As a serious cook and a lover of Lebanese food, I was quite disappointed with this book. The recipes fail to give clear, detailed instructions, they omit essential information, and they are inconsistent. For example, they often neglect to specify the type and size of pan needed and whether or not to cover the pan during cooking; they fail to specify what kind of parsley to use (the flat-leaf variety is preferred by Lebanese cooks) or, when basil is called for, whether to use fresh or dried; when calling for allspice, cinnamon, or sumac, they don't stipulate whether they should be whole or ground; they also fail to say that black pepper should be freshly ground; they neglect to say that lemon juice should be freshly squeezed and that the type of onion used in salads should be a mild variety; they often fail to specify that kind of rice and what size bulgur to use; they often don't say whether to use dried, canned, or fresh chickpeas and lima beans; they often fail to instruct the cook to peel potatoes, to clean and/or stem spinach, or to dilute tomato paste when necessary; and they sometimes neglect to give an idea of how long to cook, whether to use high, medium or low heat, and how far the food should be placed from the heat source when broiling. A cookbook should always give this kind of information so that cooks at all levels can use it successfully. Inexperienced cooks and those unfamiliar with Middle Eastern cuisine will have problems with the recipes in this book.
Furthermore, the book is not particularly informative or interesting to read. Many people would appreciate some discussion of the cultural and historical background of the food as well as of traditional utensils, meals, markets, and wines, not to mention the country itself. Also, the book does not provide enough information on ingredients. A number of very important ingredients are not mentioned or explained, and some of the information is incorrect; for example, mastic is wrongly identified as gum arabic. As for the recipes, although some are good, many are rather unimaginative. Several for well-known dishes such as musakhan yield very mediocre results. In a number of others the flavor is compromised. For instance, the recipes for tabouli and zahtar bread recommend using either olive oil or vegetable oil, yet no self-respecting Lebanese cook would use anything but good-quality extra-virgin olive oil in such dishes; vegetable oil produces greatly inferior results. The recipe for baba ghannuj calls for baking rather than grilling the eggplant, the latter being the traditional and far superior method employed in the preparation of this dish. There is even a recipe that calls for dried parsley flakes!
Unfortunately, this book doesn't do justice to Lebanese cuisine. Readers who wish to gain a more accurate and comprehensive view of the country's food traditions will have to look elsewhere.
