Book Review: The Bread and Salt Between us. By Mayada Anjari with Jennifer Sit.

Review: The Bread and Salt Between us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee’s Kitchen by Mayada Anjari with Jennifer Sit. Lake Isles Press, NY (2018)

Written by authors Mayada Anjari and Jennifer Sit, The Bread and Salt between Us offers over forty recipes that feature the cuisine of Syria. Many of the recipes featured in this book are examples of home cooking and staples of the authors family table. The food included in this book range from the very simple to the labor-intensive and there is enough variety to include a wide range of items for every palate.

Syrian cuisine may refer to the cooking traditions and practices in the country of Syria. (Modern Syria) Syrian cuisine has evolved over thousands of years and is shaped by many peoples: Arab, Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Circassian, Assyrian, Alawite, Turkish, Turkmen, Palestinian, Ismaili, Greek, Jewish, and Yazidi. Syrian cuisine is rich with such ingredients as eggplant, zucchini, garlic, lamb, sesame seeds, rice, chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, pistachios, just to name a few things. There are appetizers known as “meze” which are customarily served before the main course. As Author Jennifer Sit said in her introduction: “Syrian food is rich and varied, with a history that dates back to its ancient agricultural roots in the Fertile Crescent.”

Tabbouleh gets a more attractive and colorful treatment in this cookbook, with bulgur (Quoted in the book a “The…