Chili

This is not something we ate at home growing up. I started making chili a few years ago as a way to add variety and protein to our diet. I love the flavors of meat and beans with cumin and spice. I have experimented with different kinds of beans and found that there is no hard and set rule. My advice here is try different things, you never know what your favorite will be.
In the video, I use a homemade chili paste made by my father in law from red chilis we grow on the family farm. It's very flavorful and spicy. Store bought chili paste works too, alternatively you can add fresh chilis with the tomatoes.

Some Tips:
You can use any type of ground meat. I use a mix of ground lamb and beef, but ground turkey or chicken will work as well.
Cumin is your friend whenever you cook beans.
This is not very traditional, but my family and I have found that the chili works really well with freekeh.  The flavors complement each other really well. You can also serve with tortilla chips, garlic bread or even rice.

Freekeh فريكة

In the Levant it seems like we cook everything with rice, but that's not how it's always been. Wheat was first cultivated in the fertile planes of the levant and it was the staple grain that was used in all cooking and baking. Palestinians would import rice from Egypt and it was expensive and used for special occasions. This explains the Arabic saying العز للرز و البرغل شنق حاله . This translates to rice gets all the glory while bulgar kills itself. Because rice was rare and not local it got all the glory, meanwhile, bulgar the mainstay staple never got attention even though it was used much more.
Freekeh also comes from wheat, but unlike bulgar it came from green wheat. Once the wheat grains had reached their full size on the stalk but were still green, farmers would burn the crop in order to force the grain out of its stalk. The result was green wheat berries that have smokey nutty flavor. Freekeh is traditionally cooked like rice or made into a soup.

Some Tips:
Wash the freaked really well, you want the water to run clear when you're done. Use whole freekeh for this recipe, you can used the crushed freekeh for soup. It needs about 40 to 45 minutes cooking time, but let it rest after for at least 10 minutes.

Rice with Shrimp

This was a favorite growing up. I grew up near the shores of the Arabian (Persian) Gulf. I remember when I was young during shrimping season the shrimp fishermen would bring fresh shrimp that had been caught early in the morning in their trucks. My mother would buy several kilos worth. She would ask the vendor to peal it for her but then all that pealed ship would make its way to the kitchen sink where my mom would spend several hours deveining it, then she would divide into batches and freeze it so we could eat shrimp all year long. One of our favorite dishes was rice with shrimp. It was always a treat whenever my mother made it.

Some tips:
You can substitute thawed frozen shrimp for fresh. Be very generous with the spices for this dish.

A historical note:
I have always been pretty adamant about calling the gulf that I grew up near the "Arabian Gulf", it's surrounded by 6 Arab countries and only one Persian country, Iran. In our text books it was also know as الخليج العربي, but lately I found out that in ancient Arab geography texts and maps it was referred to as خليج فارس, or the gulf of Persia. So I'm no longer so sure where I stand in this debate.

Mjadara مجدرة

This is a vegetarian (Vegan if you don't eat it with yogurt) traditional Palestinian dish. It consists of rice cooked with lentils infused with flavorful olive oil and spices. My recipe is has inspirations from both my mother and my mother in law (RIP). From my mother I learned to infuse the olive oil with garlic and onions when I add it to the rice and from my mother in law I learned to heat up the rice with spices to get the most out of their flavor before adding the lentils.
It's easy to adjust the quantity, but I've found that sticking to the ratio of one part lentils to two parts rice works best.

Some tips:
Once you add the lentils it only needs about 20-25 minutes on the heat so start the garlic as soon as you've covered the rice and lowered the temperature. Turn off the heat after 20-25 minutes but let it sit for half an hour to get the best rice results.