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Massaad, who lives in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley outside of Beirut, had been visiting a nearby refugee camp on weekends, bringing food and making soup with some of the families, Moushabeck said last week during a telephone interview.
“She had gone there to visit them and was horrified by the conditions. So every weekend, she filled the trunk of her car with supplies and delivered them to the camp,” said Moushabeck, who owns and operates Interlink Publishing Group Inc., a company that publishes international cookbooks.
Massaad had gotten to know about 50 families, and wanted to help more. But she was running out of money, and knew what she was doing wasn’t sustainable.
“She had an idea for a cookbook with the profits going directly to help the Syrian refugees. She planned to get recipes from neighbors and use her photos. She’s someone with a big heart, and an award-winning cookbook writer and magnificent photographer, so it might have worked,” Moushabeck said.
After kicking the concept for the book around for a while, Moushabeck and Massaad came up with the idea of getting celebrity and top chefs to provide the recipes for soup. They put the word out, and 80 wanted to take part. The new cookbook Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate Our Shared Humanity was born.
The book features soup recipes from Anthony Bourdain, Mark Bittman, Alice Waters, Paula Wolfret, Claudia Roden, Yotam Ottolenghi and others, and is filled with Massaad’s photographic portraits of the children and families who are part of the Bekaa Valley refuge camp.
“The book doesn’t show the misery side of the camp. It shows people who have been helped. There are beautiful and happy faces,” Moushabeck said.
All of the profits from the book are donated to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and as of last week, more than 26,000 copies of the $30 hardcover book have been sold since it was released in January, he said.
“The book has done amazingly well. We’re getting ready for a second printing. We’ve just published our Italian edition and our Dutch edition.”
Since the war in Syria broke out in 2012, more than 4.8 million Syrians have fled the fighting, refugees who are mostly women and children under 18, according to figures updated earlier this month by UNHCR.
About 823,000 of the Syrian refugees are children under the age of 4, and another 1.5 million are less than 12 years old, the figures show.
“The refugee crisis is very tragic, and what we’re doing is a very small part to help, but the book is a place where people feel like they’re doing something,” Moushabeck said, adding that many of the books have been sold at home and office soup parties or benefit concerts.
Suggestions for how to organize or take part in gatherings and how to help the refugees can be found at soupforsyria.com.
Here are some recipes adapted from the book:
Serves 4
Sally Butcher owns and operates Persepolis, a Persian food store and cafe in London. She also is a cookbook author.
“In Farsi,” she writes, “the word for chef is ash-paz — someone who is capable of making ash, or herb soup. The ash dishes of Iran are held very dearly, and the act of making them is often regarded as an act of love or dedication. I would like to think that as you make this recipe you will remember those who are in exile from Syria, who have no kitchen or soup pot or indeed anyone for whom or with whom to make soup.”
Ingredients
3 medium onions
A little oil or ghee
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup split peas
10½ cups good stock (good water would do)
1 pound ground lamb
Salt and pepper, to taste
½ bunch each parsley and cilantro, washed and chopped
Handful of fresh mint, washed and chopped
1 bunch scallions, washed and chopped
1 cup kritheraki (orzo) or short-grain rice
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup pomegranate syrup
Fried onions and mint, or pomegranate seeds, to garnish (optional)
Steps
Peel and chop two of the onions, and fry them in a little oil in a large pot. Add the turmeric and the cinnamon, followed by the split peas, and then add the stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, grate the third onion into the ground lamb, add a little salt and pepper, and knead together.
Next, add the chopped herbs and the kritheraki or rice to the soup, and then, once it comes to a boil again, the sugar and pomegranate syrup.
Shape the meat mixture into the babiest of meatballs and plop them in as well. Now let the whole thing bubble very gently for half an hour.
This ash is nice garnished with crispy fried onion and mint, or if they are in season, you could strew a few plump pomegranate seeds across the top.
Serves 4-6
Garrett Melkonian is the executive chef of Mamnoon, a Lebanese restaurant in Seattle.
“Everyday images of war-torn communities, once beautiful and thriving, flood our hearts and fill our souls with grief and the ever-growing need to help those affected by conflict. The Soup for Syria project is a message of hope and a giant step towards the light.”
Ingredients
3–4 tomatoes, peeled and diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2–4 tablespoons red pepper paste
Small bunch cilantro, finely chopped, plus more to garnish
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons cumin
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds clams, rinsed and drained
3 cups chicken stock
3½ ounce basturma (Turkish air-dried cured beef, or substitute pastrami), diced
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Grilled or toasted bread, to serve
Steps
In a large bowl, combine the tomatoes, garlic, pepper paste, cilantro, cayenne, cumin, lemon juice, and olive oil. Mix thoroughly with a spoon or spatula (do not use a whisk).
Heat a large stockpot over medium-high heat, add the tomato mixture, and cook until the mixture becomes fragrant and tomatoes begin to break down, about 1 minute.
Add the clams, stock, and basturma and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook, shaking the pot occasionally, just until all of the clams have opened. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the clams to serving bowls, leaving the broth in the pot.
Add the butter to the broth and check for seasoning. The basturma and the clams carry a good deal of salinity, and the soup will probably not need salt.
Ladle the broth over the clams, garnish each bowl with a handful of cilantro leaves, and serve with thick slices of grilled bread.
Serves 6-8
Helena Zakharia is a cook and a resident of Beirut. As a small child, she had to flee the violence in her homeland of Palestine.
“It was a wonderful opportunity for me to be part of this amazing project. I enjoyed sharing my family’s soup recipes. What a blessing it was for me and my daughter, Maya, to be able to participate in such a worthy cause and to meet such amazing people.”
Ingredients
2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
6 cups beef stock
1 cup fine bulgar
¾ pound ground beef
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 onions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons dried mint
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Juice of 1–2 lemons
3 small zucchinis, peeled, seeds removed, sliced into crescents
Steps
Cook the chickpeas in the beef broth until tender, about 1 hour. (You can use a pressure cooker to save time.)
To make the meatballs: Wash and drain the bulgar. Add the beef, salt and pepper, and one of the chopped onions to the bowl of a blender or food processor, and pulse to a paste. With moistened hands, shape the paste into meatballs the size of marbles.
Heat half of the oil in a large pan and brown the meatballs. Set aside.
Saute the remaining chopped onion in the rest of the vegetable oil with a sprinkle of salt, until soft and slightly browned. Add the mint, tomato paste, garlic, lemon juice, and pepper. Stir well, and cook for 2 minutes. Set aside.
Spoon the sauteed onion mixture into the cooked chickpeas. Add the zucchini and meatballs.
Simmer slowly until the meat is fully cooked and the vegetables are tender, about 15-20 minutes.
Ladle into soup bowls and serve hot.
Warren Johnston can be reached at warren.nelson.johnston@gmail.com.