Anissa Helou • Lebanon: Cooking the Foods of My Homeland

Anissa Helou is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster who was born and raised in Beirut. She has published eight books, including Lebanese Cuisine, Mediterranean Street Food, and Feast, which won a James Beard Award and was chosen by the New Yorker as one of the ten best cookbooks of the twenty-first century. Helou has contributed to publications including Gourmet, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. She lives in London, where she has her own cooking school.

Sara Deseran is an editor-at-large at The Standard. Previously, Sara was an editor at San Francisco Magazine and 7×7, and her writing has been featured in Bon Appétit, Eater, Food & Wine and Saveur and selected for multiple Best Food Writing anthologies. She is the author of a handful of cookbooks. She loves a good dinner party and dancing, in combination or separately.

Lebanon- Though she has lived all over the world, Anissa Helou has her heart firmly in one place: Lebanon, her late mother’s home country and the place she grew up. In her ninth book, Helou shares the beauty and diversity of the country’s regional cuisines, along with a deep look at its culinary history and culture.

Lebanon boasts an astounding variety in its cuisine, including classics like hommos or kibbeh, as well as lesser-known regional specialties. Spanning a breadth of dishes from flat breads and savory pastries, soups, dips, and salads to stuffed vegetables, fish, poultry, and grains, Lebanon represents Helou’s unique perspective on the most essential—and delightful—dishes from her homeland. Meatballs in lemony sauce, fava beans and lamb in yogurt, lentil risotto, and baked fish with Tripolitan tahini cilantro sauce are just a few of her chosen favorites among 165 recipes, along with delectable sweets, including sweet walnut triangles, aniseed fritters, semolina cream pastries, and tahini rice pudding.

Lebanon is animated by Helou’s warm and conversational voice, punctuated by her family stories as well as her reflections and encounters as she treks through Lebanon to discover—and rediscover—her home country’s rich and varied culinary traditions.