Explore ancient food preservation and learn how salt, sun and time shaped resilience, continuity and sustenance across civilisations.

This hands-on workshop explores food preservation as both design and ancient technology. Drawing on traditions from West Asia and North Africa, participants will learn how fermentation, drying and salting with only salt, sun and time created systems of resilience and continuity. The focus is on Kishk, a mix of salted yoghurt and cracked wheat dried in the sun for two weeks, alongside a demo of Maleh (salted fish), once both sustenance and currency in the Gulf. Each participant will make their own Kishk artefact while discovering how these methods shaped civilisations and why they remain vital today.

About Bethany Kehdy

Bethany Kehdy is a Lebanese-American chef, award winning cookbook author and founder of Taste Lebanon and Taste WANA, offering boutique culinary and cultural experiences. She champions the entangled cuisines of West Asia and North Africa (WANA), leading with curiosity and grounded in rigorous research, historical and lived context, terroir and craft.