Recipe & 👋🏽 - Palestinian Mahshi

Some of us need a recipe to get it right...

I received lovely feedback from my last post where I shared one of my favorite recipes from childhood — Palestinian Mahshi! Some folks requested a full recipe to make their lives easier, so here it is 🍉

I’m going to be testing out some new things on Substack, one of which is sharing some of my own and family recipes here twice a month.

Here’s what you can expect moving forward:

For the Love of Palestine 🇵🇸 — monthly thoughts and feelings on Palestine and on being Palestinian, uncensored, without an editor telling me what words I can and cannot use.

For the Love of Food 🥘 — bi-monthly custom recipe drops! Some of the food may be Palestinian, but lesbereal — there are other Palestinians out there cooking incredible food from back home. Most of my recipes will likely be some of the ones I’ve been iterating on over the years: soups & stews, sheet pan entrees, loaded salads, veggies but make them yummy etc.

For the Love of Nonsense ✌🏽 — monthly dopamine hits where I get to write whatever the hell I want outside of the world of Palestine. This will likely touch on my latest Zillow finds, what I’m reading, what chores I’m avoiding, what knitting project I’m botching — the world of nonsense is mine.

Thanks for being here, sorry to my friends and family who don’t need to hear more from me but are here regardless ♥️

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Palestinian Mahshi Recipe

Serves: 5-6

Prep: ~ 45 minutes

Cooking: 1 hour

Tools:

• Vegetable Corer

• Large mixing bowl

• Large pot (I prefer a dutch oven for this)

Stuffing Ingredients:

• 10-12 small squash (Ideally you’d want to use the lighter green Magda variety or a yellow crookneck squash. The petite ones are best, no longer than 5 inches) 

• 1 cup short-grain rice

• 1 to 1 ½ cups of coarsely ground, chili grind, lamb meat (VEGGIE option — I use 1 package of Trader Joe’s beef-less beef )

• 2 Tbsp. Ghee

• 3 Tsp. Salt

• 1 Tsp. Pepper

• 2 Tbsp. Allspice

• ½ Tsp. Cinnamon

Sauce Ingredients:

• 8 oz. can crushed tomatoes

• 4 cups chicken or veggie broth

• 4-6 cloves of crushed garlic

• Juice from 1 lemon

• 2 Tbsp. ghee

• 1 Tbsp. Allspice

• Salt & Pepper to taste

• ½ Tsp. cinnamon 

Substitutions:

• Squash — Can’t find those perfectly small squash? Don’t worry! You can stuff bell peppers, small eggplant, or even just small zucchini.

• Ground Lamb Meat — Ground chicken, turkey, or beef will work too! Add a bit of extra ghee to the mix if you are using a lean meat without natural fats. For the vegetarians, I have used any ground soy-protein variety and it has worked wonderfully!

• Crushed Tomatoes — 8 oz. can of tomato sauce would also work!

The Deets:

Ok, first things first, my video lied, and you will need smaller squash. My mom is already mad at me for sharing bad cooking advice. Alas. Go buy yourself some cute small, stubby squash and get ready to core them out. 

For the stuffing – wash the rice thoroughly. Mix the rinsed rice, meat or fake meat, allspice, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and ghee in a bowl. Toss, toss, toss and let’s get to stuffing…

*If you feel brave you can taste the raw stuffing, which my family always does, to ensure that we’ve seasoned it right…

Cut off the top of each squash. With your new vegetable corer tool, core out the inside of the squash – leaving a nice, even hallowed out shell. Be gentle when coring so as to not puncture the sides or bottom of your squash. Keep the inside pulp from the squash to line the bottom of your pot. Using your hands, fill the hallowed squash loosely with stuffing. Give your squash a shake every once in a while to be sure that the stuffing is settling at the bottom. Fill squash with filling until about ¾ full. 

Be sure that you have lined your pot with the leftover pulp from the inside of the squash. Only then can you line up your stuffed squash in neat stacks for cooking. Pour crushed can of tomatoes on top and season with salt, pepper, allspice, and cinnamon (you will have already seasoned the stuffing but the sauce needs some love too). Toss in the crushed garlic, the juice from one lemon, and the ghee. Finally, stir in either chicken or veggie broth until the tops of the squash are covered. Depending on the size of your pot, you may need all of the broth or only a few cups. 

TASTE your broth. I’m telling you, if your broth feels plain Jane then it won’t infuse more deliciousness into the stuffed squash 🙂

Cook at medium-high heat until pot comes to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook squash covered for 30-40 minutes. Turn off the heat and let sit for another 30 minutes covered to let sauce thicken.

Serve in one of those fancy plate-bowls with a generous amount of sauce, a drizzle of olive oil, and some sprigs of parsley if you have it! Otherwise, just eat from the pot and… sahteín!