Palestinian Corn, Bean & Cabbage Soup (Shorbet Dhura oo Malfoof)

This Palestinian corn, bean and green cabbage soup is called shorbet dhura oo malfoof, and the recipe I'm making comes from Sami Tamimi's cookbook Boustany. This post is a little different from the recipes I usually share here.

Lately, I've been struggling with the guilt of continuing to cook, create & live an ordinary life while Palestinian people are suffering. I'll be worrying about a camera angle or thinking about what to make for dinner, and suddenly I'll wonder: who cares about a recipe?

I don't have a neat answer to that. But I've been thinking about whether continuing to live our lives has to mean becoming indifferent to what is happening to somebody else's.

I talk about that while making this soup in the video below.

https://youtu.be/YnKYbiJeMYI

There are ordinary things I do every day without thinking about them. I open my fridge. I turn on the stove. I have clean water. If I'm missing an ingredient, I can go to the shop and buy it.

These things shouldn't feel like privileges.

And yet sometimes I feel incredibly guilty about having them.

But I've also been wondering what that guilt actually achieves. Feeling guilty about eating dinner doesn't feed someone who is hungry. Refusing to create doesn't help somebody else.

Maybe the question isn't whether we're allowed to continue living. Maybe it's how we continue living without becoming indifferent.

And I want to be careful not to turn Palestinian suffering into a lesson about appreciating my own life. Their suffering doesn't exist to teach me gratitude.

I don't have an answer for how we're supposed to hold these two realities at once. I only know that I don't want continuing with my own life to mean looking away.

Ingredients

✿ 3 tablespoons olive oil

✿ 1 onion, finely chopped

✿ 2 tablespoons tomato paste

✿ 1 tablespoon red pepper paste

✿ 320 grams sweetcorn

✿ 1 teaspoon paprika

✿ 1½ teaspoons ground cumin

✿ Salt & black pepper, to taste

✿ 150 grams green cabbage leaves, chopped into small pieces (I like mine really chunky)

✿ 1 litre vegetable stock

✿ 1 tin borlotti beans or any white beans, drained

Instructions

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot and cook the onion for around 5 minutes, until soft and sweet.

2. Add the tomato and red pepper pastes and cook for another minute, then add the paprika, cumin, salt and black pepper.

3. Add the corn and let it cook briefly before adding the chopped cabbage. Cook for a couple of minutes, until the cabbage begins to wilt.

4. Add the borlotti beans and vegetable stock, then leave everything to simmer for around 15 minutes so the flavours can come together.

✿ Recipe note: This is my own condensed description of how I prepared the recipe. For Sami Tamimi's original recipe and measurements, please refer to the cookbook Boustany.