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I didn't think any book about empowering women through cooking in Lebanon would be complete without mention of Kamal Mouzawak and the tireless work he’s undertaken over the past 18 years to support the producers, farmers, and cooks of Lebanon. With his many successful undertakings around this country, not only is he supporting individuals, he has, in the process, promoted, preserved, and celebrated the traditional food of this diverse country. He’s taken groups of his cooks to events around the world where they have shown off the cuisine and hospitality of the Lebanese table, and, importantly, he is championing home cooking traditions. Home cooking elevated and glorified and valued. No more mezze cooked by men in restaurant kitchens. This is cooking from the heart and with the soul of each woman attached, and reflects true Lebanese cuisine. Crucially, the Capacity Building Programs Souk el Tayeb has offered since 2012, have helped other success stories like the ladies of Soufra and Atayeb Falastine and Afkar learn everything from food safety and production to the business sides of making a living off of the agricultural bounty of Lebanon using their talents. Many of these women sell their products at the farmers’ market or continue to be supported in their catering or culinary ambitions. I must note that the terrible explosion of August 4 happened not terribly long after our interview. Once again Kamal and his team rose to the occasion, transforming Tawlet’s kitchen into a volunteer kitchen, cooking and distributing thousands of meals for those in need just three days after the blast. Then within two months of the blast, a new space in the badly damaged Mar Mikhail neighborhood was christened and they founded Matbakh el Kell, a community kitchen serving free meals daily for the hungry. I’ll let him tell you in his own words the road that led him to this success.
“Our philosophy from the beginning has been the same until now. Nothing has changed. It’s like wearing blinders. We’re not a food market, we’re not a restaurant, the most important part is the human development. It’s not about how to support products, but how to support producers, farmers. Men, women who are planting, harvesting and cooking, producing mooneh, and doing it better and perpetuating their identity through a bottle of jam or pickles. Whatever it is: agricultural, preserving food, or cuisine.
So this is the whole project: to support small-scale farmers and producers. Instead of them being in rural areas of production and not being able to sell their produce we started in 2004, providing the Souk, which is a platform where farmers can come and they can sell their produce. It’s a place where there is a demand for their products and the purchasing power for their produce and it’s a place where they meet every Saturday or every Wednesday to bring a little bit of the countryside to the city. Development is not just about building more buildings in the city. As much as we invest in urban development we must invest in rural development too because the city spreads from rural areas. This is especially important now as we’re dealing with this pandemic, with the closing of the borders and the whole world busy with their own food supplies.
We brought all of these ideas together at an event in 2004 at the Garden Show, a five day event that was very successful. After these five days -- it wasn’t called Souk el Tayeb at the time, it was called the Garden Fruits, like the fruits, the wealth of the Earth. After the success of the show I thought, ok, I can’t let this go now, I will continue with it at a regular time and place. And this is how, ten days later, in early June 2004 I created something called Souk el Tayeb. Tayeb means good as in taste, but also good in ethics and life. And this is how the farmers market started.
Then, in 2007 I thought why are we only bringing the farmer, the producers from rural communities to urban? Why don’t we go to his or her place of production from time to time? So in 2007 I created something called Food and Feast where we used to go to Hammana to celebrate the cherries of Hammana or celebrate kibbeh in Ehden or celebrate fish in Batroun. Like a regional food festival and during these food festivals it was about celebrating local produce, creating a small local market, having eco-visits that celebrates this village or this region or small city.
And of course, we were going to have to offer lunch. We’re not going to eat generic Lebanese food and eat only tabbouleh and hummus. We’re going to eat typical food of that village or town or region. Who’s cooking this typical food? Of course it’s not the men of the mezze restaurants, it’s the women in their homes who are perpetuation and traditional, regional cuisine at home. Home cooking. So we started to find cooks, ladies from the village – one lady was known for her bean dish, another one was know for her fattayer. They came with their typical food and we started doing these buffets at the food festivals in the summer of 2007.
These lunches started to be a big success, so in 2009 we asked why do we have to only go to a particular village one day a year and eat that village’s food? Why don’t we do it on a more regular basis? Like every day, in a more accessible place, like the city? Like Beirut? So this is how Tawlet, Mar Mikhael was created on November 5, 2009. And until today, every day it’s a different woman who comes from a different village or region and cooks a buffet of traditional food of her region. It’s like getting to know her and her region through the typical cuisine of that village, town, or region.
When we started the Tawlet, Beirut in 2009 people started saying why do we have all these foods from Lebanon in Beirut? Why don’t we have Tawlet of the South with typical food of the South? And we actually started in the south with Ammiq. It was the food and the ingredients and the ladies of Ammiq. It was typical for that region. As of 2012 we started doing regional Tawlets in different parts of Lebanon. And if Beirut’s Tawlet was a national Tawlet, the regional ones were local to the ladies, the ingredients, and the food. There’s a Tawlet Ammiq today, Deir el Qamar and Saida and Biomass (we closed Tawlet Hamra which was about urban Beiruti food), there’s Tawlet Mar Mikhael and we just launched Tawlet Douma.
All along we understood the importance of supporting the farmers and the cooks and helping them to do their jobs better so we created something we called the Capacity Building Programs where we identified the needs or problems of the cooks or the farmers and tried to come up with solutions, training. When we saw the importance and help these programs offered we thought, why should we keep this only for ourselves? Why not take it to other needy cases? So this is how we started working with people in Palestinian camps or Syrian refugees or migrant domestic workers, supporting these ladies to create professional kitchens where they could create and have an income from what they do every day which is cuisine and cooking.
With the economic crisis ongoing in Lebanon we created a soup kitchen at our own Tawlet in Beirut and at some Tawlets around the country. And then after October 17 (the start of the Revolution), we saw a need to go outside our Tawlet and go into the neediest neighborhoods of Beirut so we started taking women from different areas and these ladies were cooking together and serving people in Bourj Hammoud and elsewhere. This had to stop too with the Coronavirus so we created a different soup kitchen where we were cooking for more than 100 people every day who were the front line workers, Red Cross volunteers, health care workers and doctors. We were cooking and distributing food to them. So we’ve adapted to every situation.”
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