♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - This week on Milk Street, we travel to northern Israel in the Galilee Valley, where we visit with Reem Kassis.

She's author of The Palestinian Table.

She teaches us how to make maqluba, which is an upside down chicken and rice dish.

Then we travel to Tel Aviv to make harisa-- the classic semolina cake.

Stay tuned for the cooking of Galilee.

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We offer a variety of no-contract plans, and our U.S.-based customer service team can help find one that fits you.

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♪ ♪ - There you are.

You're all dressed up.

Nice to see you.

- You too.

- How you been?

- Good.

- We're in Galilee.

How far right now are we from Beirut?

- So if the border were open, it would take you 45 minutes driving to be in the center of Beirut.

♪ ♪ We're gonna go see how they make the bread on the traditional tabun oven where normally it was stones picked from the rivers and the surrounding mountains, in an oven that was dug in the ground.

But here they've modernized it to an extent, so they use metal stone shapes to get the little dimples in the bread.

♪ ♪ The traditional man'ouche is topped with za'atar.

How is it?

(laughs) He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ - This region is recognized across the entire Levant as producing some of the best olive oil, even in the world.

I think olives in general are just very closely tied to the Palestinian identity.

I was asking my aunt yesterday because she was telling me, you know, stories about my grandparents and during the war, and there was a period where neither of them were working.

And I said, "Well, how did you support your family?"

She says, "Olives.

"You know, we have olive groves.

"We still have our own olive groves.

"You pick them, you press them, "you make from the leftover olive oil from seasons prior, you make olive oil soap."

So there's... if you look around it's olive trees everywhere.

♪ ♪ - We're here with Moussa and this is his olive oil press.

♪ ♪ Now how long has Moussa been doing this?

This been in his family for a long time?

- Since before his father was born.

- Hm.

- That's as far back as he can remember.

- He'd rather live in the old way from the 1920s or today?

(translating in world language) - (speaking world language) - He says every period has its own beauty.

- I knew you were gonna cheat on that answer.

(all laughing) ♪ ♪ Mid-day in Galilee.

And we're going baking, right?

- We are.

♪ ♪ (Reem speaking world language) You can take out more, she says.

(Reem chuckling) - Hey, are you... are you laughing at me?

What?

- (laughing): I'm enjoying this.

- No, no, no.

- No, no, okay.

♪ ♪ Mm... That is really good.

Excellent.

- Shukraan.

- Shukraan.

♪ ♪ - We're in the town called Rameh, which is my father's hometown.

It's in the north of the Galilee.

Good, the food's ready.

- Oh good.

- Shall we go?

- Perfect timing.

Chris, how are you?

- Nice to meet you, Chris.

♪ ♪ (indistinct chatter) - Oh this is my dad's cousin.

- Hi, how are you?

(indistinct chatter) ♪ ♪ - Okay, this is gonna be fun.

(Reem speaking Arabic) Have you had maqluba before?

- No, I haven't.

- So this is very typically Palestinian.

(speaking Arabic) Which is layers of rice, fried vegetables, and... - And now you're gonna do it?

- I am.

♪ ♪ (speaking Arabic) So these are lamb shanks and shoulder pieces.

- (woman speaking Arabic) - And eggplant and then we just top it with fried nuts.

♪ ♪ These are very, very typical.

- That is really cool.

♪ ♪ I just want to thank everybody for all the cooking.

- Thank you for coming.

It's an honor to have you here.

- You probably did this for a whole week.

- Maybe uh... not me, she might have.

- It's nice to have a mother then, isn't it?

- It is, yeah.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, one of the best things about visiting Galilee in northern Israel was going to Reem Kassis's family, as we just saw.

But you know what's interesting is that nobody cooks like a dozen cookies there.

They'll cook 12 dozen, or, you know, they don't have a little tiny casserole thing, it's always big.

Everything is served on these huge platters, and then when dinnertime comes, all of a sudden there are 15 or 20 people in the house.

So maqluba, which is what we're gonna do now, is rice, meat-- lamb or chicken-- usually fried vegetable like eggplant-- they do fry a lot of vegetables-- and they bake it in a large pot.

But the best part is they turn it over at the end, which is kind of tricky.

They unmold it, then they jiggle it.

(laughs) And then all of a sudden you see all the what's inside sort of come to the fore.

Uh... and it's absolutely delicious, and it's not hard to make.

- So what we did with the recipe here at Milk Street is we streamlined it just a little bit.

The star of the show is the rice, and we soak two cups of Basmati rice first, just in the time it takes to prep the rest of the recipe.

It helps it cook fluffy and light, and stay moist and tender all the way through.

The next thing is the chicken, and we are going to be using chicken thighs.

We kept them bone-in with skin on to give that extra flavor.

- Okay.

- So we seasoned these with salt and pepper.

But the next important thing to talk about is the pot.

You want a diameter of nine and a half to 11-- not bigger, not smaller-- and a depth of about four to six inches.

- So this is a six-quart pot, probably, something like that?

- Yes.

Exactly.

We just add a little bit of oil.

We let that get hot, and then we will brown the chicken, until it's nice and crispy and golden.

(chicken sizzling) Okay, skin side down.

We're only gonna brown one side of it.

This takes about seven minutes, and then we will take it out, and start layering.

You can see how beautiful the chicken got.

- Lovely job.

- Skin's nice and crispy.

We have turned the burner off under the pot, and now we are going to do something unusual.

We cut two parchment rounds.

We're gonna put one on the bottom, and this helps ensure that the whole thing comes out nicely.

So we'll get that... - You're cheating.

- That's not cheating.

It's an assurance.

(laughs) So we're just gonna coat both sides with oil.

Then we're gonna add a little more oil on top.

This is all the fat in the dish right here what's in the pot right now.

We're gonna add slivered almonds.

Those get nice and dark on the bottom of the pan as the whole thing cooks.

And then we're going to start layering the rice now with the meat and the different vegetables.

This is the rice we had soaked earlier, it's drained now, and we also rinsed it with cold water to rinse off any extra starch which helps keep it light and fluffy.

We're going to take a cup of this unseasoned rice... ...put it in the pan first.

If we put seasoned rice down first... - Burned?

- Yes, the spices are... just too much heat for them.

So we're going to give a little buffer layer here.

And then we're ready to work with our spice blend.

We have cumin, allspice, turmeric, a little bit of nutmeg and then salt and pepper.

Before we mix that in we have eight ounces of cauliflower florets.

This is about half a head of a small cauliflower.

We also have some roughly chopped garlic and some melted butter.

- So the oil was the only fat in this recipe except for the melted butter.

- I kind of forgot about the melted butter.

(laughing): I'm sorry.

This is amazing with the rice and the seasonings.

Okay, we have chicken fat, we have oil, and we have butter.

- Okay.

- Toss this until it's thoroughly blended.

Now, one last little thing we have to reserve, and that is a half a cup of this rice.

Gonna get as much rice as possible, and we're going to add this on at the very top at the very end.

The rest of this goes right on top of the plain rice.

Spread that out evenly.

We'll get this beautiful chicken and nestle that down inside.

And if you would like to proceed with the eggplant.

We're gonna... - Layer it.

Or shingle it?

- Yes.

- I used to renovate houses.

So we'll just use some of my shingling expertise here.

So this is a lot easier than with a Palestinian cook would cook the meat in water, take the meat out, cook it with spices, fry eggplant.

There would be a lot of steps before you actually got to assembling the dish, right?

- And what we found by putting the eggplant on the top like this, it actually steams, and it gets very creamy and soft while the rice cooks.

And that brings me to why we saved a half a cup of the seasoned rice mixture, which we're gonna put right on top of the eggplant.

This adds a little seasoning to the eggplant as well.

And, remember, we're going to invert this, so this provides a base layer for the eggplant.

So it's just a small scattering over the top.

And then we have four cups of broth.

Pour all of that in.

And our layering is complete.

So this recipe still takes a little bit of effort and prep, but it's really streamlined, and it's all upfront.

We're basically done now.

We're just going to bring this to a boil.

Okay.

Then we will put this parchment right on top.

What this does is it helps prevent some of the steam from dripping back down into the pot, and we are going to cover, let it boil for five full minutes, and then turn it down to low and let it cook for 35 minutes undisturbed and we're done.

- Really?

This is too easy.

- Except for the flipping part.

- Oh, guess who's going to do that.

Me.

Great.

(Bianca laughs) ♪ ♪ - So, Chris, after the 35 minutes on low we took the lid off, let the pot sit off the burner for 15 minutes for the steam to finish escaping.

Then we remove that parchment, inverted it onto the platter, and we have let it sit for ten minutes.

That sort of persuades the rice to hold its shape.

And now the moment of truth.

- Oh, I get to... - Yes, you do.

- You did all the work I get to do the fun part?

- Yes, the fun part.

- This never happens to me.

- Well, it's also if it falls apart, it's, you know, it's on you.

(Bianca laughs) - Now, that's the real reason!

- Ah, yes.

- Nicely done-- not me, I mean you.

- And this is why we do that.

So it comes out in one piece.

And I know you did something very special in Galilee when you had this... right?

Ah... look at that.

- So it starts to open up.

You can see inside and you get all the wonderful aromas.

- It wafts up.

- Yeah.

- Ah, all the treasures are revealed.

- That looks terrific.

- And that beautiful browning on the bottom.

That's what you want.

So definitely need some of the brown part of the rice.

You could smell those seasonings.

We got a little chicken in there.

We have the cauliflower in there and the eggplant so you've got a good amount of vegetable.

This really is a one-pot dish.

- This looks exactly the way it looked at Reem's house.

- Ooh.

- Mm!

- Does it taste exactly like it?

- Yeah.

- Isn't the eggplant wonderful?

It just gets creamy, soft.

- Yeah, and the rice, you know, you look at this and think it's kind of heavy.

It's incredibly light, which is... almost defies physics, I think.

- (chuckling): Right.

- But it's... it is very, very light.

So the next time you want to make a casserole, we suggest you make maqluba.

This is from Reem Kassis, author of The Palestinian Table, rice, chicken, eggplant.

Very easy to make, only takes about an hour, feeds a crowd.

It looks great when you turn it over on a platter.

Maqluba is now my favorite new rice casserole.

- Mm-hmm!

♪ ♪ - So you wrote The Palestinian Table, which has a very different outlook on what cooking is, the flavors.

Could just give us a really quick overview of some of the flavors and spices and ways of thinking about cooking that you have that I don't have, because you grew up in a very different culture-- food culture.

- Right.

So, I mean, I grew up in a Palestinian family, and people will tell you that the holy trinity of spices in Palestinian cooking are allspice or pimento, whatever you want to call it, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

So those infuse a lot of our dishes.

I think one of the things that differentiates Palestinian and Middle Eastern cuisine in general from some of the ones in the West is we're very heavily focused on what the landscape and the nature gives us.

So you'll see that our food relies heavily on vegetables, legumes, grains.

Our predominant grain is bulgur, not rice, because that's what we grew here.

Freekeh, which is a green wheat that gets burned.

(man speaking Arabic) This is freekeh.

This has been burnt on wood.

Do you want to smell it?

- Yes, I do.

- This I know you wanna... (speaking Arabic) - Mm... Yeah, that's great.

- You can tell, right?

This is done the traditional way.

You have fire, you have these things that they call beds, which are literally nets.

- (speaking Arabic) - So they cut... you know, the ears that are on wheat?

They cut it one by one by hand.

They don't harvest it the way you would wheat.

They cut it one by one, they lay it on these nets above the fire, and then they let it smoke.

- (speaking Arabic) - Because he says they need to make sure that they only pick the green ones.

That's why they don't harvest it.

That's going to get an ear of wheat.

- So who came up with the idea of picking green wheat and smoking it on nets?

Is it a preservation method?

- (Reem speaking Arabic) - (speaking Arabic) - He said that's our ancestors.

- He wasn't around then.

He doesn't know.

- He doesn't know.

And then after that, you look at these ingredients and you think, "Well, they're quite simple.

"How is the dish going to taste good with just a few of these simple ingredients?"

But we use a lot of spicing and then techniques like sautéing onions in olive oil until they're almost burned.

Certain techniques that just make them burst with flavor, even though the ingredient list is quite simple.

So it's techniques as well as spicing that give these dishes their unique flavor.

♪ ♪ - So today we're going to make a one-layer cake called harisa, which sounds like a chili paste from North Africa.

It's spelled differently.

It's a one-layer cake with sesame made from semolina flour and sugar syrup.

The first one I had was in Galilee at a restaurant called Ezba.

It was very custardy, it was baked in a big round, very unusual version of it.

Then I went to the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv.

Just outside the market is a restaurant called Igra Rama, and they made one which is a little more typical.

It does have semolina in it, which is a little bit yellow.

It's a very hard wheat, it's a little coarser, so it gives it the texture and color of that classic harisa.

- Let's go ahead and get this started.

We'll set our large skilling over medium heat, and to that we're going to add in six tablespoons of butter, and then we can get to toasting our grains.

Toasting is going to bring out a lot of the deeper flavors, and it will make this a fantastically aromatic cake.

So we could go ahead and add in our grains.

Now, here, I have one cup of semolina flour.

To that, half a cup of cornmeal.

Now this is fairly fine cornmeal.

We're not looking for a coarse texture here.

And, finally, we have three-quarters cup of unsweetened coconut.

We want to toast these flours and coconut until they just barely start to brown, and that will take about four to five minutes.

As I stir this round, I'm noticing tiny toasted pieces of coconut as well as some toasted semolina and toasted cornmeal.

Just need to transfer this right into a bowl and get it out of the heat because we're going to hydrate all of these grains with a mixture of yogurt, tahini, and water.

And if we were to add all of that in now, it's just gonna suck up all that moisture.

So we need to let this cool down.

And one thing that I'll do to help is to spread out the grains to create more surface area, and therefore more area for the steam to escape.

So while this is cooling, we're gonna go ahead and work on our syrup.

We'll set that over medium heat, throw in one cup of sugar, quarter teaspoon of salt, four three-inch pieces of lemon zest, and, finally, a quarter-cup of honey.

And to help all of this melt down, If you could pour in that half a cup of water, we'll get this mixture to a boil and then let it cook down for about five minutes.

- So sugar syrups make people nervous.

Because in a lot of sugar syrups you have to hit just the precise temperature.

So, just to be clear, this is not precision, you're just melting the sugar in water with some other ingredients.

There's a wide window here.

- Yeah, super, super wide window, and we should end up with about a cup and a quarter of syrup.

If you don't have as much syrup as you'd like, go ahead and just add in water until you meet a cup and a quarter.

So we're going to set that aside to cool.

And once our flour is cool, then we could go ahead and make the rest of this cake.

Now our grain mixture has cooled, and it's the perfect temperature to mix in our yogurt.

Now here I have two cups of whole milk yogurt.

- That's a lot of yogurt.

- It's a lot of yogurt, but it's going to provide the right level of hydration as well as milk fat to bake up into a nice, tender but moist crumb.

- Can I just say you're not creaming butter and sugar.

You're putting yogurt in with some toasted flours, including cornmeal, etcetera.

Tahini goes in.

I mean, it's a very different way of making a cake.

- Yeah, so to this, I'm going to add in the two tablespoons of tahini.

And Chris, if you want to pour in that half a cup of water for me.

- You know, in this recipe, my job seems to be pouring water into bowls.

- Yup.

- You noticed that?

- But to be fair, you did go to Galilee, so I could know about this recipe.

So it's a fair trade, I think.

We could go ahead and whisk this together.

We're going to allow this to sit for another 30 minutes.

So that way all of those grains can hydrate and pull that moisture in from the yogurt and the water.

Notice how different the texture is already.

It's taken on quite a bit of that moisture, and now we could go ahead and sweeten the whole deal up.

So here I have a bowl of half a cup of sugar, as well as one tablespoon baking powder, half a teaspoon baking soda, and one whole teaspoon of salt.

And we'll whisk it in.

So once all of your sugar is incorporated, we can go ahead and transfer that over to the pan.

Now we want to spread this out into a nice, even layer.

So we'll go ahead and smooth this out.

- We should point out that little short offset spatula, those are extremely useful for cakes because then you can get into the pan.

- Exactly.

Far more dexterous.

The name of the game here is just making sure it's in one nice, even layer.

To add a little bit more pizzazz, we'll dust this with a little bit of sesame seeds.

And, actually, would you like to do the honors?

- I've been upgraded from water to sesame seeds, how nice.

- Yes, you have, congratulations.

These will toast up beautifully in the oven.

Now the oven we have preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with a rack set in the middle position.

And we're going to bake this cake off for about 35 to 40 minutes or until it's nice and golden brown.

♪ ♪ So our cake is fully baked.

And, as you could see, it's taken on a really beautiful golden color.

Now we have this cooling on a rack here, and we're not going to let it cool down too much.

In fact, right around the ten minute mark, we want to hit this cake with some syrup.

Now that syrup that we made earlier still has those pieces of lemon zest floating throughout it.

So I'm going to go ahead and fish those out.

Why don't you give our cake a poke?

In fact, use that toothpick in one-inch intervals so the syrup can sink into the cake itself instead of just running down the sides.

So now that I have all the lemon zest out, we're going to go ahead and add in two tablespoons of lemon juice just to brighten the syrup up a bit.

And to add a little extra kick of flavor, we're throwing in two teaspoons of orange blossom water.

And that gives a nice, light... - Which is typical.

- It is very typical, yeah.

You don't necessarily have to use it if you don't want to, but I find that extra floral hit really, really makes this cake something special.

So we'll give this a little stir and throw this syrup in an even stream right on top.

Now, you don't want to do this when the cake comes straight out of the oven, because at that point, the syrup's just going to pool down the sides and then start to caramelize on the hot pan.

And that just makes this tremendously difficult to pull out.

But if you were to pour the syrup on when the cake is cool, it's not going to absorb into the cake at all.

So you want to do this when the cake is still fairly warm and it's going to sit for about two hours until all of this syrup gets fully absorbed.

♪ ♪ The cake's been sitting for two hours, and it's fully soaked up the syrup.

I'll go ahead and cut off... How's that piece for you?

- Good.

- Right there for you.

- Let me just take a bite before I talk.

- Find and I'll talk at you while you're doing that.

- Mm... - The crumb is tender, isn't it?

All that waiting, I promised you, it would result in this remarkably tender crumb.

- It is really light.

Um... and it's not soggy.

- That flavor of coconut coming through along with the sesame.

And then you get that little bit of acidity from the syrup.

- So from Galilee, I brought back a recipe for semolina sesame cake, also known oddly enough as harisa.

And it has a sugar syrup with some orange blossom water.

But what's really interesting is what's in the cake itself, right?

It's semolina flour, has a little bit of cornmeal as well.

So lots of rich flavor, sesame seeds, and you don't need a big frosting.

It also has the perfect texture.

It's light but it's also moist.

So you can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

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The Milk Street cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

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Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

♪ ♪ - Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ - I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for... What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪