, depends on recognizing each side belongs on the land, as equals, and each has roots there. The kousa that Palestinians grow in Battir is familiar to any Mizrachi Jew who eats stuffed vegetables at their Shabbat table. No one owns it and no one is stealing it — that family of squash is indigenous to Mesoamerica, in fact. If you can’t grow your own, most groceries in L.A. carry it as Mexican squash.
That two cultures share the same foods isn’t a recipe for instant brotherhood — Russians and Ukrainians both love borscht, and look how that’s working out. But sharing food culture at least keeps the door open a crack so you can peek into the other’s humanity.
Planting and eating this squash — and telling you about it — is my very, very small way of doing that.
Servings 4
Ingredients
4-5 Middle East squash or Mexican squash
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup fresh dill
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 cup white wine (optional)
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp. sumac
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash zucchini. Cut off one end and reserve cap. Using a spoon or corer, remove the insides, leaving a 1/4 inch wall.
Chop reserved insides and caps. Mix with chopped dill, salt and pepper, and stuff back into the zucchini. You may need to finely chop another whole zucchini to have enough filling.
Heat oil in oven proof roasting pan. Add zucchini and brown lightly on all sides, about 5 minutes.
Deglaze with wine and add about 1/2 cup water (or deglaze with 3/4 cup water if not using wine). Reduce heat, cover and place in oven. Bake about 20 – 30 minutes until the squash is soft when pierced with a sharp knife.
Remove from oven. Plate with pan juices and a dusting of sumac.
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