The aromas of Middle Eastern cooking are deep and mysterious, invoking bygone names - Assyria, Mesopotamia, Sumer. We are entranced by the romantic evocations, savor the complex tastes, yet Middle Eastern cooking remains hidden to many westerners. When the veil of mystery is lifted, we discover an easy-to-prepare cuisine that makes abundant use of healthy ingredients.
In The Middle Eastern Cookbook, author Maria Khalifé lifts the veil. Her recipes are masterpieces of simplicity, reflecting her ease with people, with teaching and with food. To collect these recipes, Khalifé traveled throughout the Middle East, going into the kitchens of women from every country, gathering mouthwatering recipes that have been made by human hands for centuries. As the founder of a cooking school, Khalifé understands how to bring those recipes to hands less sure of what they are doing. She has adapted the recipes for Westerners so they are easy to prepare and use readily available ingredients.
Khalifé gives us some familiar recipes, such as Tabbouleh, Dolmas, Baklava, but also offers succulent lamb dishes, simple, but aromatic chicken dishes such as a chicken breast flavored with rose water and cardamom (Sidreyat al Dajaj).There are fish dishes such as as cod, flavored with tahini sauce and walnuts (Smak bi Taratour), a spiced shrimp (Machbous ala Rubyan), that is spiced with chili and perfumed by cilantro and baharat. If you don't know what baharat is, Khalifé makes life easy and offers a recipe for this mixture of spices that that you already have on hand- cinnamon,cloves, cumin, paprika. There are familiar sweet desserts such as Baklawa and Halawa Labanieh, as well as less familiar, but simple desserts, such as semolina pudding (Mamounia).
There are over 120 recipes from all over the Middle East. The beautiful photographs by Stuart West guide us and show us beautiful presentations.
About the author: Maria Khalifé is a celebrity chef in the Arab world. She is the founder and producer of Soufra Daimeh Food Network, the first Arab food channel. She also started the first private cooking school in Lebanon, edits a culinary magazine, and is an instructor at the Notre Dame University in the Graduate Hotel Management School.
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