The best Middle Eastern Cooking, Food & Wine books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

First, get a good persian cook book: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Life-Ancient-Persian-Ceremonies/dp/193382347X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540326251&sr=8-2&keywords=new+food+for+life

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My wife puts a couple tbls spoons of Rose Water in our water container, and we drink that. No sugar, and its delicious.

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Buy Tumeric. Costco sells Tumeric pills for like $30/50 pills. You can buy it cheap.

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Dried Mint and dried Shallots. Use the dried mint crumbled in your yogurt. Let the dry shallows soak in warm water, then chop, put in yogurt for a delicious dip.

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It comes down to a few things: The right pot The right rice The right amount of parboil The tahdig recipe The correct method of steaming.

I use this book Food of Life to make most Persian dishes and they all come out perfect.

Hey! Iranian cooking is not the most popular on YouTube, but I do have a book I swear by, which also perfectly articulates what Persians mean when they say "hot and cold" cooking. It also shows how Persian food isn't made to look fancy, it's just bright and colorful and happens to be fancy. The table traditions are addressed in various parts, too.

I know this book is one of the best ones out there because we have a lot of Persian cookbooks. For this book only my dad, who is an immigrant from Tehran, even said that this food tastes almost exactly as his late mother used to make. My mother and I can follow it point for point and it comes out excellent, and with one or two homebrew changes for Dad's childhood nostalgia, it's definiately good.

Link here to Amazon but if you can find it anywhere else go for it.

WRT Iranian food, my sister got me Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij a while back. I've not yet perfected my Tahdig, but I've gotten decent. I'd definitely recommend learning to cook if you have a kitchen.

Falastin. Arabic chef out of London who works for Ottolenghi. This book def upped my game because the techniques are different from western cooking. https://www.amazon.com/Falastin-Cookbook-Sami-Tamimi/dp/0399581731/ref=nodl_

So, my late father left Tehran and came to the US when he was 19. After meeting my mom, she learned how to cook Persian food for him. As they grew older, mom tried to get as close to her mother in laws cooking as possible. She learned from this book here foor more advanced things. Dad said "it tastes like mos cooking" every time; so Im sure this was a good book.

Recommended Cookbook here. "Food of Life"

Recipes that dad taught me from memory, that I know even without a recipe:

• kotlet, essentially a ground beef cutlet with potatoes
  • Can you make a meatball? You can make this.
• koobideh kebab (ground meat kebab)
  • You tend to see this on a skewer. But sometimes specialty tools just arent accessible in a family of 5. So follow the recipe and instead stick that puppy in the oven in a thin 1 inch slab. Sure, it aint pretty, but you could boil it if you really need that top crunchy.
• Sholeh Zard (Saffron rice pudding); a thicker and floral rice pudding.
  • It's dairy free! Good toppings are cinnamon, pistachios or almond slivers!
• dolmeh (stuffed grape leaves); tomatoes, rice, meat, very familiar flavors.
  • Kadoo dolmeh is stuffed peppers!
  • This is seriously stupid proof UNLESS someone tells you to not drain the juice from the canned peeled tomatoes BEFORE adding them to the meat and rice mix....DAD.
• Joojeh kebab; chicken kebabs
  • Wooo, spice combinations!
• Kuku Sabzi; herbacious as hell fritatta
  • You can buy the herbs for this recipe in a can. It's stupid easy that way.
• Salad Olivieh; Persian chicken-egg-potato salad. It's super easy, just takes up some time
  • Make sure you have ground tumeric.

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I seriously recommend these because they are easy to understand with familiar things, just a different type of spice party.

Get a cookbook.

I use this one which is quite good.

I own this cookbook. It's good, although some of the ingredients are hard to find.

So sorry for the late reply! I thought I responded already oops! Here's the cookbook: Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies https://www.amazon.com/dp/193382347X/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_XS87DQ9MTPKZ4ZFRT4Y9

A cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Breads-Baking-Flatbreads-Legendary-Chocolate/dp/157965682X/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=3NL8LGXRBGCGN&keywords=breaking+breads+uri+scheft&qid=1644063927&sprefix=breaking+breads%2Caps%2C90&sr=8-3

I like to collect cookbooks and read/cook through them. I recently got Jerusalam. It's got such beautiful pictures and I'm loving it. I made the chocolate Krantz cake this weekend and it was so good.

Sami Tamimi is a great start - you can see a book of his recipes at the link below, and he has restaurants in London selling authentic Palestinian cuisine.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399581731/ref=aod_recommendations_asins_0

Shahiat tayiba!

I just got Falastin by Sami Tamimi and Tara Worley and I LOVE it! It's all about Palestinian cuisine and culture and it's amazing. The recipes I've tried have been spectacular, and I regularly dip into it for inspiration and new ideas. Cannot recommend it enough!

Maybe not what you're looking for but Zahav is an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia that has won the James Beard award declaring it the best restaurant in the country. They have a cookbook if you want try some of their recipes. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010KMORLU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Do you have a Persian/Iranian cookbook you can recommend? I've got this one, but what I've cooked from it has not turned out well.

No problem. I'll be posting more vegetarian dishes here (hopefully mainly vegan ones), Iranian cuisine is very veg friendly :) If you're into cookbooks, the famous anad amazing Iranian chef Najmieh Batmanglij has a released a book called Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies that has vegetarian recipes, shouldn't be too hard to veganize them

Zahav It's not strictly vegetarian but a lot of great vegetarian recipes. Highly recommended. It's worth it for the tahini and humus alone.

There aren't really any easy Iranian foods. I recommend this book. Try checking Chapters as well, might be less expensive in there.