Habeeb Salloum

Originally the food of peasants too poor for meat, vegetarian cooking in the Middle East has developed over thousands of years into a culinary art form. In this book, more 300 recipes for savory dishes from the region showcase aromatic stews and soups, couscous, stuffed grape leaves, and much more.

Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa

A love of Asian foods and a desire to provide simple ways to cook them drove prolific food writer Habeeb Salloum to write Asian Cooking Made Simple: A Culinary Journey along the Silk Road and Beyond. This latest release from Sweetgrass Books details how to cook up the tastiest Vietnamese pho (noodle soup), how to add a little Szechuan spice to dinnertime, and how to create mouthwatering Indian curries and Middle Eastern kebabs. The book itself, complete with color photographs of the dishes, is a journey across half the world, starting in China and working westward to the Mediterranean.

A Culinary Journey along the Silk Road and Beyond

Asian Cooking Made Simple

Readers will delight in Habeeb Salloum's childhood recollections of a Syrian childhood on the prairies, and his tales of encounters with food around the world. Cooks will be inspired by his love of cooking, by his deep appreciation for his culinary heritage, and by his enthusiasm for new discoveries in food through his travels.

Recipes and Recollections from a Syrian Pioneer

Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead

Habeeb Salloum has compiled an amazing array of recipes that celebrate this blending of cultures while still making it compatible with the everyday kitchens of the Western world. From the familiar, Hummus Bi-Tahini, to the unique, Stuffed Lamb, Salloum offers an accessible world of savory tastes and memory provoking aromas.

from lamb kebabs to baba ghanouj, delicious homestyle Middle Eastern cooking

The Arabian nights cookbook

the story of traditional Arab sweets

Sweet delights from a thousand and one nights

NEW IN PAPERBACK The vegetarian cuisine of the Middle East and North Africa is a treasure chest of pungent herbs and spices, aromatic stews and soups, chewy falafels and breads, couscous, stuffed grape leaves, greens and vegetables, hummus, pizzas, pies, omelets, pastries and sweets, smooth yogurt drinks, and strong coffees. Originally the food of peasants too poor for meat, vegetarian cooking in the Middle East developed over thousands of years into a culinary art form influenced both by trade and invasion. It is as rich and varied in its history as it is in flavor—culinary historians estimate the Arab kitchen has over 40,000 dishes! Now noted food writer Habeeb Salloum has culled 330 savory jewels from this never-ending storehouse to create Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East—a rich, healthful, and economical introduction to flavors and aromas that have stood the test of time.

University of Regina. Canadian Plains Research Center

In Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead, over 200 recipes and the author's recollections from childhood combine to tell the story of a little-known group of early immigrants to the Saskatchewan prairies--the Syrians (most of them later known as Lebanese). There was a significant Syrian community in Saskatchewan during the Depression, and as Mr. Salloum points out, their traditional foods and crops were well-suited to the dryland farming that the drought of the 1930s demanded. Thus they thrived during this difficult period on the prairies. Their traditional foods--such as yogurt, chickpeas, and burghul--were, at the time, virtually unknown to their fellow homesteaders; today, however, these same foods are an important part of an increasingly varied and globally influenced North American cuisine.

Recipes and Recollections

Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead

Muna Salloum

Leila Salloum Elias

Which dessert is named after the heroic third-century Queen Zenobia of Palmyra? Which luscious rice pudding shares its name with the eighth-century Abbasid Caliph al-Ma'mun? How does one make the perfect Baqlawah? Blending cookery with culture and recipes with history, this is the fascinating and delectable story of traditional Arab sweets. The authors here take us on a culinary journey across Iraq, Syria, Egypt and al-Andalus, presenting readers with clear and easy-to-recreate recipes from across the medieval Arab world. Filling the tables of caliphs and noblemen, these sumptuous desserts of saffron and rose water conjure the opulence and grandeur of the medieval Islamic world. Bringing together tenth- to fourteenth-century Arabic texts, the authors retrace the history of these sweet dishes, reviving the original recipes and following their development and influence over the centuries into non-Arabic speaking lands. Honey, dates, figs and pomegranates are just a few ingredients featured in this exquisite selection of mouth-watering desserts which have been modernised for cooks to try at home, all woven together with medieval poems and stories. From delicious pastries, filled with pistachios and fragrant syrups, to luscious puddings, biscuits, and pies, it is the ideal addition to any kitchen. A unique insight into Middle Eastern culinary history, this book is a must-have for anyone with a sweet tooth.

The Story of Traditional Arab Sweets

Sweet Delights from a Thousand and One Nights

The author of the thirteenth-century Arabic cookbook Kitāb al-?abīkh proposed that food was among the foremost pleasures in life. Scheherazade's Feasts invites adventurous cooks to test this hypothesis. From the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, the influence and power of the medieval Islamic world stretched from the Middle East to the Iberian Peninsula, and this Golden Age gave rise to great innovation in gastronomy no less than in science, philosophy, and literature. The medieval Arab culinary empire was vast and varied: with trade and conquest came luxury, abundance, new ingredients, and new ideas. The emergence of a luxurious cuisine in this period inspired an extensive body of literature: poets penned lyrics to the beauty of asparagus or the aroma of crushed almonds; nobles documented the dining customs obliged by etiquette and opulence; manuals prescribed meal plans to deepen the pleasure of eating and curtail digestive distress. Drawn from this wealth of medieval Arabic writing, Scheherazade's Feasts presents more than a hundred recipes for the beverages, foods, and sweets of a sophisticated and cosmopolitan empire. The recipes are translated from medieval sources and adapted for the modern cook, with replacements suggested for rare ingredients such as the first buds of the date tree or fat rendered from the tail of a sheep. With the guidance of prolific cookbook writer Habeeb Salloum and his daughters, historians Leila and Muna, these recipes are easy to follow and deliciously appealing. The dishes are framed with verse inspired by them, culinary tips, or tales of the caliphs and kings whose courts demanded their royal preparation. To contextualize these selections, a richly researched introduction details the foodscape of the medieval Islamic world.

Foods of the Medieval Arab World

Scheherazade's Feasts

The traditions of Syrian cooking go back hundreds of years, and is notable for its sensory components, in which aroma and texture are as important as taste and nutrition. Over the centuries, the unique dishes of Greater Syria (bilaad al-shaam) were preserved by those who cooked them. For cooks in imperial households, family homes, or on simple peasant farms, recipes were handed down from generation to generation. Despite centuries of occupation, unrest, economic hardships, and political strife, the people of Greater Syria continued to cook their burghul, lentil, chickpeas, kishk, and yogurt dishes as if life around them never changed. Syrian-born Habeeb Salloum and his daughters Leila Salloum Elias and Muna Salloum have researched and explored the far reaches of Syrian cuisine for many years (and in Habeeb’s case, decades). Their resulting cookbook, Pomegranate and Rose Water, provides a succinct window into the dining tables of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Syria, featuring many delectable, heart-healthy recipes that have never before been published in English. The book also provides a poignant window into Syrian culture and everyday life then and now—bound together by ageless and truly beautiful food traditions. Includes 144 recipes; full-color throughout.

Habeeb Salloum

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