Saha: A Chef’s Journey through Lebanon and Syria by Greg and Lucy Malouf ****
caroline hennessy, blog, food, cooking, baking, cookery, food, new zealand, kiwi, ireland, Irish, cookbooks, Christchurch, dublin, Saha: A Chef’s Journey through Lebanon and Syria by Greg and Lucy Malouf, Savour New Zealand, Australian chef Greg Malouf, Green Beans Slow-Cooked with Cumin and Tomatoes; Grilled Tiger Prawn Shish Kebabs with Spicy Cracked Wheat Salad and Tomato Dressing; Crunchy Sesame-Pistachio Biscuits, Roman remains at Baalbeck and Palmyra, the legendary desert kingdom of Queen Zenobia, photographer Matt Harvey, Mezze Dips and Meat Mezze to Sweet Treats and Beverages, desert truffles, mastic, barberries, Greg’s yoghurt recipe, Israeli invasion, Moorish by Greg and Lucy Malouf
There’s no nonsense about Judith Tabron. Starting in the restaurant industry as a 16-year-old apprentice, she worked her way up to become the co-owner of 
It’s the colour that catches your eye first. The bold pink and red cover of Tessa Kiros’ Apples for Jam is immediately distinctive, particularly with that eye-catching photo of a pair of red, well-worn children’s shoes. And colour is hugely important in this book as Tessa and her colour-coded recipes explore the spectrum of childhood through chapters labelled gold and monochrome, pink, yellow and red.
This is the perfect book for any foodie who’s ever spent hours puzzling over unfamiliar ingredients in their local delicatessen or ethnic food shop. Glynn Christian, originally from New Zealand, has been a food writer and broadcaster in England for many years, and as a result, has a rare international perspective. His breadth of experience also includes setting up the legendary 
Cookbook sections in secondhand bookshops can be a little hit or miss. There’s always a pile of microwave cookbooks – no one, for some reason wants to hang onto these dodgy and dated texts – a scattering of horrible diet books and often lots of ancient Family Circle publications, with their “triple-tested in the test kitchens” claim, but, rarely something that you actually want to cook from, let alone buy. Still, I live in hope, so a recent trip to Athlone had to include a browse in the local secondhand bookshop (I still haven’t discovered its name) which turned out to be a most amazing example of its kind.
In London there is a wonderful shop called 
One of the big advantages of being settled back in Dublin, with book shelves once again, is having all my old cookbooks to pore over and rediscover. Although I did manage to build up a fair collection in New Zealand, it couldn’t really compare to my beloved older stacks of books by 
As charity cookbooks go, Real Food for Real People is a real gem. The book is part of a fundraising drive for Moneystown National School’s building fund and was produced and published by the Parents’ Committee in this County Wicklow village. But, even though Real Food for Real People was evidentially done on a shoestring, the design quality still shines out. Illustrated mainly with children’s drawings and photos, and scattered with quotations from, amongst others, Shakespeare and Lenin, it is a simple and well laid-out book.