Customer Reviews

A Taste of Lebanon: Cooking Today the Lebanese Way

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lebanese food is delicious, varied, and nutritious. It offers something for every palate and every budget. This book features a tempting array of traditional family recipes, from simple everyday fare to special occasion dishes. The author thoughtfully provides serving suggestions for many of the dishes described. Although some of the recipes require lengthy preparation or cooking times, most are not complicated to make, and almost all of the ingredients are readily available.

Also recommended: "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan," by Sonia Uvezian. Every lover of Middle Eastern food should own this unique and extraordinary cookbook.

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.

I am engaged to a woman with a large Lebanese family. I have always liked to cook and was intrigued by the many new tastes I experienced at family gatherings. With this book I have heard comments like "I haven't tasted this since I was in Lebanon 20 yrs ago!". People are always amazed that I have never tasted something before and with this book it tastes like the old country. I went to a family reunion and made kibbi balls. With over 200 people in the room I was told by one of the older women that 90% of the women in the room wouldn't know how to make this. The matriarch of the family wants a copy of this book! I highly recommend it.

Growing up in a Lebanese family, I really liked a lot of the foods my mom made, but I couldn't figure out how to make them because she puts a little of this and some of that. This book is great! The recipes come out just like my mom's, but there is no guessing on my part and they are in smaller portions. The neat thing about Lebanese cooking for me is that it is so healthy. There is a wide variety of recipes and if you really wanted to know how to make tabouli and hommos, the author makes it so easy to do so. I use this book all the time.

This book is wonderful. Everyone marvels at my homemade rice pilaf (alot cheaper and healthier than the pre-packaged pilaf), my delicious roasted chicken, and my lamb and green been stew, with a rich tomato broth and aromatic cinnamon. This cookbook is perfect for people who go work everyday and must come up with quick, healthful meals that don't require more than a spice or two to enhance. This author clearly knows that most of us don't have all day to spend in the kitchen and prefer recipes with a handful of fresh ingredients and spices that we are likely to have on hand. This book is like having your mom a phonecall away for help in creating a spectacular evening meal.
It has also given me confidence to improvise or add to some of the recipes because they build on a simple, great foundation. THANK YOU!

As an American married to a Lebanese man (and his mother), this book meets all of our needs. For me, the recipes are simple, most requiring only a handful of common ingredients. And, the food tastes great. For my mother in law, the food meets her rigorous standards for Lebanese cooking. Plus, the book is actually written by a Lebanese woman, not like many other "Lebanese" cookbooks. I'm ordering my third copy since I've given away two copies to friends who've loved the food I prepared from the book.

This book is a place to start at best. The main part of Middle Eastern cook that I find enjoyable is the use of fresh produce and spices. This book calls for dried spices at times. The dishes don't produce the food that I remember eating growing up with my family. The book is not a total loss, however. The spinach pies are acceptable. There are many other books out there that I would recommend first!

The basics of Lebanese cuisine are presented in this cookbook including kibbi, kafta, yogurt, hummous, baklava, tabouleh, baba gannoush, and many others. Many of the recipes in this book present ideas on how to use these staples of Lebanese cuisine in a variety interesting and different ways. Many of the recipes have been modified for Western tastes, and a few would be unrecognizable in Lebanon (Sloppy Joe Pita Pockets or Pita Burritos!). None of the recipes are particularly complex (except perhaps some of the pastries). There are quite a few of what I would consider to be filler recipes in this cookbook to round out the book. The reason that I rated this book at only three stars is that there really isn't much to it. Once you get past the traditional Lebanese basics, that's pretty much it. A great introduction to Lebanese flavors and Lebanese cooking, but you will be quickly left looking for more.

This was my first Middle Eastern cookbook and even though I now own many others, I still use this one the most. I find the recipes easy to make and they leave very little margin for error. I didn't know how to cook before I had this book; nevertheless all of the dishes I have made from it have been delicious. I am not Middle Eastern in origin but I have been to the Arab world and have tasted the food. I love Middle Eastern food, I love this book, and I highly recommend it.

A Taste of Lebanon gives you authentic Lebanese receipes the way these dishes are supposed to be made. The foods of Lebanon, although similar to Syria and other countries in the region, are unique. This book captures the way true a Lebanese cooks.

A perfeect book for Lebanese-American children or grand children that grew up eating this food and now want to make it themsleves.