The National
Dubai cookbook club is a deliciously safe space, say members.
he first rule of a cookbook club in Dubai is there are no rules. Not around conversation, anyway. Members can share everything, from culinary hacks to life stories.
At the Cookbook Circle’s monthly gathering, recipes are traded in the form of a decadent potluck dinner. Members bring nearly finished dishes, each following the recipes from a selected book, to the hostess’s home and finish cooking together.
“We have celebrated with each other, but we’ve also cried and mourned with each other,” says Zahra Abdalla, author of Cooking with Zahra and one of Cookbook Circle’s oldest members.
We sit together at the table with the food we have made for the first time and experience it collectively for the first time
Yasmine Idriss Tannir, Cookbook Circle member
The club was founded more than five years ago by Dina Yazbak, a food consultant and mum of three, when she realised her cookbook collection was becoming extensive and she needed an outlet with a purpose.
So she banded together a group of women, including Abdalla, plus Dalia Doghmosh Soubra, Rasha Itani, Marguerite Kiwan, Zeina El Zein, Yasmine Idriss Tannir and Merale Tourbah Elrabbat. Some of them already knew each other, and others were new to the crew, but each possessed an unbridled joy for cooking, cookbook collecting, eating and entertaining.
Most of the members are accomplished cooks, some with successful careers in food. In all these years, the format has not strayed from its original purpose. “While the purpose was simply to cook, it has now evolved as I wanted it to, with all of us coming together and the food becoming almost secondary,” says Yazbak.
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