Saturday, October 20, 2012

alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking will be at PORTLAND LAMB JAMB Sunday, October 21

shish kebab (laham mishwe) and kafta are classic Lebanese lamb dishes detailed in alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking, and previous blog posts are linked for your perusal.


the occasion for revisiting them now, is the PORTLAND LAMB JAMB, a fundraiser for hungry children in which i will be presenting alice's recipes to an audience that loves lamb. the event is on Sunday from 2 to 5 pm in portland, oregon. alice's kitchen has 41 pages of lamb recipes and features 5 pages on how to properly cut a leg of lamb so the flavor is excellent. most lebanese cookbooks do not have this information, while alice's kitchen uniquely does! folks who say they don't like lamb would benefit from mama's teachings here. if the fat is not properly trimmed, according to mama, it gives a bad flavor. so the secret is here (in the book!!)
additionally, as described in the cookbook, in my parents' village of Douma, the butcher prepared the lamb cuts for specific dishes on order and delivered them! but in LA when i was growing up, mama had to become the butcher, as the meat dept. of A & P didn't know laham mishwi from kafta.

so we have mama to thank for this wisdom! 

lamb was not an everyday feature of our diet, and when it was included, traditionally small bits of meat were eaten with rice and lots of vegetables. this is why alice's kitchen is loved by vegans and vegetarians as well!

happy cooking! see you at PORTLAND LAMB JAMB!

Friday, October 12, 2012

Alice's Kitchen will be at Portland's Wordstock Book Festival this weekend!



If you're in portland this weekend, please come by the convention center for a great book festival, wordstock, and visit me at booth #815. i will be there signing copies of alice's kitchen: traditional lebanese cooking and The Sweets of Araby, a book for which i illustrated and designed the cover, as well as doing interior illustrations, published last year by Countryman Press, and named a NY Times Notable book for 2011. it is a delightful book with recipes and stories based on the tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights.

my beloved mother, alice, joined me at Wordstock in 2005, when they had a cooking stage and the revised and expanded edition of AK had just been published. it was such a joy to share the stage with mama; the audience loved her, and she was honored by the line of people waiting for us to sign their books.

this weekend i'll be selling the books at a special price, and will be sharing some of my summer dried figs...so do stop by! mama will be with us in spirit! reminding us: Dear, if you make it with love, it will be delicious!

and if you are too far away, you can order copies through my website or amazon. happy cooking!

Friday, October 5, 2012

LEBANESE COOKING DEMO by linda sawaya in vancouver, washington October 17!

fall and harvest greetings to all!

i have been busy this summer and posting a lot of food and cooking images to my TWITTER (@lindasawayaART) and FB, so if you'd like to follow either or both of those, you will see what i've been up to.

i do plan to continue posting here, just found the iphone/instagram so instant, it made it possible in an otherwise very busy period!

OCTOBER 17, wednesday from 1:30 to 2:30, i will be doing a FREE cooking demo at CHUCK'S PRODUCE, a very wonderful store i just discovered. will be demonstrating how to make a quick and FABULOUS hommous b' tahini and baba ghannouj!

sign up with them soon, as their classes fill up quickly! and come and learn how to make the best hommous and baba in the pacific northwest!




of course i'll be signing and selling Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking too! please come by and visit, taste, and pick up some gift copies of your favorite Lebanese cookbook!