17 January 2008

Review

BEIRUT: Over the past few decades, books on Middle Eastern cookery have literally flooded libraries and shops throughout the English-speaking world. If a quick search on Amazon is to be believed, there are well over 100 titles currently in print, ranging from general overviews to acutely specific accounts of the food prepared in a region more often associated with the horror of its politics than with the dishes on its dinner tables. (Though for the truly militant, "A Vegan Taste of the Middle East" came out a few years ago).

The region's cookbook juggernaut is bolstered by a number of well-known and prodigious authors, such as the inimitable Claudia Roden (whose "Book of Middle Eastern Food," first published in 1968, is a peerless classic of the genre), Anissa Helou (author of six volumes ranging from "Lebanese Cuisine" and "Mediterranean Street Food" to the recently published "Modern Mezze" and "Savory Baking from the Mediterranean"), Greg and Lucy Malouf (joint writers of the one-title wonders "Arabesque," "Moorish" and "Saha") and many more.

Lebanese cookery has generated its own veritable publishing industry - challenged only by those spawned by the richness of Moroccan cooking and the extreme refinement of Persian cuisine - and one can't help but wonder if there's a correlation between a country's brain drain and its capacity to produce cookbooks abroad. Surely, Levantine recipes are collected, archived, published and circulated to restore the links broken by emigration and upheaval (and perhaps to soothe the social transition from tight family units to more and more young people moving out and living on their own, willfully uprooting themselves from the matrilineal lines that would otherwise pass along food knowledge verbally, but homesick for home cooking nevertheless).

Food, after all, is intimately tied to memory, and no one mines that relationship more skillfully than Nada Saleh, who is considered one of the United Kingdom's leading authorities on Lebanese cuisine.

"New Flavours of the Lebanese Table" is Saleh's latest contribution to the genre and follows her previous books, "Seductive Flavours of the Levant," "Fresh Moroccan" and "Fragrance of the Earth," an intensely personal tome dedicated to her late son Ziad and full of warm recollections of her homeland and family.

Saleh traces her ancestry to the Chouf village of Mukhtara. "New Flavours" is generously seasoned with memories of family meals near Ain Murshid, a natural spring and popular picnic spot. Equally evocative is her depiction of booming Beirut in the 1960s.

Take, for example, her introduction to foul mdammas, a staple dish of brown beans with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and a garnish of parsley and paprika: "Foul mdammas recalls the old days of enchanting Beirut when the Lebanese made their way after partying to have their breakfast at Ajami [the famous restaurant that held pride of place in Souk al-Tawileh, before it decamped to Ramlet al-Baida]. There was a narrow street next to it where tables were placed. The street led to an amazing fountain surrounded with all kinds of fruits and jallab (a drink made from raisins) and liquorice drinks. This was demolished during the war and the restructuring of Beirut."

For brown bean breakfast food eaten predominantly by the poor, Saleh not only drafts a compact history of modern-day Beirut but also excavates its origins to the tables of Egyptian pharaohs and speculates on the practice of preserving the beans with pomegranate skins and bay leaves. Saleh employs this approach - intimate yet methodically archeological - throughout the book.

But perhaps even more striking is her fierce yet understated commitment to highlighting the contemporary health benefits of traditional Lebanese cooking. Detailing a standard cabbage salad, spruced up with the juice of clementines, Saleh documents the curative properties of cabbage as a valuable source of vitamin C and notes ongoing studies that suggest it stimulates the immune system, lowers the risks of cancer and kills bacteria and viruses.

The Romans, she adds, introduced cabbage to Britain because they "regarded it as a panacea against the discomforts of high living as well as a neutralizer of the effects of alcohol. The Roman statesman Marcus Cato strongly advised the inclusion of raw cabbage in the diet as a prophylactic." Who knew? And for the vain among us, she concludes, the clementine juice in the dressing gives "a glow to your skin."

In 12 jam-packed chapters - from "Salads, Vegetables and Grains" to "Meats," "Stews," "Sweets" and more - Saleh hits every wow factor of the traditional table. The value for those readers who already know these recipes by heart is the revelation of where they come from (in historical terms), the explanation of why certain dishes are prepared when and how they are, the understanding of how - precisely or with a few modifications that in most cases restore the recipes back to their arrangement of origin (reverting back to olive oil from once trendier vegetable oils, for example) - this food is good for you.

Healthy eating, however, need not be boring or dull to the palette. "New Flavours" includes a pretty decadent recipe for Tripoli-style, kashta-filled halawet al-jibn, and another for "Layali Loubnan (Nights of Lebanon)," replete with layers of banana, pistachio, almond flakes, honey and rose or orange blossom water. The meats chapter is literally stuffed with countless variations on kibbeh (baked, fried, dunked in tahini and, of course, prepared raw as kibbeh nayeh), plus recipes for kafta, shawarma, fried liver, spiced sausages and more.

Clocking in at more than 300 pages - with no photographs or illustrations whatsoever - "New Flavours" is as dense as it is mouth-watering. The paperback format and utilitarian design suggest that Saleh's is a work book for toiling cooks, good or bad as they may be, rather than a high-impact coffee table accoutrement. The bordeaux-colored type may be a challenge for tired eyes, but the recipes are well-rendered and occasionally quite streamlined.

Saleh has clearly trolled for recipes across the country, from North to South, and her book definitely captures the logic of village food preparation, which is rapidly disappearing. As such, "New Flavours" is a vital read for Lebanese food enthusiasts, whether they are near or far from home, and a nice antidote to a nation's eventual culinary amnesia.

Nada Saleh's "New Flavours of the Lebanese Table" is published by Ebury Press, part of a division of Random House

Copyright The Daily Star 2008.