Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Food writer and photographer Massaad has compiled more than 30 soup recipes in an effort to help Syrian refugees. All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to nonprofits for food relief through the United Nation's UNHCR. Beginning with basic stocks-beef, chicken, vegetable and corn-the collection moves on to noteworthy U.S. contributors' selections, such as Anthony Bourdain's soupe au pistou, Alice Water's carrot soup, Paula Wolfert's lentil and Swiss chard soup, and Mark Bittman's Korean-style beef or pork soup with rice. Recipes hail from around the globe, showcasing international flavors including the meal-worthy Turkish black-eyed pea soup with lamb and noodles, South American pumpkin soup, Indian lentil soup, and Greek chickpea soup with lemon and rosemary. Photography-particularly portraits, including many of children-plays a central role in the book, showcasing refugees in Lebanon, and quotes give statistics, sentiments, and important information about this exemplary project and the refugees' dire need for food relief. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Lebanese food writer and photographer Massaad, a proponent of the slow food movement, spent the winter of 2014/15 visiting a refugee camp for displaced Syrians in Lebanon, bringing a car full of food each time. The plight of the refugees, and the world's failure to help them, led the author to create this book of recipes by an international gathering of chefs and cookbook authors (Anthony Bourdain, Yotam Ottolenghi, Paula Wolfert, and others), with all profits going to various organizations' food relief efforts. Though the recipes are by internationally known chefs, there are arrangements for hearty, down-to-earth soups (mostly hot, some chilled) that will be wonderful for home tables. Leek and potato, lentil and Swiss chard, and split pea soup are some of the entries that will be most familiar to American cooks, but the book also pays homage to the refugees' region of the world, offering, for example, instructions for Middle Eastern meatball soup with vegetables, Moroccan lentil and chickpea soup with cumin-fried whitebait, and chicken soup with freekeh. Dishes from other areas of the globe make appearances, too. Accompanying the recipes are dozens of photos, and most importantly, of the people who inspired the book: full-page and -spread images of Syrian children and adults complement the text and make this title stand out from other soup recipe sources. -VERDICT Worth the purchase for the recipes alone, but with the profits going to such an important cause, this is a must-have.-Henrietta Verma, Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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