Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook
In many ways Middle Eastern cooking stands as the source of all Western cuisine, and modern nutritional opinion holds it up as a nearly ideal diet, an eastern extension of the Mediterranean Basin. Mallos begins her exploration of those lands in decidedly European Greece and illustrates through recipes Aegean cooking’s multicultural sources. She proceeds east through Turkey into Armenia and closes with some wonderfully unusual dishes from Afghanistan. Meat and vegetable “pies” seem ubiquitous in every one of these disparate lands, whether wrapped in crisp, delicate filo sheets or more substantial pastry doughs or breads. Mallos makes these recipes accessible for American kitchens, playing down ingredients too unobtainable. Although the rest of the eastern Mediterranean countries are represented, from Syria and Lebanon into Jordan and even African Egypt, Mallos fails even to mention Israel, an odd omission for so thoughtful and otherwise comprehensive a work. --Mark Knoblauch