Sometimes as cooks, chefs, bakers and makers, we can appear to the outside world as big softies, barely equipped to cope with life outside of food.

But what if there was a war around you, how would that affect the way you cook, you bake, you live, you sleep even?

Today I’m speaking with the Lebanese Palestinian food writer living in Beirut, Hisham Assaad, about his new cookbook “Taboon: Sweet & Savoury Delights from the Lebanese Bakery” out with Smith Street Books. And we’re talk about baking and clowning and cooking during a war.