Sally Butcher

This is a beautifully presented cookbook. Pretty pages and wonderful food photos. There seem to be photos for most of the recipes but sometimes they’re on nearby pages. Some pages have photos of several recipes and they’re not labeled although I think I could tell which photo belonged with which recipe.

The author is not vegan or even vegetarian. She’s the same as me though in preferring the term vegan to plant-based.

There were a few times when ingredients were listed and I had to look them up online. I had no idea what they were. One was asafoetida. I needed a glossary of terms/ingredients! Most of the recipes call for many ingredients and many ingredients aren’t to my taste, at least not in my cooking, vegan ghee for instance, and many ingredients seem as though they would be hard to find for many home cooks.

For my personal (picky) taste there weren’t that many recipes in here that appealed to me as given, though they do seem authentic and I got some good ideas for ingredients to use in various dishes.

What looks best to me.

From Simple Mezze: Eggplant “Carpaccio” with Pomegranate

From Salads & Cold Appetizers: Pistachio Hummus

From Soups, Snacks & Hot Appetizers: Herb & Barley Soup; Rutabaga Soup with Turmeric, Ginger & Orange; Kookoo-ye-Calam (Persian-Style Cabbage Frittata)

From Sweet Treats: Sweet Potato, Date & Tahini Gateau; Homemade Halva

Overall this was not a good cookbook for me though it is gorgeous and for those cookbook readers who want to see more vegan recipes for the Middle East region and who are accomplished cooks this might be a good book for them. I was disappointed though. I expected to really like this book and expected to find many more recipes that were appealing to me and doable for me.

Contents:
Introduction
1 Simple Mezze
2 Salads & Cold Appetizers
3 Soups, Snacks & Hot Appetizers
4 Bread, Rice & Grains
6 From the Oven
7 From the Frying Pan & Into the Fire
8 Salted, Conserved, Fermented & Pickled Foods
9 Sweet Treats
10 Drinks
11 A Cheaters’s Guide to Vegan “Meat,” “Dairy” & “Egg” Substitutes
Index
Bibliography
Acknowledgments… (mais)