Customer Reviews

Where Flavor Was Born: Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route

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"Where Flavor Was Born" is the product of the author's three year journey around the Indian Ocean spice trail, where he feasted his eyes and palate (not to mention his sense of smell) on the abundance of carefully seasoned food that he found along the way. The book is categorized by spice, with chapters highlighting black pepper, chile peppers, cardamom, and so on. Each chapter contains, and the book is full of beautiful photographs of the areas profiled, with an emphasis on the local people harvesting, selling/buying, and cooking their food. The photos of spices growing or being harvested are especially interesting. There is a wide range of foods in the cookbook, from meats to ways to flavor fruit with spices, and he promotes an attitude of playful experimentation with flavor rather than a rigid, harsh approach that takes all the fun out of eating. Most if not all of the recipes include detailed information about where he ate the dish, or how he was inspired to create his version. All in all, it's a great book that highlights the similarities between the cuisines of this wide geographic region while still managing to depict each local area as distinct.

The font size throughout the book is on the small side, but virtually all of the pages are white with black print and, if you can manage the size, easy to read.

And the recipes I have tried have turned out excellently.

I purchased this book after seeing it in the window of one of my favorite used bookstores earlier this evening, then tonight I am purchasing multiple copies of this book to give as gifts to my family this holiday season. I should note here, my father is a professional food technologist (for over 30+ years leading R&D programs for some of the world's biggest food companies as well as building and desiging factories and food processes) and my sister's boyfriend is a cookbook author and professional food critic (writing for the NY Times). So these are gifts for serious food lovers.

Where Flavor was Born is a beautiful, inspiring book. Many of the recipes are very simple - emphasizing the wonderful flavors that high quality, fresh spices and sometimes just one other ingredient can achieve. While other dishes involve slow cooking for 8+ hours. In short, recipes which while customized for the needs of a modern, western kitchen, do not cut corners to achieve flavorful combinations.

I generally do not cook from recipes, rather I typically cook extremely fresh, mostly local & organic ingredients which are in season with the minimum of additional steps to bring out their best flavors - it is a very rare dish I cook that involves more than 7 ingredients (even including spices most of the time).

However, this is a rare cookbook which I sat down and almost read cover to cover, noting on many pages recipes which I want to make sometime soon.

So soon, in fact, that I think my next dinner party - on the 25th - will include quite a few dishes from this book - as alternatives to slightly simpler dishes which I had intended on making. And in addition to trying many of the recipes as written, I am also taking inspirations from the overall stories and discussion of the spices.

And though I know I have a gift basket of spices from my favorite spice vender, The Spice House, coming to me later this month, I suspect I'll be calling them up about getting a few of the more exotic spices mentioned in this book (varieties of peppercorns for example).

In short, this is a great addition to the library of anyone who loves food, flavors, and cooking - cooking which is driven by starting with the highest quality ingredients.

The photos are stunning. I love learning more about the spices origins and how they can be used. I made my first meal last Sunday - a lamb stew that was delicious and easy to prepare. The smell in my kitchen was fabulous. I even bought a mortar and pestle the other day so that I will be able to grind my own spices. Can't wait to have more time to try more recipes.

What an amazing cookbook! Beautiful pictures of the people and region for each recipe. Very informative about the spices used for each recipe..basically you choose the spice or region you like and it leads to a recipe and region featuring the spice ued. If you like out of the ordinary, recipes that take you away as if traveling to the country featured, this is for you! Mouth waters as you review the pictures and recipes...also you get to read a bit of the authors local experience with each country and food featured. Not vegetarian, very balanced types of recipes to try and also the author provides a list of places to order some of the exotic spices and how to use them is also included with the recipe..for example how to bruise a particular spice or roast them in a pan if needed. Highly, highly suggest trying this cookbook

I GAVE THIS TO MY SISTER WHO IS THE FORMER EDITOR FOR 25 YARS OF A LEADING MAGAZINE. SHE RETIRED FROM THE MAGAZINE AND IS NOW IN A PARTNERSHIP WITH ANOTHER FORMER EDITOR WRITING "FOODIE" ARTICLES FOR THEIR WEBSITE. SHE IS STILL VERY ACTIVE IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY AND HAS EVERY COOKBOOK IN THE WORLD SO I HESITATED GIVING IT TO HER. WE ARE OF NORWEGIAN HERITAGE, HENCE THE DESIRE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK CONSIDERING THE AUTHOR IS A NORSK. WE TRIED TWO RECIPES SO FAR AND THEY WERE BOTH WONDERFUL. SHE LOVES THE BOOK!!!! I WAS SO THRILLED. THE BOOK IS LIKE A HISTORY LESSON ON SPICES AND THE COUNTRIES ALONG THE INDIAN OCEAN. THE PHOTOGRAPHY IS GREAT. MAKES YOUR MOUTH WATER JUST LOOKING AT THE PRESENTATIONS. I AM SERIOUSLY CONSIDIERING PURCHASING IT FOR MYSELF AS WELL. A GREAT GIFT FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES TO COOK AND TRY NEW RECIPES.

I love this cookbook! I've tried about 1/3 of the recipes and have yet to be disappointed! Good recipes and a good way of trying new spices!

If what you eat matters, Where Flavor Was Born: Recipes and Culinary Travels Along the Indian Ocean Spice Route, a passionate, rich learning experience is a must have! It's an art book too exquisite to take into the kitchen. It's an important reference. It's a comprehensive cookbook. It's a 2009 Staycation.
Was gifted with Chef Viestad's Kitchen of Light: the New Scandinavian Cooking and have been following his career ever since. From his monthly, Washington Post, food science column, The Gastronomer to his recent Food & Wine article on tomatoes and farming in South Africa. The latter inspired me to buy Where Flavor Was Born for a fellow Foodie, very hard to part with.

I found this book by accident and couldn't put it down. I was going through a gluten-free eating phase and found many of the recipes by nature qualify for gluten-free--but with exceptional taste. This book is unique and not pretentious as it may seem at first glance. You have to read it through to benefit from it as it is sectioned by spice. The tomatoe-cucumber salad with cuminsalt is now a standard in our house.

Bottom line: A must-have for any foodies' library. If you know someone who must eat gluten-free, they could find great pleasure in this book.

Even though there were recipes and articles I looked forward to reading, I had to return the book, because the print was so small and the ink in many sections was light on white. obviously the art director by scrunching the text into approximately 1/3rd of the page, and by using ink that was off white on a white page thought he might win a design prize, BUT unfortunately for the author, produced an unreadable book