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L.A. Times Review • Oregonian
Foodday • Aramco World • Santa
Cruz Sentinel • Al Jadid •
what readers say!
•The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, November 11, 2007
A recipe for forming a Middle East identity
by Therese Watanabe
Inside the UCLA exhibit case, the family cookbooks offer generations of
recipes and traditions that have persisted beyond place and time in America's
Middle Eastern diaspora communities. There is "Assyrian Cookery: Exotic
Foods that Outlasted a Civilization" and the "Iraqi Family Cookbook: From
Mosul to America." There are Palestinian cookbooks from 1960s Detroit,
and Armenian cookbooks from 1920s Boston. "Alice's Kitchen: Traditional
Lebanese Cooking" by Linda Dalal Sawaya offers a treasury of her mother's
recipes, including spinach pie and sesame cookies.
The most extraordinary thing about the cookbooks, however, is that they
are housed together in one glass exhibit case. They are part of a groundbreaking
exhibit at UCLA that seeks to present a pan-ethnic identity for Middle
Eastern Americans though a collective display of their literature, media,
scholarly works, memoirs and other written material. Whatever political,
religious and ethnic differences divide ethnic Armenians and Turks, Arabs
and Israelis, Iranians and Assyrians, exhibit organizers say, commonalities
also bind them -- like shared spices and dishes in their cuisine, such
as cardamom, falafel and hummus.
Consider Sawaya's book. It might focus on growing up Lebanese American
in Los Angeles, but it contains scenes that might resonate with an Armenian
or Arab -- memories of community picnics, visiting family vineyards, curing
olives and cooking with three generations of women...
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Copyright © 2007 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
• Wednesday, August 18, 1999
COOKBOOK WATCH The Los Angeles Times
Lebanese Grandmother Cooking
by Charles Perry
Arabs have lived in this country since the 1870s, but Arab Americans have
always been considered peculiarly foreign (insofar as other Americans
knew they existed, that is), so the first generation has keenly felt the
usual immigrant alienation. Their children and grandchildren, in turn,
are often somewhat ambivalent about their roots.
Because of this, Arab American writers have
started reexamining the lives of their remarkably determined ancestors.
"Alice's Kitchen: My Grandmother Dalal & Mother Alice's Traditional
Lebanese Cooking" by Linda Dalal Sawaya is both a cookbook and a
part of this literature.
The author grew up in Los Angeles in the
'50s among neighbors who had never heard of hummus, tabbouleh or pita
bread although her family had been here since the '20s, when her grandfather
owned a downtown dry-goods store on Los Angeles Street. Part of the book
is her family history, and part represents a dialogue with her tradition
in which pride alternates with passionate nostalgia and a certain poignant
distance. She is enough of an American girl to be shocked by the sight
of her mother slaughtering a chicken for dinner, for instance.
But most of the book is recipes. The title
says it all--this book grew out of the author's desire to cook the dishes
she grew up on. The strength of the book is this tight focus. The carefully
written recipes represent a very clear aesthetic.
If you have a Lebanese cookbook, most of
the recipes will look familiar (the spellings will differ; cookbook writers
have no concept of spelling Arabic consistently), but in the Middle Eastern
tradition, every cook has a subtle touch of her own. And some recipes
may be new to you, such as the potato salad dressed with parsley, mint
and lemon juice.
This book covers some very basic procedures
rarely described elsewhere, such as curing olives, baking paper-thin marouq
(marqu^q) bread and making Arab-style cheese. There's even a recipe for
arishe (qari^sheh), a sort of tart ricotta made from the whey you get
when you make "yogurt cheese" by draining yogurt overnight.
"Alice's Kitchen" is available from the author.
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
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 Tuesday,
February 3, 1998 • FOODDAY, The Oregonian
Cookbooks from HOME, by Barbara Durbin
"Author explores Lebanese roots in ALICE'S
KITCHEN/Family cookbook is as much about love as food"
For author Linda Dalal Sawaya, a Portland free-lance graphic artist,
"Alice's Kitchen: My Grandmother Dalal & Mother Alice's Traditional
Lebanese Cuisine" is a culinary trip down memory lane.
For those who love Lebanese food, it's
a handbook for good eating.
For those who have no connection to Lebanese
food, it's a blueprint for putting together a recipe collection that spans
several generations.
As Sawaya explains in her book, "in
the late 1800s when my grandmother, Dalal Hage Ganamey, whom we always
called Sitto, was sent as a child to the convent school in her Lebanese
mountain village of Douma, she was taken not into the classroom, but into
the kitchen to cook. As a result, she didn't learn to read or write–instead,
she became an incredible cook."
...Sawaya recalls her southern California
upbringing, the youngest of Alice and Elias Sawaya's five daughters. Linda
Sawaya's reminiscences of cooking with her mother and of her grandmother
make the book both personal and homey. Because of the anecdotes, the book
is a tribute to the centuries-old tradition of mothers handing down a
love of cooking to their daughters, rather than simply a chronicling of
recipes.
Sawaya has lived in Portland for 20 years.
In addition to her graphic arts work, she paints and has illustrated two
children's books--the bilingual "The Little Ant/La Hormiga Chiquita"
and "How to Get Famous in Brooklyn."
Sawaya started the core of what developed
into the cookbook about the same time she settled here, transferring family
recipes from scraps of paper onto index cards, and eventually onto computer.
Recipe testing required multiple calls
home to mother Alice, interspersed with personal visits, plus transcribing
the family's oral history onto paper. Old and newer family photographs
are sandwiched among the recipes, giving added dimension.
The author includes recipes not found in
many other Lebanese cookbooks--such as for curing olives, pickling vegetables
and making quince jam--in addition to the ones cooks have come to expect,
such as for hommous, tabbouli, kibbe and baklawa.
Her basic bread dough, which can be made
into pocket bread, is "also nice substitute for pizza," Sawaya
explains, particularly when converted to tilme b'kishk---small
circles of bread topped with a mixture of olive oil, onion, tomato, and
bulgar kishk--or tilme b'zaatar--bread topped with an olive
oil, sesame seed and zaatar seasoning mix.
Juggling making two of these "pizza"
varieties and an omelet (ijhee) at the same time in her tiny kitchen,
Sawaya says, "I cook like I paint, I always have too much stuff out."
The omelet makes a great breakfast, lunch, or dinner---warm, at room temperature
or cold, Sawaya notes. And because it's heavy on minced parsley, mint,
onion, and zucchini but light on the eggs, it's also a healthy dish.
© The Oregonian 1998
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Al
Jadid, a Review & Record of Arab
Culture and Arts, Vol. 4 No. 25 (Fall 1998) review of ALICE'S
KITCHEN, 3rd ed.
• ART OF THE COOKBOOK
by Judith Gabriel
This earthy, almost fragrant book is “self-published” in
the same way that homemade bread is a “self-rising” mound
of leavened flour. When you smell it baking, you can only be grateful
someone did the kneading. (And the writing.) And then hope they give you
a slice while it’s still hot. Especially if it’s khoobz marouq
. . .
Linda Dalal Sawaya . . . is also a writer, and the pages of this very
special cookbook contain not only recipes, but evocative descriptions
of how her grandmother, Dalal, prepared the traditional dishes back in
her Lebanese mountain village, and how her mother, Alice, followed the
time-tested formulas in her American kitchen, making adjustments that
Sawaya passes on . . . a highly useful reference . . . A truly literary
picture emerges of such commonplace dishes as Lebanese pickles and kibbeh,
which one would expect to find in such a setting. What makes the entries
stand out is the context of descriptive nostalgia and culinary refinement
that frames them.
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WHAT ALICE'S
KITCHEN READERS SAY
• “I have never wept over a cookbook before, but I found
myself tearing up reading Alice’s Kitchen. I was holding love and
family in my hands . . . ‘Shukrun ktir’ for a lovely, lovely
book.”
-Barbara Bedway, Hudson, New York (1998)
• “Your stories about Douma and Lebanon are so interesting
to me and I never tire of hearing them.”
-Philip Simon, Los Angeles (1998)
• “Your artwork and recipes are superb efforts as well as
the memories of your family life and the gems of cooking . . . I have
tried two of the recipes already and they turned out delicious.”
-Frank Sumarah, Halifax, Canada (1998)
• “Alice’s Kitchen is a real treasure! . . . I absolutely
love it and will cherish it forever. Linda, thank you for doing this for
all of us out here—your mother and your grandmother: the best cooks
ever!!”
-Barbara Connor, Ventura, California (1998)
• “The cookbook is an absolute gem—I love the new edition.
You’re wonderful to endow us with such lush history and tradition.”
-Joan Shipley, Portland, Oregon (1998)
• “It’s a rainy day here and your almond crescent moons
are in the oven baking. Your family reaffirmed what we’ve always
known, but forget. Time for family, food prepared with love, these things
are our treasures.”
-Donna Stewman, Ben Lomond, California (1999)
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• Santa Cruz Sentinel article, March 1998