aleppo: 2 posts

Top 15 Cookbooks for Fall : From Venice to Sri Lanka

If like me, you haven’t accepted the end of summer and would like to carry a sunny note through fall, there are several means to achieve it. For instance, scents can help but so can flavors. One of the reasons I love cooking is that it allows me to blend two of my passions–and savor the results. This fall, cooking is even more exciting because 2017 has been a year with many excellent cookbook releases. I had difficulty picking just a couple, so I decided to show you my favorite 15 books, from which I’ve cooked already and which I recommend wholeheartedly. They will satisfy your hunger as well as your wanderlust.

Europe

Veneto: Recipes from an Italian Country Kitchen by Valeria Necchio

Venice is on the well-trodden tourist trail, but its food and that of its region isn’t. This is a shame, because Venetian dishes blend a full spectrum of flavors and ingredients like polenta, pine nuts, rosemary, raisins, shellfish, white wine, and saffron. Veneto is Valeria Necchio’s debut cookbook, and it’s exquisite. I don’t mean the photographs and styling, beautiful though they are. The recipes are the only thing I’m interested in. For a taste of real Venetian cooking, I suggest trying fried marinated pumpkin with onion, pine nuts and raisins, prawn and Prosecco risotto, stir-fried beans with basil and garlic, and ricotta pudding cake.

Continue reading →

Damask Roses and Roses of Damascus

Occasionally I come across articles mentioning “roses from Syria” as “a precious” ingredient in perfumes. One of the pieces even appeared in a newspaper that runs daily reports on the war in Syria. But real world events don’t enter into the fantasy bubble of beauty writing, with absurd and morbid results.  We’re conditioned to think of perfume as something so rarefied and intangible that for all we know angels pick the flowers and blend essences in their celestial realms. The thought that a country, which has been at war for five years, might have difficulty growing roses doesn’t cloud the writers’ imaginations.

rosa-damascena

Until the war, which started in 2011, Syria produced 80 tonnes of roses, some of which were distilled on site and some exported to be processed in Europe. Syria wasn’t as large a producer as Turkey, Bulgaria or Morocco, but its roses had a delicious raspberry nuance. The last commercial sample I was able to get in 2011 still smells of sun warmed fruit and spicy honey. Damascus and the other rose growing provinces have suffered tremendously during the war, especially the area held by the revolutionary army and targeted in the heavy bombing campaigns by the Syrian regime.  People have fled from the fighting, leaving plantation owners with few work hands and resources. As a one-time distiller told a reporter of The Express Tribune, “Today there are barely 250 grams (half a pound) of oil available to buy in the whole market.” What are the chances that it makes its way into a perfume produced by a luxury brand?

Continue reading →

From the Archives

Latest Comments

  • Notturno7 in Recommend Me a Perfume : November 2023: Hi Amy, you might like Private Collection by Estée Lauder. I enjoy it and it’s a lovely chypre. Victoria gave it a 5 star review. I found a bottle of… November 30, 2023 at 6:30am

  • Tamasin in Recommend Me a Perfume : November 2023: I was given a 2mls sample of Arabesque by Ormonde Jayne a few weeks ago when I bought a candle. I actively disliked the perfume when I first tried it… November 30, 2023 at 4:00am

  • Nikos in Recommend Me a Perfume : November 2023: I second Alityke’s list. I would also add Halston’s classic. Again a Bernard Chant creation and wears amazingly on a guy. November 30, 2023 at 1:48am

  • Aurora in Recommend Me a Perfume : November 2023: Hello Gisele, we don’t have Sonoma Scent Studio where I am (UK), as it is described as a vanilla musk, you might look for some of the Al Haramain oils,… November 29, 2023 at 2:37pm

Latest Tweets

Design by cre8d
© Copyright 2005-2023 Bois de Jasmin. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy