Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate Our Shared Humanity
Alia Yunis
Barbara Abdeni Massaad
2015, Interlink, 978-1-56656-089-4, $30 hb.
Good food and good photography are natural companions, and here they come together for a good cause. Cookbook author Barbara Abdeni Massaad has made a career photographing Lebanon’s back roads in search of its culinary heritage. Recently, that has also meant meeting some of the country’s thousands of Syrian refugees. Her intimate portraits of these displaced men, women and children are paired with unique soup recipes from a very different set of friends—celebrity cookbook authors and chefs. Contributors include Alice Waters, Claudia Roden, Paula Wolfert and Greg Malouf. Levantine cooks also provide local flavors, such as Aziz Hallaj’s Aleppo Red Lentil with Verjuice and Paola Skaff’s Pumpkin Soup with Cardamom. Proceeds from the book will go toward humanitarian care for the refugees residing in a country heavily burdened by the scars of its wars.