Lebanese Cuisine: More than 200 Simple, Delicious, Authentic Recipes

I bought this book in 1974 the first time, when I got married to my husband who was a naturalized citizen from Palestine. I later went to live in the Arab world and found my love for Arabic food. I was surprised to find that the "recipes" my sister-in-laws used were almost exactly the same as what was in the cookbook - or rather that I could re-create the food they made by using the recipes in this cookbook. Here and there, I added some info, but mostly they are very accurate. Also, they are not very complicated and the author includes some secrets to making things easier. Fast forward 45 years and I recently bought this re-printed cookbook for some friends and family. They like it too.

This is the first cookbook I ever bought, as a 20 something year old Lebanese immigrant to the US. I write in the margins, I make notes when my family recipes are slightly different, or when we call a recipe by a different name. I will call my mother back in the motherland and compare notes, and 90% of the time it's exactly the same as in this book. These are classic recipes, the backbone of Lebanese cuisine. No twists, just traditional dishes the way my grandmother made them. I absolutely love this book. With time, I came to enjoy cookbooks with glossy pictures of Lebanese landscapes and colorful mezze plates.. But this one is the one that I compare every recipe to, every time. I trust it fully.

An absolute must have for Lebanese cooking!

There is some good recipes and simple effective techniques for using spices in Lebanese cooking . Cooking is a demonstration and manifestation of colors and techniques which you won't find in this book! The book is written like a novel! Cheap papers , no pictures. One recipe has an error that I can pinpoint... At some point, I felt the author is not Lebanese but a foreigner who wrote about a loving cuisine that has been writing about in a rush ! 😟

This book has so many delicious recipes. It does not have pictures, but who needs pictures when you have the recipes? I tried a few of the recipes and they turned out delicious! I have never cooked Mediterranean Cuisines or dishes before and my friends thought I was cooking for years after they tasted my food. They seriously could not believe this was my first time at cooking these dishes. This book was definitely worth every penny.

Originally recommended to me by my (ex-)brother-in-law, who was Lebanese, this book is the best cookbook for Lebanese cuisine. I have given copies of this book to many friends, and now that a new edition is available, I'll buy more copies for myself and others.The recipes for Baked Kibbi (Kibbi bis-Sayniyyi) and Baqlawa are among my favorites (I prefer the rose water approach to Baqlawa to the cinnamon most commonly found in such recipes).The author also presents the recipes with their Arabic names, as well as pronunciation rules, for more authenticity.

This was a disappointment to me. The green bean stew was 4 stars good but I really wanted a lebanese lentil soup recipe. I eat out at Lebanese restaurants and like the food but since I'm not Lebanese I don't know how to cook it or what is in it and uniformly these restaurants don't enlighten you. I had a great lebanese lentil soup that I dreamed about from a lebanese restaurant and hoped the swiss chard and lentil recipe would approach it. I am swearing off cookbooks. It's better to go on line for recipes and read the reviews. First of all this is written for a western audience because the author didn't put the spice in that made it lebanese lentil soup. I made this and it was bland. It was so boring that I could have made this without a recipe. But then I went on line and read about sumac. As soon as I put sumac in the soup I knew this was the spice that had haunted me in the soup I used to love. I remember seeing the black dots in the soup i liked and now I know it was sumac but this was not mentioned in this recipe. I think there was butter in that soup too but not in this recipe. Probably for westerners rather than olive oil. i don't eat meat so most of the other recipes don't help me. Also I had a wonderful drink at a lebanese restaurant and had hoped that was in here but it wasn't. The drink had orange blossom water, probably grenadine and pine nuts in it and was so refreshing on a hot summer day that I craved this for years but could never find a recipe for it and it wasn't in this book either. Found it online.

I've been looking for a cookbook that is simple basic recipes for lebanese cooking. THIS IS IT! the recipes are easy to follow and all come out just like I ordered them from my favorite authentic lebanese restaurant except I DID IT MYSELF here at home. :):)