Why making maklouba can be a powerful gesture of solidarity when the world feels upside down

A picture of it got my attention. But it was the challenge posed by “the upside down” that hooked me.

Early in 2022’s holiday season a locally owned grocery store, the Metropolitan Market in Seattle, sent out an email teasing its specials on holiday pears and charcuterie platters, along with a few recipe suggestions for holiday gatherings. Amid photographs of the usual suspects sat a gorgeously layered sight featuring golden rice, lamb and a ruby red tomato lid.

That was my initial introduction to maklouba, described in the newsletter as a Middle Eastern dish and a “showstopper” for intimate gatherings with loved ones. Maklouba is nicknamed “the upside down” due to the top layer going into a pot first before covering it with the fillings of your choice. The recipe I use calls for potatoes and eggplant to be added in an even layer next, then spiced lamb, then the rice layer. From there it’s covered and simmered without stirring for about 40 minutes, with one peek to gently move the rice grains from the outside rim to the inside.

Once the cooking finishes comes the make or break of the dish, style-wise, in that you invert the pot and gently let the whole thing slide onto a very large plate or a platter, producing a savory casserole resembling a layer cake. 

Between the look of it and the spices required — turmeric, allspice, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon — how could I not try it? “Don’t be intimidated by the number of steps — it’s actually pretty easy and well worth the effort,” the recipe’s intro assured me.

By some miracle, my first effort emerged from my enameled dish with its shape immaculately retained, strata recognizably separate. My husband, already seduced by the aromatics, took photos before we dug in. And one does dig into a maklouba since the layers tend to collapse into a heap as you plate it. Cooking the spices into the meat gives it a delicious earthiness, balanced by the soft mouthfeel of roasted cubes of eggplant and potato.

The rice layer soaks up the juices from the meat and tomato, grabbing a pleasing yellow color from both the fruit at the bottom (and the top, eventually) and the turmeric. A feast of many colors originating from one pot.

I’ve made the dish many times since, sometimes when my spouse and I have had a tough week; it’s outstanding comfort food and yields plenty of leftovers. Over the summer I impressed the Jordanian proprietor of a Midwestern spice and gift shop when, upon encountering his ready-made spice mix for maklouba, I asked for several ounces. 

“You know what this is?” he said with a pleased note of shock. “You make ‘the upside down’?” Yes, I assured him. He smiled, amazed that a non-Middle Eastern customer knew about what he described as a “very Middle Eastern dish.”

But only when I searched online for other versions of the recipe months later did I find out that the origin of this wonderful meal is specifically Palestinian. That grants it additional meaning, especially now.

To its credit, the grocer that shared its maklouba recipe in the first place describes it as “traditionally served in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria.” At least it mentioned the place that birthed it, and perhaps it wasn’t aware that the third land and culture mentioned should have been given top billing.  

But that’s what it is to walk the line between appropriation and appreciation. Americans tumble into the former’s territory more often than we may realize. Everyday examples are woven throughout our culture. We see it in hairstyle, fashion and music trends white people crib from Black, brown, Asian and Indigenous folks. 

Food is a means by which we can experience home again and share that sense of place with others, making it vital to acknowledge where a dish began, even popular ones. But appropriation is so prevalent in our cuisine that we rarely think about it. It’s commonly understood the food considered to be essentially American has European origins, but even meals and condiments in the so-called “international” aisles at our grocery store are vastly different from the versions eaten in the places from which they purport to be.

Middle Eastern cuisine comes to the plate with additional friction, particularly hummus and falafel, the origins of which are debated in Jerusalem, as Anthony Bourdain showed in his 2013 “Parts Unknown” episode on the place. Here in the U.S., one of the most popular brands of hummus is manufactured by an Israeli company, Sabra. 

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food’s newsletter, The Bite.

---

Some who are at a loss as to how best to support the civilians terrorized in the Israel-Hamas war have been patronizing Palestinian and Israeli restaurants to show solidarity. 

I am not selling my food in an eating establishment, the arenas in which appropriation battles tend to be pitted. But I am fortunate to have a roof over my head, a kitchen and the means to cook a signature dish of a people under siege and facing annihilation. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving right now, and The Guardian reports that an estimated 85 percent of its population has been displaced by Israel’s relentless bombings. Maklouba is a dish made for celebrating and sustaining community, from what I understand. So is it wrong to make maklouba at a time when such concepts can feel so distant?

Not according to Reem Assil, an Oakland, CA.-based Palestinian-Syrian chef and the author of “Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora.” In her view, she told me via email, “Making a maklouba in solidarity with Palestinians is one of the most powerful things you can do.”

Assil, who runs Reem’s California in San Francisco, is closely connected to Gaza. Her grandmother, who was born in Yafa, became a refugee in Gaza when her family was pushed out of their home as part of what the U.N. describes as “the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war,” also known as the Nakba.

As she observes in a profile posted on the Palestine in America website, “For Palestinians, food becomes a way we document that we exist as a people when so much around us has been stolen to fool the world into thinking we don’t exist. Cooking and sharing our food becomes an act of resistance to the intentional campaign to sever us from our foodways.” 

So, too, can be cooking food from a culture you may not share while acknowledging the people who gave that cuisine to the world. Indeed, make an “upside down” and sit with its aroma; savor its flavorful, consoling sustenance.  Make it for others, letting them know from whom and where it originates. Enjoy its homeyness, and set a place in your heart for those who also make it, love it and can’t right now, with the hope that someday soon they can again.