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Bread and Salt Between Us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee's Kitchen
Organized by everyday fare, celebrations, and sweets, The Bread and Salt Between Us offers over forty recipes that recall the flavor and comforts of Mayada's home in Syria. From the fresh tabbouleh she learned to prepare alongside her mother and sisters to the rice pudding that won over her future husband, these easy-to-approach dishes tell the story of a family whose culinary traditions have sustained them as they build a new life in the United States. To show her gratitude to the community that sponsored her family's resettlement, Mayada prepared a meal. This simple act of sharing food ignited an outpouring of support. A regular supper series ensued, drawing crowds that were as enthusiastic to help her family as they were to enjoy her cooking. The story of Mayada's journey is beautifully chronicled in this personal recipe collection. All proceeds from sale of this book will directly benefit Mayada's family, and members of the refugee community. Foreward by José Andrés.
176 pages, Hardcover
Published September 7, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 5, 2020
I’ve never cried reading a cookbook before, but I couldn’t help but be moved by the vivid stories of community, family, and love contained within the covers of The Bread and Salt Between Us. Simple, unfussy, delicious recipes from an infectiously lovely family in their journey as refugees from Syria to the United States. Wonderfully narrated by Jennifer Sit, you’ll fall head over heels for this kitchen staple.
April 17, 2019
Book Review: The Bread and Salt Between us. By Mayada Anjari with Jennifer Sit.
Go to the profile of TheWellSeasonedLibrarian
TheWellSeasonedLibrarian Apr 17
https://medium.com/@librarian.deanjon...
Review: The Bread and Salt Between us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee’s Kitchen by Mayada Anjari with Jennifer Sit. Lake Isles Press, NY (2018)
Written by authors Mayada Anjari and Jennifer Sit, The Bread and Salt between Us offers over forty recipes that feature the cuisine of Syria. Many of the recipes featured in this book are examples of home cooking and staples of the authors family table. The food included in this book range from the very simple to the labor-intensive and there is enough variety to include a wide range of items for every palate.
Syrian cuisine may refer to the cooking traditions and practices in the country of Syria. (Modern Syria) Syrian cuisine has evolved over thousands of years and is shaped by many peoples: Arab, Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Circassian, Assyrian, Alawite, Turkish, Turkmen, Palestinian, Ismaili, Greek, Jewish, and Yazidi. Syrian cuisine is rich with such ingredients as eggplant, zucchini, garlic, lamb, sesame seeds, rice, chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, pistachios, just to name a few things. There are appetizers known as “meze” which are customarily served before the main course. As Author Jennifer Sit said in her introduction: “Syrian food is rich and varied, with a history that dates back to its ancient agricultural roots in the Fertile Crescent.”
Tabbouleh gets a more attractive and colorful treatment in this cookbook, with bulgur (Quoted in the book a “The Workhorse ingredient in middle eastern kitchens”, parsley, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, with lemon juice, olive oil, and cayenne pepper. Likewise a delicious sounding Salad “Cabbage Salad with Pomegranate Molasses” that includes Cabbage, Tomatoes, and Pomegranate Molasses promise color and flavor for the table or pot luck.
Eggplants get wide usage in this cookbook. Full disclosure, I’ve never liked eggplant. This is one cookbook that makes me want to revisit the vegetable and try it using these recipes. With the “Eggplant Stew,” there is the recipe and the version using meat, both sound great and like something I would enjoy making for dinner. Baba Ghanoush eggplant mashed and mixed with yogurt and tahini is featured as well.
Pan-seared Coriander Chicken (Shish Tawook) gets a wonderful yet simple treatment here and also provides something simple for a weekday meal that would be comforting yet delicious with the sides offered here. Serve with lettuce and flatbread for a complete meal.
Stuffed Vegetables (Mehshi Khodar “Yalingy”) are vegetables (Zucchini or eggplant) that are hollowed out and stuffed with a rice stuffing. Served with tomato sauce, this somewhat labor intensive recipe might well be worth the effort, and a good idea of a celebration with family or pot luck where you are looking to impress.
Falafel, Spinach-stuffed pies, meat-stuffed pies, cheese fingers (a kind of cheese pie), Red Lentil Soup, and other Dinner or Pot Luck recipes are rounding out the collection of exemplary main dish or Dinner items. There are also a collection of Sweet Recipes for Dessert. Cheese Stuffed Filled Pancakes (Qayayef), Date filled cookies (Ma’Amoul) and Rice Pudding with Rose Water, Coconut and Pistachios and more that offer tempting treats to serve up for family or guests.
For people who might be worried about trying new recipes, there are some very user-friendly things you can try like Chicken in the Oven with Potatoes, a recipe that I have worked into my family cooking repertoire. It is both a delicious and also family/budget friendly recipe that you will find very easy and wonderful.
I enjoyed “The Bread and Salt Between us” I was entranced by the recipes and the writing that surrounded the chapters eloquently and deftly put by the authors. I would recommend this to anyone who is curious about the Cuisine of Syria and might want to expand their repertoire.
The Good:
· Several really solid recipes that would invite the reader to try them out.
· There should be very little here that is not available in most supermarkets. Even exotic items like pomegranate molasses or grape leaves can be obtained with ease or at the very least on Amazon.
· As a cookbook, this is also a very nice introduction to Syrian Cuisine. I feel like I learned a lot from this cookbook and now I would gladly visit a Syrian Restaurant because of what I have learned.
The Bad:
· Many (not all) of the recipe photos were fairly monotone. I think I would have had some color for contrast. Some of the photo’s made what should have been mouthwatering look not so enticing. They were not bad photos, I do believe that they could have been better.
Review: 1–5 Loaves (Rating 4 Loaves)
About the Authors:
Mayada Anjari
Mayada Anjari is originally from Syria. In 2016 Mayada came to the United States from Jordan with her husband and four children.
As Author Jennifer Sit said in her introduction to the book of co-author Anjari “Mayada is not a culinary historian, nor a restaurant chef, blogger, or food personality. She is a woman who has cooked for her family, in some form, all her life — from family occasions alongside her mother and younger sisters, to trading off household cooking duties with her sister-in-law when she first got married and lived with her new in-laws, and now, as the matriarch of her own nuclear family of six.”
Mayada is helping her family build a new life by cooking for the hundreds of people who attend her sold-out “Dinners with Mayada and Friends” in New York City. She lives with her family in New Jersey. As author Mayada Anjari said “To celebrate our six-month anniversary of being in the U.S. and to show our thanks for everything, we wanted to treat everybody to a big meal at our home. People enjoyed themselves so much that someone got the idea that I should cook a fund-raising dinner at the church. I had never cooked for so many people before — the first dinner was for seventy-five people — and it was the first time I had ever made that much food. It gives me joy to cook the dinners and to see so many people enjoying my food. From the dinners came the idea of this cookbook.” (See article link below.)
· The First Thanksgiving: Recently arrived refugees in the United States prepare to cook the most American of feasts. New York Times, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/di...
Jennifer Sit
Jennifer Sit is a cookbook editor and James Beard Award-nominated coauthor of “Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes from the Source to the Bowl with co-author Pierre Thiam. Jennifer Sit has edited cookbooks at independent publisher Lake Isle Press and at Blue Apron, including the IACP Award-winning Blue Apron Cookbook. She is now a senior editor at Clarkson Potter and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Official Website:
The Bread and Salt between Us: https://www.breadandsaltbetweenus.org/
Other Articles of Interest.
· Remembrance of tastes past: Syria’s disappearing food culture by Wendell Steavenson.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
Go to the profile of TheWellSeasonedLibrarian
TheWellSeasonedLibrarian Apr 17
https://medium.com/@librarian.deanjon...
Review: The Bread and Salt Between us: Recipes and Stories from a Syrian Refugee’s Kitchen by Mayada Anjari with Jennifer Sit. Lake Isles Press, NY (2018)
Written by authors Mayada Anjari and Jennifer Sit, The Bread and Salt between Us offers over forty recipes that feature the cuisine of Syria. Many of the recipes featured in this book are examples of home cooking and staples of the authors family table. The food included in this book range from the very simple to the labor-intensive and there is enough variety to include a wide range of items for every palate.
Syrian cuisine may refer to the cooking traditions and practices in the country of Syria. (Modern Syria) Syrian cuisine has evolved over thousands of years and is shaped by many peoples: Arab, Kurdish, Druze, Armenian, Circassian, Assyrian, Alawite, Turkish, Turkmen, Palestinian, Ismaili, Greek, Jewish, and Yazidi. Syrian cuisine is rich with such ingredients as eggplant, zucchini, garlic, lamb, sesame seeds, rice, chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, pistachios, just to name a few things. There are appetizers known as “meze” which are customarily served before the main course. As Author Jennifer Sit said in her introduction: “Syrian food is rich and varied, with a history that dates back to its ancient agricultural roots in the Fertile Crescent.”
Tabbouleh gets a more attractive and colorful treatment in this cookbook, with bulgur (Quoted in the book a “The Workhorse ingredient in middle eastern kitchens”, parsley, lettuce, cucumber, tomato, with lemon juice, olive oil, and cayenne pepper. Likewise a delicious sounding Salad “Cabbage Salad with Pomegranate Molasses” that includes Cabbage, Tomatoes, and Pomegranate Molasses promise color and flavor for the table or pot luck.
Eggplants get wide usage in this cookbook. Full disclosure, I’ve never liked eggplant. This is one cookbook that makes me want to revisit the vegetable and try it using these recipes. With the “Eggplant Stew,” there is the recipe and the version using meat, both sound great and like something I would enjoy making for dinner. Baba Ghanoush eggplant mashed and mixed with yogurt and tahini is featured as well.
Pan-seared Coriander Chicken (Shish Tawook) gets a wonderful yet simple treatment here and also provides something simple for a weekday meal that would be comforting yet delicious with the sides offered here. Serve with lettuce and flatbread for a complete meal.
Stuffed Vegetables (Mehshi Khodar “Yalingy”) are vegetables (Zucchini or eggplant) that are hollowed out and stuffed with a rice stuffing. Served with tomato sauce, this somewhat labor intensive recipe might well be worth the effort, and a good idea of a celebration with family or pot luck where you are looking to impress.
Falafel, Spinach-stuffed pies, meat-stuffed pies, cheese fingers (a kind of cheese pie), Red Lentil Soup, and other Dinner or Pot Luck recipes are rounding out the collection of exemplary main dish or Dinner items. There are also a collection of Sweet Recipes for Dessert. Cheese Stuffed Filled Pancakes (Qayayef), Date filled cookies (Ma’Amoul) and Rice Pudding with Rose Water, Coconut and Pistachios and more that offer tempting treats to serve up for family or guests.
For people who might be worried about trying new recipes, there are some very user-friendly things you can try like Chicken in the Oven with Potatoes, a recipe that I have worked into my family cooking repertoire. It is both a delicious and also family/budget friendly recipe that you will find very easy and wonderful.
I enjoyed “The Bread and Salt Between us” I was entranced by the recipes and the writing that surrounded the chapters eloquently and deftly put by the authors. I would recommend this to anyone who is curious about the Cuisine of Syria and might want to expand their repertoire.
The Good:
· Several really solid recipes that would invite the reader to try them out.
· There should be very little here that is not available in most supermarkets. Even exotic items like pomegranate molasses or grape leaves can be obtained with ease or at the very least on Amazon.
· As a cookbook, this is also a very nice introduction to Syrian Cuisine. I feel like I learned a lot from this cookbook and now I would gladly visit a Syrian Restaurant because of what I have learned.
The Bad:
· Many (not all) of the recipe photos were fairly monotone. I think I would have had some color for contrast. Some of the photo’s made what should have been mouthwatering look not so enticing. They were not bad photos, I do believe that they could have been better.
Review: 1–5 Loaves (Rating 4 Loaves)
About the Authors:
Mayada Anjari
Mayada Anjari is originally from Syria. In 2016 Mayada came to the United States from Jordan with her husband and four children.
As Author Jennifer Sit said in her introduction to the book of co-author Anjari “Mayada is not a culinary historian, nor a restaurant chef, blogger, or food personality. She is a woman who has cooked for her family, in some form, all her life — from family occasions alongside her mother and younger sisters, to trading off household cooking duties with her sister-in-law when she first got married and lived with her new in-laws, and now, as the matriarch of her own nuclear family of six.”
Mayada is helping her family build a new life by cooking for the hundreds of people who attend her sold-out “Dinners with Mayada and Friends” in New York City. She lives with her family in New Jersey. As author Mayada Anjari said “To celebrate our six-month anniversary of being in the U.S. and to show our thanks for everything, we wanted to treat everybody to a big meal at our home. People enjoyed themselves so much that someone got the idea that I should cook a fund-raising dinner at the church. I had never cooked for so many people before — the first dinner was for seventy-five people — and it was the first time I had ever made that much food. It gives me joy to cook the dinners and to see so many people enjoying my food. From the dinners came the idea of this cookbook.” (See article link below.)
· The First Thanksgiving: Recently arrived refugees in the United States prepare to cook the most American of feasts. New York Times, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/di...
Jennifer Sit
Jennifer Sit is a cookbook editor and James Beard Award-nominated coauthor of “Senegal: Modern Senegalese Recipes from the Source to the Bowl with co-author Pierre Thiam. Jennifer Sit has edited cookbooks at independent publisher Lake Isle Press and at Blue Apron, including the IACP Award-winning Blue Apron Cookbook. She is now a senior editor at Clarkson Potter and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Official Website:
The Bread and Salt between Us: https://www.breadandsaltbetweenus.org/
Other Articles of Interest.
· Remembrance of tastes past: Syria’s disappearing food culture by Wendell Steavenson.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...
February 10, 2019
This book is simply lovely--in both form and spirit. I love that the recipes are so simple but clearly bursting with love and flavor. I borrowed the copy I read from the library, but I will definitely be adding a copy of my own to my (rather small and very carefully curated) cook book collection very soon. Thank you for your recipes and your stories Mayada!
September 28, 2018
Gorgeous.
Haven't eating anything from the book yet (husband is making Lamb and Pita tonight) but it looks wonderful. The recipes are not very complicated. The photography and design of the book is spectacular. The stories of Mayada's family woven through the book are compelling.
Haven't eating anything from the book yet (husband is making Lamb and Pita tonight) but it looks wonderful. The recipes are not very complicated. The photography and design of the book is spectacular. The stories of Mayada's family woven through the book are compelling.
February 27, 2019
I enjoyed this book co-authored by Mayada Anjari, a refugee from Syria and Jennifer Sit, a woman who helped Anjari's family settle in the US after escaping from Homs, Syria. The recipes are easy to follow. I especially enjoyed the different Syrian salad ideas.
February 23, 2019
A lovely book that is uplifting and inspiring. Jennifer Sit did a beautiful job with the background information.
July 16, 2019
A wonderful collection of stories and recipes that showcase Syrian home cooking, as well as the refugee experience.
February 20, 2020
i thought this was wonderful
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews