THE RURAL TASTE OF LEBANON, FOREWORD OF THE BOOK - French

Book dimension 21x25 cm - 224 pages - Printed in septembre 2009
Author: Chérine YAZBECK - Photographer: Randa MIRZA - Illustrations: Hoda ADRA
Design: Chantal YAZBECK COROLLER - Food stylist: Chérine YAZBECK
Published by the author >>Table of contents<<

The story of this book begins in July 2008. There was an unforseen encounter with women in Hermel. Gathered around a cauldron, they cast a handful of cereals and vegetables, infusing the air with tempting odors, those of little-known recipes. Under the same appellation are a thousand recipes, savors and aromas.

I wanted to write a cookbook with authentic recipes collected from rural people; a book that revolves around the genuine Lebanese taste in its complexity and diversity; a comprehensive paperback with daring, unexpected visuals that reveals a hidden Lebanon; a book that provides different procedures for the same dish - a gastronomic road-movie.

From the eco-conscious farmer to well-kept secrets from our forefathers, I met numerous individuals that helped me unveil our culinary traditions. Their recipes draw together cultures, lifestyles, family secrets and fragments of life. In the course of the journey, bits of stories from compelling and peculiar lives are woven together.

I considered it necessary to impart at my turn rural cooking techniques. We cooked in courtyards, in the kitchen, around the tannour or the saj. I wanted to record our food heritage, the plants, and growing methods cooked dishes summarizing the history of a country. Lack of resources stimulates creativity and urges us to cook with what lies in our immediate surroundings, something that resonates in me today. Our modern ways of consumption strangle us and damage our earth. It is time to go back to our roots by embracing earthy food, simmer a quality dish that tastes in perfect harmony with nature. Most of the recipes in this book are simple. It is a matter of feeling and executing the right techniques. Vegetables, cereals, breads, wine or cheese, I wanted to document and share the wealth of the Lebanese terroir.

In doing so, I delved into the research of information on plants that should be quite useful, supposing you wanted to add them to your own dishes according to their nutritional and medicinal values, in case you wished, let’s say to remedy a cold, or other ailments in the body. In the crossings of roads, these recipes cross the cities and villages to reach the coast.

My historic research of Lebanese gastronomy has been complicated by a lack of manuscripts. Because of this, I decided to focus on our forefathers, towards the mountains where the road opened beneath our feet. The earth, the terroir, the hand of the man with delicate balance, the tanned skins that speak of hard labor, fields, nature, plants and vegetables.

Also unique was the eye of Randa Mirza, the photographer who accompanied me on this culinary journey. Her astute observation, sensitive to the poetry, willfully opened herself to these cooking moments. She lyrically draws the stages of this adventure rich in feelings. In 2006, she won the Photography Prize ‘No Limit Award’ at Les Rencontres photographiques d’Arles.
Hoda Adra illustrates with subtlety and sharpness, fragments of life of real people as well as the different details of rural life.

Following the thread of this book will reveal discussions, moments of exchanges retracing habits and customs, disclosing here and there small secrets of the vast wealth of the soil, the edible plants, the bread-making and the conversational style according to regions and times. We could speak of a rural community continuing to live according to a certain ancestral inheritance, but it seems better to speak about a family of spirit, a shared ‘terroir’ in hommage to those who will never sacrifice a papilla of quality for the glitter of profitability. Whether they live in the hub of the city or in distant mountains, all these wonderful people share the love of taste.

I like to call it: A Communal Emotional Terroir.

CHÉRINE YAZBECK - Beirut 2009

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