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Sweet, Savory, Spicy, and Sour: Sharing Lebanese Culture through Food
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Award-winning food blogger, recipe developer, and winner of Netflix’s Crazy Delicious, Samira Kazan has crafted a vibrant, authentic Lebanese cookbook with mouthwatering photography throughout. Each recipe is thoughtfully presented with step-by-step images moving from ingredients to the finished dish. Packed with amazing tips and best practices, it’s like a mini cooking class on each page! Here, Samira Kazan shares about her food journey and what inspired her to share her food and culture.
Hello!
I am Samira, better known as Alphafoodie. You might have seen my website or followed me on social media, and you might know that I love sharing rainbow, made-from-scratch recipes. But do you know why I love cooking so much?
My food journey began when I was little. Even at a very young age, my sisters and I were helping our mom in the kitchen! I was always in awe observing her selecting herbs, prepping ingredients, and tasting dishes. She used to explain to us how to select the best ingredients and how to use them. She also taught us about the traditional ways of preserving our food like fermenting and making jams. Her knowledge and the love she poured into the food she made for her family inspired me to dip my toes into the world of cooking. I grew up in Lebanon where sharing food is embedded in our culture. This meant that I was used to spending daily quality time with the whole family gathered at the table, enjoying what mom had prepared.
This all changed when I started travelling and living away from home. That was the time when I drastically improved my cooking skills (and maybe my social skills, too!). I remember calling my mom all the time to ask her about what had gone wrong with the recipe I made. I was missing the Lebanese flavors and I needed to know how to best recreate them. I started taking notes of all her tips and best practices and I started researching the authentic ways to make my favorite traditional recipes. And this is when I really fell in love with cooking – I kept making these recipes over and over again, sometimes failing to achieve the result from my memories, but never giving up. The more successful my tries were, the more I wanted to share what I had prepared. So, I turned to my friends and my social circle, and I started sharing with them my Lebanese cooking. The more I traveled, the more new friends I made, and the more I kept learning about food, the more I fell in love with cooking. And since I love cooking all sorts of dishes, I experimented with dishes from around the world – sweet, savory, spicy, and sour! And I also started sharing them on my blog.
The more I read about food and cooking, the more I was inspired to create something special with my heritage. As a culmination of all my experience with Lebanese food and traveling throughout the country consulting with top chefs and elders, I am happy that I could put together this collection of the most popular authentic, fresh and flavorful Lebanese dishes. I hope you get to enjoy them as much as I do!