cover image The Sweets of Araby: Enchanting Recipes from the Tales of the 1,001 Arabian Nights

The Sweets of Araby: Enchanting Recipes from the Tales of the 1,001 Arabian Nights

Muna Salloum and Leila Salloum Elias. Countryman, $21.95 (128p) ISBN 9780881509298

When they stumbled upon a thousand-year-old collection of Arabic desserts, Salloum and Salloum Elias (sisters and Middle East and Islamic studies scholars) felt compelled to bring these recipes to twenty-first century tables. It's a terrific hook which informs the book's effective structure: start with a short tale from Scheherazade that mentions a particular dessert, offer the original recipe and the updated version. Most recipes reshuffle a small deck of ingredients: yeast-based dough, chopped almonds and pistachios, rose water, dates, and honey. Those with a love of fried dough will find a litany of applications here, such as: Luqum al-Qadi, a fried ball of dough stuffed with ground almonds and spices; Aqras Mukarrarah, fried patties with a cinnamon and sugar topping; and Barad, fried dough covered in honey and baked. Those with an aversion to baking or working with yeast-based items will appreciate Hays, one of the oldest sweets in the book, which calls for just six ingredients (dates, bread crumbs, sesame oil, confectioner's sugar, ground almonds, and chopped pistachios) mixed together. While cooks who'd prefer to make their own Halwah will certainly appreciate this book, it may be even more compelling for food historians, fellow scholars, and expats. (June)