Any other time that would be a hard one. But this time around it's a no-brainer: Where Flavor Was Born, by Andreas Viestad.
I don't remember if I've talked it up much over here. I know I did at the other site, before we all left. Technically published in 2007, it didn't come out until December. Far as I'm concerned that makes it one of this year's books.
It's part travelogue, part culinary history, part introduction to the cuisines of the Indian Ocean, part a primer on spices and their role in world events. All written by a chef and cookbook writer who brings the style and panache of a novelist to his passion for the region and its food.
Here, for instance, in one of my favorite passages, he's describing Stone Town, in Zanzibar:
"And it is all about secrets and semi-secrets, about what is hidden and what lies in the open, about lies that serve noble causes and truths that can hurt. There are rumors and gossip, more so than other places, one should think.... In the space between truths and lies, between what is public and what is secret, everything happens."
That quality writing is not unusual in the book. And the recipes are something else again. I've tried more than half a dozen of them, so far, and haven't had a bad one yet.
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