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| Artichoke to Za'atar: Modern Middle Eastern Food | 
 enlarge | Authors: Greg Malouf, Lucy Malouf
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
New (30) Used (9) from $14.38
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 91055
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.3 x 1.6
ISBN: 0520254139
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5956
EAN: 9780520254138
ASIN: 0520254139
Publication Date: March 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
What life must have been like in Al Andalus September 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In an era in which we associate the Arab world with closed-mindedness and self-isolation a cookbook like this must come as a shock. These eclectic recipes remind one of the tales one often reads of banquets in the glory days of Al Andalus, where Jewish advisors counseled Syrian kings who ruled over a Christian population, and where the threads of so many different cultures intermingled freely to produce the greatest cultural flowering in the history of humanity.
That claim may seem a bit overblown, but just try the dried apricot and sherry cardamom ice cream, and you'll quickly realize that this is not a compendium of one's grandmother's old village recipes. This is a book that shows how cuisine is born in the mixing of the old and he new, the traditional and the foriegn. How refreshing to find a bood of middle-eastern cooking that isn't afraid to deploy pork or rabbit! Shukran!
Preserved lemon guacamole with smoked eel, salmon kibeh, watercress tabouleh, barbequed squid in a hot Yemeni relish, grilled haloumi endive salad, etc. etc. etc. What makes the recipes work is the way in which each extends the core idea of traditional recipe by borrowing from something outside of any traditional Arab cuisine. For example, by taking simple tabouleh and adapting it for watercress you come to realize just how parsley works in the original in a way that you never would by just making up a batch of the traditional fare.
In addition to the recipes the book features a number of descriptions of the place of various key ingredients in arab cuisines: their history, their raison d'etre, and their most commmon uses. Having a chapter on rosewater is really very helpful when you find yourself with a bottle of it and would like to put it so some use beyond scenting baklawa.
The one downside to the book is that it doesn't categorize recipes by type (e.g. desserts, appetizers, etc.). It's more a book meant for reading cover to cover than for picking out a dessert for tomorrows bridge party. Does anybody have those anymore?
Any serious cook is likely to count this among his or her top 5 cookbooks for a very long time. It really is that good. Now to try some of the turkish coffee ice-cream that has just finished churning.
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