Want some culture along with your recipes? How about some great photos and inadvertent travel tips? In what is possibly the coolest collection of recipes I’ve ever seen, Andreas Viestad manages to supply all of the above. His lush cookbook is based on the cuisines along the the fabled spice routes: he begins in South Africa, travels north to Tanzania and Ethiopia, curves over to Oman and Pakistan, moves through India into Southeast Asia, and finishes in Australia. (There are far too many stops along the way to mention them all.) Each chapter highlights a specific spice — turmeric here, vanilla there — and illustrates the way that particular spice has influenced the cuisines of a wide swath of regions. Seeing as I’m a huge fan of spices and culinary anthropology, I’d have to say that this is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. What a great way to taste some history!
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