How to ‘fake’ food in Gaza

As all of Gaza suffered under Israel’s siege and food ran out, my family had to figure out ways to make small supplies of food stretch further, and compensate for ingredients that were no longer available.

We experimented with new recipes, created combinations we never imagined trying, and managed to come up with some solutions that would help us a bit to endure the harsh realities of famine and survive as best we could.
Doha started working on the recipe with the help of my mum, Saham.

They soaked some of the pasta until it became soft, then added a little wheat flour and kneaded it well until it came together as a dough. It takes much more effort and patience, and the texture is a bit different from bread made with just flour.
When Fady came back with the bread, it was a crucial moment for us – we were all curious about the taste. The bread looked not much different from our usual bread, which gave us a sense of reassurance.

When we shared a loaf to taste it, the flavour was acceptable, and we were happy – it would serve the purpose.

But as more and more people in Gaza relied on pasta to make bread, pasta became scarce and its price skyrocketed over the next few weeks, just as flour had done.

Many people, my family included, could no longer afford it, and we found ourselves desperately looking for another substitute in July.

So we thought: Maybe lentils would work for making “fake” bread in Gaza.
Fady, following a recipe from a friend, ground lentils into flour at the mill and then brought that to us to knead with a bit of wheat flour, as we had done with the pasta.

But lentil dough was far harder to work with than pasta dough, taking my mum and me forever to turn into dough. And it tasted terrible – actually more like lentils, not bread.

We tried to ignore the strange lentil taste while eating, but we failed; it was deeply unpleasant. Yet we had to eat whatever was available; we simply don’t have the luxury of choice.

The next day, the lentil bread became even worse; it got drier, harder, and each bite felt like a rock in your throat.

We resorted to warming it over the fire to make it softer and edible, then tried to eat it with Dukkah, our standard meal for breakfast and dinner.

Dukkah is a mix of toasted wheat and spices, like dried coriander and dill seeds, ground up and combined with sesame seeds – but in these lean times, we make it with lentils instead, like everyone else in Gaza.

My brother Fady started joking – terribly – about how we were eating bread made of lentils stuffed with dukkah, which, of course, was also made of lentils.