Melding the rural and the urban with the local, regional, and global, Levantine cuisine is a mélange of ingredients, recipes, and modes of consumption rooted in the Eastern Mediterranean. Making Levantine Cuisine provides much-needed scholarly attention to the region’s culinary cultures while teasing apart the tangled histories and knotted migrations of food. Akin to the region itself, the culinary repertoires that comprise Levantine cuisine endure and transform—are unified but not uniform. This book delves into the production and circulation of sugar, olive oil, and pistachios; examines the social origins of kibbe, Adana kebab, shakshuka, falafel, and shawarma; and offers a sprinkling of family recipes along the way. The histories of these ingredients and dishes, now so emblematic of the Levant, reveal the processes that codified them as national foods, the faulty binaries of Arab or Jewish and traditional or modern, and the global nature of foodways. Making Levantine Cuisine draws from personal archives and public memory to illustrate the diverse past and persistent cultural unity of a politically divided region.

Pomegranates and pistachios. Floral waters and cinnamon. Bulgur wheat, lentils, and succulent lamb. These lush flavors of Maureen Abood's childhood, growing up as a Lebanese-American in Michigan, inspired Maureen to launch her award-winning blog, Rose Water & Orange Blossoms. Here she revisits the recipes she was reared on, exploring her heritage through its most-beloved foods and chronicling her riffs on traditional cuisine. Her colorful culinary guides, from grandparents to parents, cousins, and aunts, come alive in her stories like the heady aromas of the dishes passed from their hands to hers. Taking an ingredient-focused approach that makes the most of every season's bounty, Maureen presents more than 100 irresistible recipes that will delight readers with their evocative flavors: Spiced Lamb Kofta Burgers, Avocado Tabbouleh in Little Gems, and Pomegranate Rose Sorbet. Weaved throughout are the stories of Maureen's Lebanese-American upbringing, the path that led her to culinary school and to launch her blog, and life in Harbor Springs, her lakeside Michigan town.

Growing up in an Arab American household, rich traditional Arabic dishes were central to Blanche's family's life. However she noticed that previous generations of her family did not document these heirloom recipes on paper, but passed the cooking techniques only by word of mouth. So Blanche began a mission of cultural preservation, taking down the cooking methods and exact ingredients of these hundreds of year old recipes. She launched a popular YouTube cooking show called ''Feast in the Middle East'' to not only share these recipes with her family, but with the world. Some of these dishes are classical favorites, like smoky Syrian Muhammara dip with walnuts, pomegranate molasses and roasted peppers, ''Warak Enab, '' or rice and lamb rolled into tender grape leaves and cooked in a tomato broth, or Lebanese semolina custard scented with rose water called ''Layali Lubnan'' or ''Lebanese Nights''. Other dishes, like Musakhan, come from small and obscure villages like Ein Erik in the Palestinian West Bank. Musakhan is a sumac spiced chicken roasted on bread and smothered with caramelized onions and toasted pine nuts. Ancient recipes like chewy semolina date ring cookies called Ma'moul commemorate both Easter and Ramadan, while an over 1000 year old cinnamon spiced bulgur wheat porridge called Burbarra celebrates the Feast of Santa Barbara in the Arab Levant, Malta, and even Eastern Europe. While many of these dishes used to take hours to make, Blanche modernized these recipes to adapt to today's western palate and busy lifestyles. Readers will be able to recreate street foods like Chicken Shawarma and crispy Felafel in their own kitchens using easy techniques and familiar ingredients. Fusion dishes like Baklava Granola with pistachios and cardamom, Middle Eastern Nachos or ''Machos'' with pita chips and cucumber yogurt sauce, and a Lemon Cheesecake made with creamy labneh cheese adapt middle eastern spices and ingredients to western tastes. Today the ''Feast in the Middle East'' YouTube series has brought together a global cooking community in an unexpected and beautiful way. Now viewers are making these recipes in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, Spain, Korea and beyond. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Blanche Araj Shaheen is the YouTube personality and host of the popular cooking show, Feast in the Middle East. Prior to her foray into food, she was a television host and reporter in both entertainment and news. She reported and hosted programs for PBS, G4 Television, and Link Media's ''Mosaic World News of the Middle East.'' She also became the first Arab American entertainment reporter, as a contributor for the ABC live show called ''View From the Bay.'' In 2010 Blanche made the switch to hosting her own YouTube cooking show, sharing heirloom recipes preserved by her mother and grandmother. With her journalism background, she decided to document the recipes in this cookbook, and Feast in the Middle East was born. She gives the historical relevance of many signature dishes, and shares personal stories from her own family traditions and trips to the Middle East. Aside from her ongoing cooking series on YouTube, Blanche's Feast In the Middle East has been featured on Virgin America Airlines AUTHOR HOME: Los Altos, C

Savory, heart-healthy Lebanese recipes from a renowned chef The cuisine of Lebanon epitomizes the best of the Mediterranean diet, which is highly regarded for its positive health benefits. Abounding in vegetables, grains, fresh herbs and spices, poultry, and lamb, it yields meals replete with robust, earthy flavors. In Classic Lebanese Cuisine, Chef Kamal Al-Faqih presents 170 dazzling recipes that reflect the full breadth of authentic Lebanese cuisine. Featuring favorites such as baba ghannouj, tabbouli, and kibbi, this book also presents Al-Faqih's signature classics, like London broil layered with pita and garlic yogurt, and heart-healthy fire-roasted wheat with lamb. With step-by-step instructions accompanied by full-color photographs throughout, this book makes Lebanese cuisine accessible to everyone who seeks to reproduce their favorite flavors and dishes—from the merely curious to more experienced cooks.

A beautiful and detailed journey into the food of the middle east, from the awardwinning cook and traveler, gorgeously photographed throughout

This award-winning cookbook “dives deep into Islamic food culture and history” with colorful stories and a wide array of timeless recipes (Food & Wine). Renowned chef Anissa Helou is an authority on the cooking of North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. She has lived and traveled widely in this region, from Egypt to Syria, Iran to Indonesia, gathering some of its finest and most flavorful recipes for bread, rice, meats, fish, spices, and sweets. In Feast, Helou delves into the enormous variety of dishes associated with Arab, Persian, Mughal (or South Asian), and North African cooking, collecting favorites like biryani or Turkish kebabs along with lesser known specialties such as Zanzibari grilled fish in coconut sauce or Tunisian chickpea soup. Suffused with history, brought to life with stunning photographs, and inflected by Helou’s humor, charm, and sophistication, Feast is an indispensable addition to the culinary canon featuring some of the world’s most inventive cultures and peoples. “[Helou's] range of knowledge and unparalleled authority make her just the kind of cook you want by your side when baking a Moroccan flatbread, preparing an Indonesian satay and anything else along the way.” —Yotam Ottolenghi WINNER OF THE JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL COOKBOOK AWARD

Joumana Accad, creator of the blog TasteOfBeirut.com, is a native Lebanese, a trained pastry chef, and professional caterer. In her debut cookbook, The Taste of Beirut, she shares her heritage through exquisite food and anecdotes, teaching anyone from newbies to foodies how to master traditional Lebanese cuisine. With over 150 recipes inspired by her Teta (grandmother) in their family's kitchen, Accad captures the healthful and fabulous flavors of the Middle East and makes them completely accessible to home cooks. Each recipe features step-by-step instructions, Accad's warm teaching style and breathtaking color photographs that will make mouths water. Divided into sections including Breads, Breakfast, and Sandwiches; Soups; Mezze Delights; Main Dishes (Stews, Kibbeh, Stuffed Vegetables, and Rice Dishes); plus Pastries and Drinks, here is just a taste of the recipes featured: Spinach turnovers (Fatayer bel-sabanegh) Meat pies (Sfeeha) Kibbeh tartare (vegan) Red pepper and walnut dip (Muhammara) Lebanese couscous (Moghrabieh) Red lentils and rice purée (Mujaddara Safra) Eggplant casserole with tomato, meat and yogurt sauce topping (Fattet al-makdoos) Meat loaf with potato slices (Kafta bel-saniyeh) Zucchini or cauliflower fritters Wings, Lebanese-style Fattoush salad Beet hummus (Mama dallou'a) Zaatar and tapénade bread Wheat berry and milk pudding (Amhiyet bel-haleeb) Sesame and pistachio cookies (Barazek) Lebanese semolina cheesecake (Knafeh) Baklava in a speedy ten-minute version! While The Taste of Beirut brings to life the rich, complex, and delicious flavors of the Middle East, each recipe is refreshingly easy to make. The author's passionate, conversational style will make readers feel like they have a friend from Lebanon right in their kitchen, teaching them everything from cooking techniques to how to stock a kitchen with the best ingredients. Even more than a fabulous Lebanese cookbook, The Taste of Beirut is a proud celebration of people, culture, and cuisine.

A full-colour cookbook featuring an enticing array of Palestinian dishes, 'The Gaza Kitchen' also serves as an extraordinary introudction to daily life in the embattled Gaza Strip. It is a window into the intimate everyday spaces that never appear in the news.

In the Arabian Gulf, just east of Saudi Arabia and across the sea from Iran, the kitchens of Oman are filled with the enticing, mysterious aroma of a spice bazaar: musky black limes, earthy cloves, warming cinnamon, cumin, and coriander all play against the comforting scent of simmering basmati rice. Beyond these kitchens, the rocky crags of Jabal Akhdar tower, palm trees sway along the coast of Salalah, sand dunes ripple across Sharqiyah, and the calls to prayer echo from minarets throughout urban Muscat. In The Food of Oman, American food writer Felicia Campbell invites readers to journey with her into home kitchens, beachside barbeques, royal weddings, and humble teashops. Discover with her the incredible diversity of flavors and cultures in the tiny Sultanate of Oman. Omani cuisine is rooted in a Bedouin culture of hospitality—using whatever is on hand to feed a wandering stranger or a crowd of friends—and is infused with the rich bounty of interloping seafarers and overland Arabian caravan traders who, over the centuries, brought with them the flavors of East Africa, Persia, Asia, and beyond. In Oman, familiar ingredients mingle in exciting new ways: Zanzibari biryani is scented with rosewater and cloves, seafood soup is enlivened with hot red pepper and turmeric, green bananas are spiked with lime, green chili, and coconut. The recipes in The Food of Oman offer cooks a new world of flavors, techniques, and inspiration, while the lush photography and fascinating stories provide an introduction to the culture of a people whose adventurous palates and deep love of feeding and being fed gave rise to this unparalleled cuisine.