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...
Author Aminata Sow Fall’s Empire of Illusion—Our Book Review
What do we owe each other? What do we owe ourselves? These are the questions that Senegalese author Aminata Sow Fall has posed for nearly half a century.
The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History—Our Book Review
The Alhambra at the Crossroads of History shows how the 13th-century Andalusi palace complex in Granada, modern Spain, generates often conflicting meanings at the same time—meanings actively constructed and sometimes misread. Edhem Eldem, an Istanbul-based history professor, traces its role in shaping social and cultural identities across imperial Europe, Arab North Africa and Ottoman Türkiye from the 18th to the early 20th centuries.