Product Description

On a trip to Turkey as a young woman, chef Ana Sortun fell in love with the food and learned the traditions of Turkish cooking from local women. Inspired beyond measure, Sortun opened her own restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the award-winning Oleana, where she creates her own interpretations of dishes incorporating the incredible array of delicious spices and herbs used in eastern regions of the Mediterranean.

In this gorgeously photographed book, Sortun shows readers how to use this philosophy of spice to create wonderful dishes in their own homes. She reveals how the artful use of spices and herbs rather than fat and cream is key to the full, rich flavors of Mediterranean cuisine -- and the way it leaves you feeling satisfied afterward. The book is organized by spice, detailing the ways certain spices complement one another and how they flavor other foods and creating in home cooks a kind of sense-memory that allows for a more intuitive use of spice in their own dishes. The more than one hundred tantalizing spice categories and recipes include:

• Beef Shish Kabobs with Sumac Onions and Parsley Butter
• Chickpea and Potato Terrine Stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach, Onion, and Tahini
• Crispy Lemon Chicken with Za'atar
• Golden Gazpacho with Condiments
• Fried Haloumi Cheese with Pear and Spiced Dates

Absolutely alive with spices and herbs, Ana Sortun's recipes will intrigue and inspire readers everywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #69256 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-01
• Released on: 2006-05-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Clifford A. Wright, author of the James Beard Cookbook of the Year A Mediterranean Feast
"Only a brilliant chef like Ana could have created such a warm and evocative cookbook filled with enticing recipes."

Paula Wolfert, author of The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean
"This book beautifully codifies the marvelous dishes I've eaten at Oleana, all of which bear her special inventive touch."

About the Author

Ana Sortun was named the “Best Chef: Northeast” at the 2005 James Beard Awards for her restaurant, Oleana, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she opened in 2001. Known for unique Arabic-Mediterranean food, Oleana has received much local and national praise. Sortun holds a degree from Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne in Paris. She lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter.

Customer Reviews

A Thinking Woman's Approach to the Middle Eastern Kitchen
For American foodies, Middle East cooking is fraught with peril. Not only do popular specialties like hummus, baba ganoush, and falafel represent stereotypical ikons of this huge region. But as one becomes familiar with more sophisticated choices, it's easy to dismiss them because of: 1. hard to get ingredients 2. time consuming steps for dishes like stuffed vine leaves, moussaka, Persian rice, etc.
Now comes Ana Sortun. She has demystified the exotic herbs and spices that define the Levantine palate by describing how she discovered the real thing in Turkey and/or other eastern Mediterranean lands.
She should know because her Cambridge, Mass restaurant Oleana offers most every item featured in this handsome treasury of easy-to-follow, step by step recipes. True to its eponymous title, the book is organized by spices, i.e. the predominant seeds, leaves, and blossoms that flavor her signature dishes. It also includes a comprehensive list of web sites and shops that carry admittedly exotic or hard to get ingredients.
One reason for her success is the descriptive passages preceding each recipe. She tells stories of where she encountered the ingredients. She describes the (mostly) women and men who introduced them to her. Then she shows how she and her talented restaurant staff (everyone is credited, including her farmer husband) have adapted traditional recipes for the modern palate. This approach is more than nouveau, more than fusion. It takes tradition, and then expands on it with surprising results. Thus, hummus the old way morphs into a delectable parsnip creation, and falafel becomes a crunchy spinach/chick pea marriage.
But Sortun doesn't stop there. Because she has trained in France, she shares secrets about that country's cuisine. She generalizes about the use of cream and butter and riffs on why cooks should avoid extra virgin oil when sauteing. This is not a cook book for beginners, but, in the great narrative tradition of M.K. Fisher and Julia Child, it is a celebration of creating authentic gustatory delights - a tour de force truly enhanced by the spices of life.

Add "Spice" to your life
This is a great cook book. As a lover of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean area foods I have to say this is one of my favorites. I've just begun to try the recipes but I like that the author includes descriptions and histories of the spices. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to not only play with their food but to learn more about food too.

Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean
A very useful book for lovers of the Levantine kitchen. Recipees are very easy to execute