
Feast: Food of the Islamic World
Tom Verde
Anissa Helou
2018, Ecco, 978-0-06236-303-9, $60 hb.
It takes confidence to pull together an authoritative cross section of foods spanning “the Islamic World.” Veteran food writer Anissa Helou rises to the occasion with this 530-page collection of familiar (shawarma, hummus), vaguely familiar (Moroccan tagines, Persian pilaus) and not-so-familiar (Saudi camel meatballs) recipes from nearly every corner of the Muslim world. She presents fish dishes from the Gulf States, along with Saudi Arabia curries from India, Pakistan and Indonesia; savory one-pot rice meals from Afghanistan; sweets from Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq; scallion pancakes from China; and simple bread rolls from Senegal. This exhaustive volume, covering centuries of tradition and tens of thousands of square kilometers, should appeal to serious and curious cooks alike.
You may also be interested in...
Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Winner Gives Voice to Marginalized
“No one else will be destined to write a life story as squalid as mine, although it’s all true,” comments the elusive protagonist of Algerian author Ahmed Taibaoui’s noir novel.Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.Child's Play: Reconstructing Everyday Life of Youth in Ancient Egypt
Egyptologist Amandine Marshall observes how the depictions of children created by Ancient Egyptians seldom illustrated their actual lives.