Traditional Iraqi Cuisine - Original Recipes from Migrant Women: Food From Around The World

By D'Arcy McGinniss

Learn how to cook traditional Iraqi dishes the way they have been handed down from mothers to daughters over hundreds of years. This easy-to-use cookbook includes recipes for popular dishes, including:

• Chicken Biryani
• Kabuli Rice (Lamb Rice with Pistachios)
• Shorbat (Green Dumpling Soup)
• Faisinjan (Chicken in Pomegranate Sauce)
• Shahkam Asheh (Rice Stuffed Vegetables)
• Masgouf (Baked Whole Fish)
• Mujaddara (Lentils with Rice)
• Zard  w'Haleeb (Yellow Rice Pudding with Raisins and Pistachios)
• Bas Bous Goz (Semolina Pudding with Coconut)
• Ad-Kelaijah (Date and Walnut Biscuits)
• Baklava…and many more

Traditional Iraqi Cuisine is part of the series 'Food from Around the World', which has been developed in cooperation with migrant women who have shared their recipes and stories as a way of bringing joy to their families and reconnecting with their traditional homelands.

 

In this rich offering, we also learn how Iraqi cuisine is a fusion of foods of the Middle Eastern region, with an ancient history that has developed over thousands of years. It is a place where the desert foods of bread, milk and dates, with occasional meat combined with the agricultural regions of Iraq where cucumber, leeks, chicory, onions, garlic, palm hearts, lemons and pomegranate were farmed in this land of loamy soil and sunny climate.

 

If you are looking for the real taste of Iraq, this book is a must-have for your kitchen collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D'Arcy McGinniss
• Release date: Jan 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393362708

D'Arcy McGinniss

D’Arcy McGinniss has a long association with food as a writer, teacher and columnist. Currently living in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, D'Arcy has spent many years abroad in Ireland, Indonesia and the United Kingdom where her passion for food has provided many opportunities to work in the industry. Her latest project has been her involvement with recently arrived refugees and asylum seekers. She established a women’s group with a large kitchen as its focus where women from diverse backgrounds gather and share their recipes.

Book preview

Introduction

Iraqi cuisine is a fusion of foods of the Middle Eastern region, with an ancient history that has developed over thousands of years. The desert foods of bread, milk and dates, with occasional meat has combined with the agricultural regions of Iraq where cucumber, leeks, chicory, onions, garlic, palm hearts and lemons are just some of the fruits and vegetables being farmed in this land of loamy soil and sunny climate.

Pomegranates are another fruit used in many dishes and in Middle Eastern legend and they are linked with fertility and to marriage. In times past, Arab brides would crush a pomegranate in their bridal tent in order to bestow blessings of fertility. So significant is the pomegranate, considered by many to be sacred, that some scholars believe them to be the original forbidden fruit.

The traditions of this extensive range of produce and the spreading of Islam meant the growth of a vibrant food culture fifteen hundred years ago. Baghdad was at the centre of cultural and political power as Islam spread across North Africa, Spain, parts of southern Italy, Arabia, Syria, Armenia, Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan.

A ‘golden age’ of Islamic cuisine emerged from the ninth century, and stories abound of sumptuous feasts of foods quite beyond imagination. Cooking became an art form. The rich and famous were on a constant search for the latest sensation with which to impress their rivals. Culinary literature was considered the height of sophistication, with the cultural elite dabbling in poetry and song about the pleasures of the table.

Subtle combinations of foods were prized, and Caliphs commissioned people to invent dishes and events. The caliphs’ banquets in Baghdad were famous beyond Iraq for their display and scale of choice. The preparation of the food and the lavish garnishes are the stuff of legend.

For many of the elite the aspiration to the status of connoisseur was their life’s ambition. The prosperity of the age meant that the acquisition of new foods from distant corners of the empire was not only possible but desirable. Prestige