Cooking-competition TV shows around the world can be exhausting – watching those wildly over-the-top creations matched only by the egos of the judges.
But occasionally right seems to triumph, we’re told in a little documentary called Breaking Bread.
Photo: Screenshot
Doctor Nof Atamna-Ismaeel was the first Arab winner of Israeli Masterchef.
It was a popular win that united all sides of a country better known for its divisions, and Nof used the influence it gave her to create an event called “A-Shom – the Arabic Food Festival.”
The idea was for several pairs of chefs – one Jewish one Arab - to create their versions of mostly traditional dishes. And these aren’t dishes that Israeli or Arab families would necessarily expect to eat at home. They’re often dishes from the chefs’ grandmothers – Syrian Kishek soup, Taashimi Levantine fish, traditional octopus dishes, given a novel twist.
And above all – salad, a dish that Jews and Arabs fight over as much as Kiwis and Aussies fight over pavlova.
And really that’s all there is to Breaking Bread – watching people getting together because of their love of cooking, and their respect for people who are good at it.
American director Beth Elise Hawk seems to have had access to everyone involved in the Festival, possibly because she had Nof with her. It’s also significant that much of the film takes place in the northern city of Haifa.
Haifa seems to be almost unique in the region for having a population who get along with each other.
More than one of the chefs talk about eating outside a Haifa restaurant while, overhead, missiles are exchanged between Israel in the South and Lebanon in the North.
We’re used to wringing our hands over the situation in what used to be called the Levant - Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. This is an unsolvable problem that goes back before the days of David and Goliath, we’re told.
But here are people united over their love of food. What else do they have in common?
One of the chefs sums up a common feeling in Haifa. They’re fighting over nothing, he spat, and went back to his kitchen where he and his new colleague were trying to improve a thousand-year-old recipe.
But not even the optimistic Nof is prepared to say that the political problems of the Levant are going to be solved by well-made hummus.
Still, she makes a good point when she says that the professional peace-makers – politicians, soldiers and religious leaders - have hardly covered themselves in glory.
Watching food being prepared - not for the personal glory of the cooks, but to lift the hopes of the people eating - has to be something worth supporting.
Breaking Bread doesn’t seem a particularly ambitious exercise, but in this context it could move mountains.
