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Book Review
by Mary Kay
Radnich
Egyptian Cooking: A Practical Guide
By
Samia Abdennour
Hippocrene Books 1998
The delights of Egyptian cooking have been
proclaimed both here in the Tour Egypt magazine and elsewhere on
the Internet. For those travelers to Egypt who are willing to step
outside of their culinary comfort zone and sample traditional
Egyptian fuul or Om Ali, they will not be
disappointed with the results of their experimentation.
There are many Egyptian delicacies, however, with its location
at the corner of North Africa, Egyptian cuisine is also a mixture
of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African foods. Many
regional cookbooks exist that offer Egyptian cuisine, but how can
one learn to prepare completely Egyptian foods in the comfort of a
private kitchen?
Samia Abdennour has solved this problem for us with her compact
cookbook, Egyptian Cooking, A Practical Guide. This handy
paperback is a repository of all sorts of local Egyptian foods,
the kind you would find in a typical Egyptian restaurant or in a
private home. It is not full of westernized delicacies but rather
good old home cooking recipes. And she does a good job of
introducing the Arabic names for all of the recipes as well as the
ingredients and cooking utensils.
The cookbook chapters are divided into sections according to
courses, Mezze, Breakfast, Main Courses, and so on, finishing up
with chapters on Kitchen Utensils, Spices, a good Glossary and
finally, an Index chapter. The final chapters, which explain
terms, spices, etc. are very useful for understanding just what
all that Arabic means. Within each chapter are divisions according
to main ingredient, such as chicken recipes, salad recipes, etc.
This feature makes the cookbook a very handy guide in preparing an
ethnic meal. In the case of the section on Molokiyya, the popular
green of Egypt, no fewer than eight variations of Molokiyya
recipes are given.
I found this cookbook to be a good basic cookbook of Egyptian
food. Some of the selections are very exotic, such as preparations
of various animal organs. I did find that many recipes were bland
for our tastes and more spices or hotter spices were required. One
significant drawback – no photographs. If you are dependent on a
photo of what the dish is supposed to look like, then this will be
a handicap for you. However, like most home-cooked food anywhere,
a soup is liquid, a salad is green and a roast is a roast. I didn’t
find the lack of photos to be a problem, plus it makes the book a
very affordable US $11.95.
Egyptian Cooking, A Practical Guide is available on the
internet from the online booksellers, such as Amazon.com.
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