This is an admirable and timely collection addressing key topics at the interface of Middle Eastern and culinary studies. The scholarship is excellent; and recipes, reminiscences, and poetry add complementary modes of describing modern Levantine cuisine. It’s wonderful to have so many insights into the relations between culinary, political, and economic history of this fascinating and pivotal part of the world. There’s lots to love about this volume.
~Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
This important collection is an absolute delight. Bringing together historians, anthropologists, and literary scholars, but also poets and food writers, it is interdisciplinary in the true sense of the term. Taken together, these enlightening essays do more than simply provide us with new insight into Middle Eastern foodways: they also open up new conversations and suggest new ways of looking at the world. This book is indispensable reading for all those interested in the region's rich culinary cultures.
~Andrew Arsan, author of Lebanon: A Country in Fragments
[Making Levantine Cuisine] suggests that food and the fiery debates around it can shed light on histories of inequality and struggle in the region... By examining the food history, culture, and politics of the modern Levant, the pieces reveal a culinary history that is, as one contributor put it, 'simultaneously hidden and deliciously obvious.'
~The Nation
A comprehensive and inviting account of Levantine Cuisine...As an inviting and accessible read for food scholars, ethnographers, graduate students, and home cooks, this edited volume engages readers to discuss method, theory, recipes, geography, and research in a new light. Whether discussing kebabs, pistachios, or hummus, the volume offers so much to think with, cook, and snack on.
~Food Anthropology
