Middle East Meets Mittelmeer
Tuesday, October 1, 2024 at 19 h

Lisa’s culinary coming-of-age was multi-cultural long before the term was coined. It was – of course – her mother’s fault. As a German language teacher, her mother would invite her students to her big, late 19th century flat in Charlottenburg. The deal was: she bought the booze, the students cooked and little Lisa was delegated to the kitchen to „help“. So Lisa chopped chili with Korean nurses – lured to Germany in the 1970s to overcome a shortage –, rolled rice balls stuffed with canned tuna with Japanese students, and after her mother had crossed first North Africa and then Turkey in her Peugeot 404, students from the Southern and Eastern coasts of the Mediterranean steamed couscous, wrapped rice into vine leaves, Israelis and Palestinians bypassed politics and instead discussed whether the chopped salad typical to their region should be called Israeli or Palestinian salad. Lisa did not care, all she knew was that she had encountered herbs and spices that perfectly matched lemon, her favorite ingredient. A lifelong love affair with Middle Eastern food ensued.

Lisa Shoemaker won 2nd place in the ideas competition organised by the state of Berlin as part of its Zero-Waste Strategy 2021. The sustainable use of food and energy is very close to Lisa's heart and she enthusiastically passes on her experimentally acquired knowledge in all her cooking classes. And of course she cooks with food from organic cultivation, seasonal and regional wherever possible.