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Episode 370: Sharing Lebanese Baking with Maureen Abood · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  You are listening to the Cookbook Love podcast with Maggie
• 0:05
  Green, episode number three 70.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 0:14
  A podcast that celebrates cookbook readers, buyers,
• 0:16
  collectors, writers and clubs.
• 0:19
  And now your host cookbook author, culinary dietician, and cookbook
• 0:23
  writing coach, Maggie Green.
• 0:31
  Hi everybody.
• 0:32
  Welcome back to another episode of The Cookbook Lift podcast.
• 0:35
  Tells everybody doing today.
• 0:37
  I am doing well, enjoying a beautiful Thursday morning here in my world.
• 0:44
  Before I start a 12 o'clock call for my cookbooks on KDP program.
• 0:50
  We are rolling along and today getting ready to start working on
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  our low content books and cookbooks.
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  On KDP is the program where I teach.
• 1:00
  People how to publish their recipes and stories in a book on Amazon.
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  So I'm very excited for that.
• 1:07
  I returned from the supermarket, another one of my favorite activities, and
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  thoroughly enjoy as always, getting out, seeing people, getting a cup of coffee,
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  shopping for my groceries, unloading the car, putting them away, and knowing
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  that my pantry and refrigerator are stocked for meals for the next week.
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  We returned from Chicago, had a beautiful weekend up in Chicago with
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  our sons, and our daughter went with us.
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  So we had a great time together and looking forward this week
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  to go to a friend's wedding, a friend's son's wedding.
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  So, uh, October is a busy time, as always here in Kentucky.
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  And I'm just grateful to be here talking to you today about a couple of things.
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  First of all, um, I have an interview with Maureen Abood and
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  I'll introduce that here in a minute.
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  But before I start my interview with Maureen, I wanna tell you all about
• 2:05
  something very exciting that's going on.
• 2:08
  And if you are a food, nutrition or a culinary professional, I want you
• 2:14
  to listen up because I think that adding a cookbook to your repertoire,
• 2:22
  to your assets, to your business, maybe it's something you've dreamed
• 2:27
  of doing, is a beautiful thing to do as a food culinary or nutrition pro.
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  I want you to imagine what it might be like to share your unique perspective
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  in, of traditionally published cookbook.
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  And because of that, I'm thrilled to announce that the registration
• 2:47
  is open for a brand new.
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  Training just for you called Publish Your Cookbook.
• 2:56
  This training is an opportunity for you to turn your food, nutrition, or culinary
• 3:03
  expertise into a published masterpiece.
• 3:08
  In this class, I'm going to talk all about traditional publishing.
• 3:15
  This is the process where we turn our expertise into a cookbook proposal
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  and we pitch it to a publisher and we become a paid cookbook writer
• 3:29
  before our cookbooks are published.
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  I'm gonna walk you step by step through what it takes for
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  you to do something like that.
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  And the steps that I teach inside my program get paid to get published.
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  So if you are interested in learning all about this process, I'm going
• 3:51
  to be offering this masterclass to Food and Culinary Professionals.
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  You can head to publish cookbooks.com and register for the masterclass.
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  You'll receive emails all about the details, how it's going to unfold,
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  but this is an opportunity for you to take some time to learn about the
• 4:14
  process and for us to spend some time together, specifically talking about
• 4:19
  this process in a way that helps you see that what you have to offer to a
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  traditional publisher is in high demand.
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  They love working with people like us.
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  So again, head to publish cookbooks.com.
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  You can register for the masterclass, and I can't wait to see you there.
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  All right.
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  Today on the show I have an interview with Maureen Abood.
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  Maureen is the author of the beautiful new book called Lebanese Baking, and
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  she is on a mission to help the world's Lebanese food loving community, cook,
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  bake, eat, and share Lebanese recipes.
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  Her first book, rosewater and Orange Blossoms was a Michigan notable book
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  as well as an IACP award finalist.
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  Her writing and recipes appear widely in the New York Times, the
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  Washington Post, sevo Magazine, food 52 and National Public Radio.
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  Maureen teaches Lebanese cooking throughout her popular website on her
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  social media channels, and she lives in Harbor Springs and East Lansing, Michigan.
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  Today on the show, we talk all about the beautiful book Lebanese Baking
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  about her journey from idea to book.
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  We talk all about the photography in the book, the concept of the book, the idea
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  that she mentions in this book quite frequently about sharing and how sharing
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  is an important part of Lebanese Baking.
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  We talked about how she makes homemade filo dough and why it was important
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  to include that in the book, as well as her recommendations for bakers
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  who are new to baking and who are new to Lebanese Baking in particular.
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  So without further delay, let's dive into this interview with Maureen Abood.
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  Hi Maureen.
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  Welcome to the Cookbook Love podcast.
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  Hi, Maggie.
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  So nice to be here.
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  Yes, excited to have you here too, to talk all about your beautiful
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  new book, Lebanese Baking.
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  But before we dive into the book, tell us a little bit about
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  who you are and what you do.
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  It's nice to be asked to introduce myself because, you know, in in casual
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  conversation, we only get like one thing that we get to say very quickly and there
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  are so many hats that someone like I wear.
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  Yeah.
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  So I am a food blogger and cookbook author and consider myself a
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  teacher, very much a teacher, a content creator, and a shop owner.
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  Yes.
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  All for my larger mission, all for my larger mission, which is to help the
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  world's Lebanese food loving community.
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  And there are many in that community.
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  Cook and remember and bake and enjoy Lebanese recipes.
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  Yes.
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  What about the shop that you own?
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  Tell us a little bit about that.
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  I launched my online shop.
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  It's online only with my first book, and it was born out of all of the questions
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  people would ask me all over the country about what products I'm using and where
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  do I get them and what do I recommend.
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  You can find xta and sumac a little bit more easily and even vulgar, um,
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  today than you could 10 years ago.
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  But still, I find a lot of appreciation for, uh, my, my spice line and all
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  of these ingredients and gifts.
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  We sell a lot of gifts for, for what you need to cook and bake
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  Lebanese, and also just to enjoy, like, for example, I, I offer, um.
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  Baked pastry.
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  I don't actually wanna get into that because I don't make it, but,
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  um, we do sell a lot of gifts.
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  Yes.
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  Yes.
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  And your first book, uh, rosewater and Orange Blossoms is the book that
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  you're referring to, and that was an IACP finalist and also a baking book.
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  Correct.
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  It does have baking in the book, but it's not a straight baking book.
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  It sounds like it with that title, doesn't it?
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  But it is a book with all of the favorite traditional Lebanese recipes
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  in it, from stuffed vegetables to rolled grape leaves, humus, all of it.
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  Yeah.
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  So more than, and this new book, which has just come out, uh, Lebanese Baking,
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  tell us a little bit about, uh, this book and where you came up with the idea
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  to actually create a hundred recipes for sweet and savory baked goods.
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  Um, all about Lebanese baking.
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  The book has been on my mind for a long, long time, and I am a baker of course.
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  So I love to bake and I always focus on those recipes probably first.
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  It's like in the dressing room, you try on the clothes that you
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  brought in that you love most first.
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  So I am always wanting to develop recipes for baking, and
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  I am huge cookbook collector.
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  Love to collect any and every Lebanese cookbook, of course as
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  well, including the community books.
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  So my shelf has been missing this book.
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  Oh, I wanted it all in one place for myself to be able to say,
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  okay, breads, I wanna see them all.
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  And I want to see and use recipes that today have been.
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  Streamlined, vetted, developed that I know will be successful and
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  that shine more light on how to do it than we have seen in the past.
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  It's interesting to me a lot of times with cookbook authors, how we write the
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  book that we wish we had on our own shelf.
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  Really true.
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  And from that, you have a real passion for what you're doing and you have
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  to have it because it's such a labor of love to create a book like this.
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  So I believe you have to have a passion, a love for it to really
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  get it done and get it done well.
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  Yeah.
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  And it sounds like the recipes that you have put in this book prior to this
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  were scattered among a lot of different resources and books that you had.
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  Yes.
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  The books, the.
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  Handwritten recipes that were in, you know, folders and different, different
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  files from all of the family and from just a lifetime of my mother and her
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  mother, and my aunts and my cousins.
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  And what a, what a thing to take all of this and say, okay, how can I
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  create a collection that will honor the traditions and suss out what those are?
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  Because I don't necessarily know all of them.
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  I'm a Lebanese American, and I, I, even, even people born in country, you know,
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  they don't necessarily know everything.
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  So I wanted to explore and make sure that I covered as much breadth and
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  depth as possible of these traditional recipes while also doing what I
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  also love to do, which is create inspired recipes with the ingredients.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So when we write a book like this and you're trying to, um, cover the
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  traditional recipes, Lebanese baking, usually there's an overarching like
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  message that we're trying to, uh, convey to people who are using our books.
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  So let's start with that.
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  For you and for this book, uh, what is it from your perspective in your kitchen
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  and collecting all these recipes and now publishing them, what do you want
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  to tell, uh, the bakers and cooks that should happen to interact with this book?
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  Please bake
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  and bake for good reasons.
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  The fun of it, the pleasure of it, the sensory experience of it,
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  the meditational aspect of it.
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  I believe that it brings good.
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  Into the baker's life, if the baker can relax and enter into the project.
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  However complex or simple it may be with a kind of light heart so
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  that, you know, we all have had experiences where what we make may
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  not turn out the way we wanted it to.
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  And I hope, you know, from the past that doesn't discourage
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  people from saying, I wanna try this, I wanna try Lebanese baking.
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  And then sharing that, sharing that, sharing how to make, bringing others into
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  the kitchen and sharing the actual baked goods with others really brings a lot.
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  To the baker.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So before we dive into like talking specifically about some of the things in
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  the book, would you be willing to give us an overview of Lebanese baking and kind
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  of give us a snapshot of what the baking looks like and the types of things that
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  people might expect to see in this book?
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  The book covers both sweet and savory baking.
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  So we have chapters on cookies and cakes very simply, but then also the B Lewa,
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  which is known also as baklava, but in a different style in the Lebanese style.
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  A chapter on that, a chapter on the Cannae, which is getting to be far
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  better known because of the viral Dubai chocolate bar trend, where
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  you have kafi, which is the basis of much of the cannae, the Kafe dough.
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  Is not, is, is more well known now, which is wonderful 'cause then you can dive into
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  this chapter and explore the traditional recipes that Kataifi is used for.
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  Then there are savory yeasted breads and sweet breads, as well as the fata.
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  The fata are little hand pies that have fillings in them and they're very
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  traditional, delicious, uh, treat, savory, treat in Lebanese cuisine.
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  The book also has a lot of roadmap.
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  So we start the book with how to use the book, and I wanted to include this.
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  Actually, it was something that came out of what was
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  being written for each chapter.
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  And we realized together with my editor, Hey, you know, this is, this
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  is very helpful upfront, so let's give everybody this content right away.
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  And one of the most important pieces in there, I think in addition to what
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  equipment is useful to have and um, ingredients that are useful to have,
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  but also how to approach a recipe.
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  And one of the ways we approach a recipe is to read through it first and take your
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  time rushing into something you want to make is okay as long as you, and we've
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  also included how long it takes to make things at the beginning of each recipe.
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  So you can say, okay, I can make this for, for dessert in two hours, but.
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  Reading through really, really helps on so many levels with pulling it together
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  and enjoying the experience even more.
• 16:39
  Yeah, and I would think in particular for perhaps a dessert or a baked
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  good that you've never made before.
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  Absolutely.
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  It, it just.
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  Unlocks so much to be able to visualize it, think it through, make sure you
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  have what you need, be more methodical.
• 16:56
  It's, it's just a really nice form of getting us to slow down for a minute
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  in our lives and just take a breath and say, this is gonna be, this is going
• 17:07
  to be a wonderful, creative process, not just, I'm gonna bang this out.
• 17:13
  Right, right, right.
• 17:14
  And also, I love the second recommendation to take notes.
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  It says, no matter how beautiful you think this or any cookbook is, we all
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  need permission to write in our books and to make notes about things such as
• 17:26
  the feta you used when you made things.
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  Um.
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  Perhaps the results of it, how it turned out, what you served it with.
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  Uh, I think it's fascinating what people are willing to do that going back
• 17:39
  and looking at cookbooks that someone in our family perhaps owned, or even
• 17:43
  a, maybe we bought a cookbook used.
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  Just seeing the types of notes that people actually write in their cookbooks.
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  It's precious.
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  It really is.
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  I cherish these, these handwritten recipes that I have and then the books that I
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  have where, where mom took notes or sit down, my grandmother took notes, and even,
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  even the splash on the page feels like a part of the note and it, it helps us.
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  It helps us understand the recipe better.
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  It helps us know people in our lives better, even if it's not someone you knew.
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  You can, you can learn something from this little note.
• 18:23
  And I, I'm the worst offender in the sense that I, I'm a, I hesitate to bring
• 18:29
  my pen to paper on a beautiful book, but once I get started, I recognize
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  that I am sharing something special with the people I love because I really
• 18:40
  hope that they, and I hope they're listening, that they will keep these
• 18:44
  books and use them long after I'm gone.
• 18:47
  Yeah.
• 18:48
  Yeah.
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  And I just had this experience over the weekend.
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  I was making, uh, cupcakes for a baby shower, and the, the batter for it was
• 18:56
  a cake that I was turning into cupcakes.
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  But the batter for the cake and the frosting for the cake, uh, the batter
• 19:04
  made more cupcakes than the frosting.
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  Frosted cupcakes, even though it worked in the cake form, it
• 19:10
  didn't work in the cupcake form.
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  So I made a note because I love making this cake as cupcakes, but next time I
• 19:15
  make it, I wanna remember that I might need to, you know, put another stick of
• 19:19
  butter and some more powdered sugar so I get enough frosting because there's
• 19:23
  nothing, uh, I was modifying it, but still writing the note, like right there.
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  So the next time I make that, or if you don't wanna write in your book, you
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  could use like a sticky note or something and stick it on that page so that you
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  can remember, uh, because experiencing recipes and this in particular recipes
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  that maybe we're not familiar with, um, it will if we have a good result, or
• 19:45
  even if we don't, but if we wanna try it again, those notes are essential.
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  So, so true.
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  The sticky note is fine too.
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  And I really love looking at what I've made before and remembering what I've
• 19:59
  made before and, and the note there helps me remember what I made Yeah.
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  Out of that book and, yeah.
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  You can, it's like a little bit of a journal.
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  Yeah, I agree.
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  I agree.
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  I think it, and um, it's, it's neat to see it.
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  You also have a note here to be kind to yourself.
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  Sometimes it takes two or three, three tries, a two a try or two
• 20:21
  to get the hang of a particular method, especially shaping.
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  Tell us what you mean about that in, in the context of, uh, Lebanese baking.
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  What do you mean by shaping Lebanese Baking and truly Lebanese food across
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  the board is so much about presentation and many, many of our dishes require
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  shaping, meaning rolling up a grape leaf roll or stuffing squash.
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  You have to hollow it out first.
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  Now you get into baking and you have so many shapes happening with cookies with.
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  Cakes even with the, the baklava, the bwa diamonds and nests and, and fingers.
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  And then with the Aya, you have shapes like several different
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  shapes in that chapter.
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  So this is all a wonderful creative opportunity.
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  A, a maker will love Lebanese baking because you have this opportunity
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  to, to put your hands to it and create a shape, a traditional
• 21:36
  shape or something you do yourself.
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  There are some areas where you can, you can, you can go rogue and create
• 21:45
  your own, your own design, for example, on, on the Moul cookies.
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  But we have molds as well for that.
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  But the shaping is special and one of the reasons that.
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  It's so wonderful is that the end result is beautiful, very,
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  very beautiful and appetizing.
• 22:08
  Rustic is also beautiful, and I, I'm a fan of Rustic, but what we're
• 22:13
  doing with many of these dishes, with many of these recipes is a
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  refinement, a beautiful refinement.
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  And so that's what I mean by shaping in the book.
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  And there is a lot to it.
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  And I truly went to the mats for creating recipes that will explain
• 22:37
  really, really well what I mean by the shape that you're trying to achieve.
• 22:42
  And provide visuals for that too.
• 22:45
  Yeah.
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  Did you learn shaping at the hands or the elbows of people in your family, or
• 22:50
  did you learn it from reading recipes?
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  Both, I would say both the shaping of the fat and the B lewa in particular.
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  Those are, those are things that my family has always made.
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  So I do have this lifetime of shaping them.
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  However, even my husband's mother, who is an incredible cook in Baker, would
• 23:18
  be sometimes not so happy with how her fat turned out, didn't necessarily have
• 23:23
  these tricks and tips that, that I have in the book that will get you there.
• 23:29
  And the, and with like the Syrian bread, the massage bread flatbread that we make,
• 23:36
  that's very specialized, very, very thin bread baked on a dome or in, in the oven.
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  This, this bread.
• 23:47
  I've been trying to master, it seems like forever my grandmother made it.
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  But what I did in the book was come up with a way that the home baker can make
• 23:59
  it without tossing this in the air.
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  It's kind of like a pizza style where you, you know, the old school is to
• 24:07
  toss the dough between your hands.
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  Thinner, thinner, larger, larger till you have this beautiful,
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  large round, flat piece of dough.
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  And not everyone's going to give these 10,000 hours to trying to
• 24:24
  do it exactly the way Cito did it.
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  And I think that's just fine.
• 24:29
  I want us all to be able to make and enjoy it.
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  So get your rolling pin, get your other tools out, and you can make this too.
• 24:38
  You have, and that particular recipe, there's a page with,
• 24:41
  uh, nine, uh, processed shots.
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  So you really do try to explain it.
• 24:46
  There's a sweet picture of, uh, cito your grandmother with her
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  bread, like she's leaning on the counter and it's at her elbow.
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  These, a stack of this bread on baking day.
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  She couldn't be cuter.
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  She couldn't cuter.
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  It's, it's, and so she had a certain day of the week that she would bake the bread.
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  She would come over and go down in our basement where we had a second oven.
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  She didn't have the massage, which is the dome oven with a gas flame under it.
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  She didn't have that.
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  She had a baking steel in the base of the oven that she worked with, and she would
• 25:27
  come and bake all day with my mother.
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  This and a whole array of things.
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  By the end of the day, we would have all over the table, all
• 25:39
  these wonderful, amazing delights.
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  She also did it in her own little kitchen at home, and she lived in an apartment not
• 25:49
  far from us, and I used to go over there and thank God I woke up and realized at
• 25:57
  a point when I was studying literature at Michigan State that I had a wonderful
• 26:03
  opportunity to go be with Cito and learn.
• 26:06
  Learn how she was making this breath.
• 26:08
  Yeah.
• 26:08
  Yeah.
• 26:08
  I think sometimes, unfortunately we realize these things too late.
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  Um, right.
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  And what a gift to be able to live so close to her and to be able to, because
• 26:18
  that's the difference of, um, reading.
• 26:21
  Your detailed processes and the way you talk about shaping things in this book.
• 26:26
  And the photos certainly help, but there is nothing like the actual
• 26:30
  standing with someone in the kitchen and watching their hands at work.
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  And, uh, it's just like magic.
• 26:36
  Yes.
• 26:37
  It's magic.
• 26:38
  It's so fun.
• 26:40
  And you see things that could never be explained in words.
• 26:44
  Yeah.
• 26:44
  And honestly, until I did this, I don't believe it has been
• 26:50
  explained in words like this.
• 26:51
  Yeah.
• 26:52
  Anywhere.
• 26:53
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  The bread is present in many, many books, but the, the explanation of getting
• 26:59
  so granular about what you are doing with that dough when you're trying to
• 27:04
  throw the dough, um, that was, that was fun and took a lot of empathy, I
• 27:12
  would say, about what is a baker doing?
• 27:17
  How can I think through what they're trying to experience here?
• 27:21
  Yeah, because from what I understand, this detailed process instruction that
• 27:25
  you provide, uh, this is the first time in English language, uh, baking
• 27:30
  book or cookbook like this of its kind, has been written of this kind.
• 27:35
  And, and there really are some wonderful books with savory baking
• 27:40
  and wonderful inspirational books that I have looked up to, but that
• 27:45
  compiles all of this in one place with the Lebanese sweet and savory and the
• 27:50
  cookies and the cakes and the breads.
• 27:53
  That's new.
• 27:54
  Yeah.
• 27:54
  That's amazing.
• 27:55
  Yeah.
• 27:55
  You should be so, uh, proud.
• 27:56
  And I think there's another thing in the book that is another s word that is talked
• 28:01
  a lot about and I'd like you to explain that also is the concept of sharing.
• 28:06
  Uh, it's mentioned quite frequently in the book.
• 28:08
  What's the significance of sharing in Lebanese baking Lebanese culture?
• 28:16
  Is so much about hospitality and welcome, it's ingrained.
• 28:22
  It's part of the fabric of who we are, and I see this baking as a very key part of
• 28:34
  that story because we bake out of love.
• 28:41
  It's a way of expressing what we do.
• 28:43
  I'm certainly not the first person to say this about food is love.
• 28:47
  Cooking is love.
• 28:48
  Baking is love.
• 28:49
  It can be, and we want it to be because it's, it's a way of taking our warmth
• 28:56
  and welcome to another level, a sensory level, and a level that particularly as,
• 29:04
  as people get more and more mature in their lifetime, they come to be able to.
• 29:11
  Be cognizant and appreciative on another level of what it is
• 29:15
  someone has just done for them.
• 29:17
  Yeah.
• 29:17
  When, when they bake for them.
• 29:19
  Yeah.
• 29:20
  So sharing from the baker to her people mm-hmm.
• 29:25
  Is, is essential.
• 29:27
  It's, it's, and I sure experienced it writing the book because there were
• 29:33
  so many baked goods on the counter every single day, you know, and
• 29:40
  I, I, I loved sharing all of that.
• 29:44
  Even the failures were gobbled up and enjoyed by a lot of people.
• 29:50
  Yeah.
• 29:50
  Baking always mainly rooted in the home, or were there bakeries also that provided
• 29:57
  other baked goods or the same baked goods?
• 30:00
  Bakeries absolutely essential.
• 30:03
  And many people, uh, don't necessarily make.
• 30:07
  The baked goods at home, they go and buy them just down the way in Lebanon.
• 30:13
  And here in Michigan, we have the highest number of Arab
• 30:18
  Americans in the country for sure.
• 30:21
  And that's in the Dearborn area.
• 30:24
  Our, our opportunities for eating delicious food from bakeries and
• 30:32
  restaurants, uh, Lebanese food and Middle Eastern food is huge here.
• 30:37
  And that's a treat.
• 30:38
  That's a pleasure.
• 30:39
  You know what, what they were doing in Lebanon, it was so interesting taking
• 30:45
  their own fillings to the communal bakery and then having the communal bakery there.
• 30:52
  They would get the dough there and make the faya or the flatbread with
• 30:57
  the family's own filling, and, and then you'd take home your baked good,
• 31:03
  but you did have that part in it.
• 31:05
  And, but the communal.
• 31:07
  Baking is a really special and neat thing.
• 31:11
  Yeah.
• 31:11
  But I think in most of the country, Maggie, it's really you, you're not,
• 31:16
  you're not necessarily even finding great pita bread or pita chips,
• 31:20
  uh, at the grocery store or market.
• 31:23
  Yeah.
• 31:25
  Yeah.
• 31:25
  Our, um, oldest son, actually our youngest son too, now, they both live in Chicago
• 31:29
  and whenever we go up, we go to this certain, uh, market where you can get
• 31:34
  really great, like rye bread, pita bread, and there's something about a city like
• 31:39
  that where there are people living there.
• 31:42
  Uh.
• 31:43
  The bakeries that make it, it's different than like, uh,
• 31:47
  traditional commercial bakeries.
• 31:49
  It's just incredible the difference.
• 31:51
  And I can only imagine when people get used to making it at home.
• 31:55
  It's just probably even, you know, 10 times better than that I think.
• 31:59
  Um, you mentioned something in the beginning about baking, which
• 32:02
  is so true, but it's a different speed of operation, isn't it?
• 32:06
  It's a different way of being in your kitchen and in
• 32:09
  your house and in your home.
• 32:11
  And this whole concept of sharing it with other people, um, it really is a different
• 32:16
  way of thinking about, well, it's not cooking, it's baking it and it's sharing.
• 32:24
  Yes.
• 32:24
  It becomes, it becomes even more special when, when you think about it as a kind
• 32:31
  of gift, a kind of meditation, a kind of spiritual exercise, all the things that
• 32:40
  it can be, and it really can be all.
• 32:42
  Yeah.
• 32:43
  Now something that you, um, talk about in the book is making your own philo dough.
• 32:50
  And this would be something to me that I might think, well, I could make a
• 32:54
  lot of Maureen's recipes, but maybe I should just go to, uh, the supermarket,
• 32:59
  buy some frozen philo dough, come home and, and make these, uh, baked goods.
• 33:05
  But I want you to, uh, walk us through and talk a little bit about homemade
• 33:10
  philo dough and what prompted you to want to include recipes like that In
• 33:15
  this book, I would say, yes, you should go and buy the commercial philo for
• 33:22
  much of these recipes in the book.
• 33:25
  And I do that too.
• 33:26
  It's a, it's a particular crisp light dough that we love and we have to have,
• 33:33
  and we, we, you know, we cherish it.
• 33:35
  And I love the Athens Philo that is in, in the grocery store
• 33:39
  and, and the Phlo factory too.
• 33:42
  But the recipes for philo have been a part of my imagination for a long time
• 33:50
  because I know that the commercial philo was not always available.
• 33:56
  In fact, not for that long has it been available.
• 33:59
  So I kept, it kept nagging at me that my forebears were having to
• 34:07
  make philo dough in order to make their pastry, their Lebanese pastry.
• 34:11
  And what that meant, and I always considered it to have been a kind
• 34:17
  of burden for these women that, that this is what they had to do.
• 34:22
  It was expected, this is how they did it.
• 34:25
  But also, I, I just didn't understand how it was made in a home.
• 34:32
  So I went on my, my own journey.
• 34:35
  To learn what is philo dough, how is it made?
• 34:40
  And there are, there are a couple of different methods for how it's made.
• 34:44
  And I felt that if I could unlock this mystery in my own head, I
• 34:51
  could at the same time know my grandmothers and my great grandmothers.
• 34:59
  And my aunts great aunts.
• 35:02
  Much better.
• 35:02
  Yeah.
• 35:03
  And it did happen.
• 35:05
  It did happen because I found that.
• 35:09
  Making philo dough is so much fun.
• 35:12
  It's really a lot of fun, and it takes concentration and it takes
• 35:18
  that reading through and watching and coming to understand how these
• 35:23
  thin, thin layers can be handled.
• 35:25
  And in the end, they're actually, they're delicate, but you can, when
• 35:29
  you use the wet method, for example, where you're stretching the dough, and
• 35:33
  I always had heard, okay, they used to stretch the dough over the whole table
• 35:36
  and they had a community of ladies around the table doing their stretching.
• 35:41
  And I just thought, that's amazing.
• 35:43
  And now I understand what exactly they were doing.
• 35:46
  If you get a little tear in that stretched dough, it's no big deal.
• 35:50
  It's fine because you're gonna roll it up or you're gonna layer
• 35:53
  it and it'll be, it'll be okay.
• 35:57
  So the Filo is a special, special recipe that honestly, up until.
• 36:05
  We were, we were getting closer and closer to finishing editing the book.
• 36:11
  I was wondering, should I include this or not include this?
• 36:15
  Even though I had already developed all of it, I, I wouldn't have
• 36:18
  had a problem, I don't think just saying, oh, this is too much.
• 36:22
  But we really wanted this exploration to be there and for all the reasons
• 36:29
  that, that I've explained here, but it's also just a ton of fun and you
• 36:35
  can make beautiful pastry with it.
• 36:37
  Yeah.
• 36:37
  And traditionally women did, did make it, and it's not the ingredients, I
• 36:42
  mean themselves like in the dough, water, vinegar, sea salt, olive oil,
• 36:48
  and unbleached, all-purpose flour.
• 36:50
  So it's not even the ingredients, it's probably more the technique and just
• 36:54
  the, the thinness of it that people might think, how am I possibly going to do that?
• 36:58
  Yes, yes.
• 37:00
  And you have a wet method and a dry method.
• 37:02
  The we, the ingredient list I just read was from the dry method and
• 37:07
  then the next recipe, the spirals is made with the wet method, but the
• 37:12
  ingredients are pretty much the same.
• 37:14
  Um, tell us the difference between the wet and the dry.
• 37:17
  The dry method is a rolling out of the dough and you create these little balls
• 37:23
  of dough and then you start stacking them.
• 37:27
  You use a ton of corn starch.
• 37:29
  You make a sort of corn starch flour mixture, and this is your ball bearing.
• 37:34
  This keeps everything moving.
• 37:36
  You start layering these small rounds that you roll out, and I tried to
• 37:41
  break this down so that you wouldn't be rolling too many layers at once and
• 37:46
  have it be a little over overwhelming.
• 37:50
  But you can roll these out.
• 37:52
  You stack them with lots of the corn starch mixture between.
• 37:57
  The rounds, the disks that you're rolling out, then you roll again, and
• 38:00
  as you're rolling, it's so tempting to just keep rolling because it's getting
• 38:06
  bigger and bigger in these layers.
• 38:08
  But you have to stop because the more you roll, the more likely it is that
• 38:12
  they're gonna just start to meld together and it'll be difficult to separate them.
• 38:17
  So you start separating your layers more corn, starch mixture, stack
• 38:22
  'em back up, roll again until you get to about a 10 inch round.
• 38:28
  And, and many recipes will call for rolling it much bigger
• 38:32
  than that, but I wanted it to fit into a standard-sized pan.
• 38:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:37
  So then we layer it in the pan with the butter, just like you would make any,
• 38:42
  uh, b lewa and par bake that so that you can, it's a little, it, even, even though
• 38:50
  it seems super, super thin, it's still a little thicker than the commercial.
• 38:55
  Filos.
• 38:55
  Yeah.
• 38:55
  So we have to, we have to bake it as we go.
• 38:58
  But then with the, with the wet method, you are making one larger disc, you're
• 39:06
  letting it rest, and then you're, you're basically, you're stretching
• 39:12
  this into a very thin giant sheet.
• 39:15
  So you need a big workspace.
• 39:17
  And that's probably why they always worked on the, the table.
• 39:20
  'cause that was the biggest open workspace in the kitchen.
• 39:23
  And it still is.
• 39:25
  And you stretch carefully.
• 39:27
  You rest, you stretch, you pull, you, you are stretching the stove and sort
• 39:33
  of anchoring it back down on the counter while you then pull from another area
• 39:38
  around the dough till it gets giant.
• 39:44
  There's some beau nice photos of this as well, and actually showing
• 39:49
  that this also could tear a little bit when you're making it this thin,
• 39:54
  but it obviously doesn't affect the final result of the, uh, final spiral.
• 39:59
  Yes.
• 40:00
  And, and you could have, you could have photoshopped that out.
• 40:06
  You could airbrushed that right out of there, um, in my photos, but I,
• 40:10
  and I've made it where I haven't had the tears, but I thought this is fine.
• 40:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:16
  Because it really is fine.
• 40:17
  Yeah.
• 40:17
  It doesn't matter what you see in the end result there.
• 40:21
  It comes from a, a beautifully stretched dough that may have had a tear or two
• 40:26
  in it, and it, it came out beautifully.
• 40:29
  Yeah.
• 40:29
  That's interesting.
• 40:30
  I'm fascinated in the, uh, dry method that you roll the pieces,
• 40:35
  uh, stacked together, separated by the corn starch and the flour, that
• 40:39
  you're not doing 'em individually.
• 40:42
  Yes.
• 40:42
  You start with them, them individually, then you stack them.
• 40:45
  Right.
• 40:46
  It is interesting.
• 40:46
  Yeah.
• 40:46
  You're rolling them all together Yeah.
• 40:50
  And creates all those at the same time, different layers.
• 40:53
  Yep.
• 40:53
  Yes.
• 40:53
  It's a, it's really fun.
• 40:55
  And when you do them, when giant, like a big, huge round of filo
• 41:02
  dough, you get a very long, narrow rolling pin, which I have.
• 41:08
  Uh, and you can, you can roll the dough out in a single
• 41:12
  layer with that, with that pin.
• 41:17
  Very nice.
• 41:17
  Well, we have to talk about the next recipe 'cause I
• 41:20
  just turned the page to it.
• 41:21
  And that's cardamom coffee.
• 41:23
  Is there any better spice to put in coffee than cardamom?
• 41:28
  It's delicious.
• 41:28
  And you love it.
• 41:29
  You've had it, huh?
• 41:30
  I had, I have had it.
• 41:31
  And the funny place, the place I had it where I went to college in Lexington,
• 41:37
  Kentucky, there was a little restaurant that, uh, they made all their own food.
• 41:42
  I'd often go in there for dinner and they served cardamom coffee and it was
• 41:46
  just a little, uh, like vegetarian kind of bunch of hippies kind of ran it.
• 41:52
  And it was great food.
• 41:53
  You know, beans and rice.
• 41:55
  They made carrot cake.
• 41:56
  They had hopin John on the menu.
• 41:58
  Uh, probably some dishes with tofu, but they had cardamom coffee.
• 42:03
  Oh, delicious.
• 42:04
  Yeah, it is.
• 42:05
  Cardamom Coffee is a tradition in the Middle East and in Lebanese cuisine it.
• 42:15
  Adds this really warm spice dimension to strong roasted beans.
• 42:23
  And you can have this bean ground to a very, very fine powder to make Arabic
• 42:31
  coffee kahu, or the Turkish coffee, which is like a shot of espresso.
• 42:37
  It's really strong.
• 42:38
  And the cardamom just, I feel like the cardamom, it balances it out.
• 42:44
  It smooths it out really nicely.
• 42:47
  Yeah.
• 42:48
  Yeah.
• 42:48
  Very good.
• 42:49
  And um, I love how you have a side variation for Arabic Coffee Ado,
• 42:55
  which of course is served, um, maybe with a brownie scoop of frozen yogurt
• 43:02
  and then poured the coffee over top.
• 43:06
  Yes.
• 43:06
  Sounds great.
• 43:07
  Okay.
• 43:08
  So, um, that's the Philo Dough discussion, and I think it helps us
• 43:12
  to see, it helps me anyway, to see, uh, really into the depths of what
• 43:17
  this book was intended to be about.
• 43:20
  And that's, you know, bringing forth the traditional methods that people
• 43:23
  used in their home when they were, uh, Lebanese doing Lebanese baking.
• 43:28
  Uh, what about recipes?
• 43:30
  If there's someone who, uh, gets a copy of the book, they, um, have it in their
• 43:36
  kitchen, they read it, what kinds of recipes, let's walk through a few that
• 43:41
  you recommend for bakers who might be new to this type of baking or new to baking,
• 43:46
  but they wanna try something, uh, new.
• 43:49
  Where would you recommend they start?
• 43:52
  If you step into the very traditional butter cookie,
• 43:56
  gripy the butter cookie, this.
• 44:00
  Is a great bridge because it is such a simple cookie with just a
• 44:05
  few ingredients beautifully made.
• 44:08
  You whip the butter, use a kind of cool clarified butter, and it
• 44:12
  whips to a gorgeous whipped cream like consistency and you're, you're
• 44:19
  just stirring in your, your flour.
• 44:22
  Very, very easy cookie and it's delicious.
• 44:26
  So you're getting a wonderful taste of Lebanese baking here too, because
• 44:32
  there's a little bit of orange blossom water in the cookie and very fragrant.
• 44:37
  So I think that's an, a super easy recipe to start with.
• 44:42
  If you wanna do some shaping, but you don't necessarily wanna dive
• 44:47
  deep into shaping, you can make the cheese Fat xl and that's.
• 44:55
  A fat, but it's a long boat shape where you're doing a little bit
• 45:00
  of the shaping around the edges, but not necessarily needing to, to
• 45:05
  shape to the degree that the other little pies are shaped and cheap.
• 45:10
  Impressive.
• 45:11
  You can pull it out of the oven and cut it into wedges and it's,
• 45:16
  it's a very delicious treat.
• 45:18
  And you get to test out some of the shaping.
• 45:21
  Yes.
• 45:22
  And that would be, is that, that's a savory, uh, the, the one with the cheese,
• 45:25
  A savory or a sweet, uh, baked good.
• 45:29
  That's a, that's a savory pie.
• 45:33
  Yeah.
• 45:33
  Cheese, fat xl.
• 45:35
  Yes.
• 45:36
  Savory cheese pie.
• 45:37
  It's, it's pizza like in, its in its, uh, cheesiness and just
• 45:44
  super delicious and fun to make.
• 45:46
  Yes.
• 45:46
  An impressive too.
• 45:48
  Yes, but I wouldn't dissuade people from trying to make a. Bit lewa,
• 45:53
  a baklava, which is broken down and simplified really nicely here.
• 45:59
  If you make your components in advance, which, which bakers have
• 46:03
  been doing for a long, long time, you get your clarified butter done.
• 46:07
  You make your toasted nuts, your flour, water syrup.
• 46:12
  Then on baking day, you're just assembling.
• 46:15
  You're assembling, and you don't have to butter every layer, which is traditionally
• 46:19
  done with philo, with philo pastries.
• 46:23
  I have a really nice method here from my Aunt Rita that makes that faster and
• 46:28
  easier, so you could actually make a pan of bit lewa as a beginner and feel so
• 46:34
  accomplished, impressed, and overjoyed.
• 46:37
  Yeah.
• 46:38
  Yeah.
• 46:39
  Very good.
• 46:40
  The cookies and some of the other, uh, baked goods.
• 46:43
  I see some different tools like laying in the photos.
• 46:47
  Tell us a little bit about some of the tools that you might recommend
• 46:50
  that people have or if there's things they can use instead of the tools
• 46:54
  and what's the purpose of the tools?
• 46:57
  The UL cookie is a very traditional, stuffed filled butter cookie, Lebanese
• 47:04
  cookie that has all different kinds of fillings and these are shaped, so you have
• 47:09
  molds with different shapes to the molds and gives different shapes to the cookie.
• 47:15
  That then indicates what's inside.
• 47:18
  So you know, the different shape has a different filling, be it
• 47:21
  dates or pistachios or walnuts.
• 47:25
  So these molds are just beautiful, traditional, wonderful pieces to
• 47:32
  have in your kitchen and to use.
• 47:34
  I have a lot of VI vintage molds.
• 47:38
  And I also have these molds in my shop online because they're
• 47:44
  good ones, are hard to find.
• 47:46
  You can find them in some of the Middle Eastern grocery stores and that kind of
• 47:50
  thing, but they're, they're more shallow and the cuts on them, the cut marks that
• 47:54
  make the designs might not be as defined.
• 47:59
  But if you don't have a mo mul mold to, but you wanna make mo mul and you wanna
• 48:03
  make them beautiful, you can just use your fingers to create a kind of pinch
• 48:10
  mark in three spots across the top.
• 48:13
  You can make them oblong round and then make these marks across the top.
• 48:17
  And they're quite beautiful.
• 48:19
  Just like that.
• 48:20
  Yeah.
• 48:21
  Yeah.
• 48:21
  The pictures are really, uh, very pretty.
• 48:24
  Can we talk a little bit about the shredded, uh, dough that is used in,
• 48:30
  it's, there's a whole chapter for it, so it looks like philo dough, but it looks
• 48:33
  like it's cut into very fine shreds.
• 48:37
  A Typhi dough is used to make all different types of cannae, and we
• 48:43
  have a chapter on Cannae in the book.
• 48:46
  The Cannae creates a crust out of this shredded dough.
• 48:53
  We, you do hear it referred to as shredded filo, but it isn't actually that.
• 49:01
  It is actually made with a batter that's dropped down from multiple
• 49:05
  little spouts, and they create these threads of kataifi, but it's got a
• 49:12
  wonderful, toasty, delicious flavor when it's baked or when it's when it's
• 49:19
  sauteed on the stove top with butter, and then assembled to make a crust.
• 49:27
  I realized when I was writing this chapter that I had never seen
• 49:32
  anywhere a collection that would really help us understand all the
• 49:36
  different variations of can afi.
• 49:39
  So as I was researching, I realized it's basically these different crusts
• 49:47
  with any type of the fillings that you would wanna use, nuts or cheese.
• 49:53
  And so I wrote the chapter with the crust recipes at the beginning,
• 50:00
  and then you refer back and pick which crust you'd like to use.
• 50:04
  'cause you can use any of them.
• 50:05
  So if you don't have Kit Tifi dough, there's a crust there for you where you
• 50:09
  can make canna without the kit Tifi dough.
• 50:13
  Yeah.
• 50:14
  And you would buy this.
• 50:15
  This isn't something that you would, the shredded part make that
• 50:19
  in the book or people make it?
• 50:21
  Yeah.
• 50:22
  Even traditionally, it was always purchased.
• 50:24
  It was always purchased somewhere in time.
• 50:27
  It wasn't, I suppose.
• 50:29
  And um, and I think it would be an, of course, I would love to explore
• 50:33
  that and figure out how, unlock the mystery of how to make kafi do.
• 50:37
  But yes, you would purchase this 100%.
• 50:41
  It's frozen.
• 50:42
  I have purchased some online that was not frozen.
• 50:46
  It was fresh and it came to me like express mail.
• 50:50
  Yeah.
• 50:50
  Very, very, very good.
• 50:53
  Yeah, I mean these shreds are very fine.
• 50:54
  I mean, finer than coconut.
• 50:55
  It looks like, it almost reminds me, um, like the thinness, uh,
• 50:59
  you might see a shredded wheat cereal, something like that.
• 51:03
  Uh, that's how fine the individual strands of this dough are.
• 51:08
  So I can see that you'd have to have some sort of a tool
• 51:11
  to, uh, create those shreds.
• 51:14
  Yes, you would.
• 51:16
  And when you work with the dough, you need to.
• 51:21
  Cut it or pulverize it, because otherwise it's sort of unruly.
• 51:27
  It's like rapunzel's hair.
• 51:28
  It's, there's a lot of it there and you need to get control of it.
• 51:32
  So you generally chop it or process it to then work with it in the, in
• 51:41
  the crusts, and to make little nests, which are adorable and delicious.
• 51:47
  And because it's so thin and you have all of this surface area that lends itself to
• 51:53
  the coating with the clarified butter, and then becoming very toasty, golden toasty.
• 51:59
  Delicious.
• 51:59
  Yeah.
• 52:00
  Yeah, that's for sure.
• 52:02
  Okay, so, um, we've talked about some cookies.
• 52:05
  We've talked about the filo dough, um, talked about the kfi.
• 52:08
  There's a lot of other recipes in here.
• 52:10
  There's some beautiful cakes.
• 52:12
  Um, even like a mocha cardamom snack cake.
• 52:16
  I loved what you said about the Michigan tart cherry limeade.
• 52:20
  Uh, for people that are listening that are not from Michigan,
• 52:24
  talk about Michigan cherries.
• 52:28
  Michigan cherries are iconic.
• 52:30
  We are the cherry capital of the world.
• 52:33
  Yes, we like to sink.
• 52:34
  I'm sure there are plenty of other regions where they produce a lot of cherries.
• 52:38
  But up in northern Michigan, in the Traverse City area, we have
• 52:42
  cherry farm after cherry farm.
• 52:45
  It is a quilted glory to behold.
• 52:49
  And the cherries themselves are,
• 52:54
  the cherries themselves play such a big role as.
• 52:58
  Michigander.
• 52:59
  You see cherries everywhere.
• 53:00
  We have cherries in all kinds of recipes, and we cannot wait for cherry
• 53:07
  season in the middle of the summer.
• 53:09
  It takes until about mid-July to start getting our cherries in.
• 53:13
  Yeah, because we are a colder climate.
• 53:14
  But that also contributes to how delicious they are.
• 53:18
  And the tart cherry is especially wonderful.
• 53:22
  This is the cherry that you use in a cherry pie.
• 53:25
  Yeah.
• 53:26
  Yeah.
• 53:26
  They are delicious.
• 53:27
  We went to Door County in Wisconsin a couple summers ago, and of course they
• 53:35
  had cherry picking there, and it was mid-July and they were just now, they
• 53:39
  were just like, uh, little bit past.
• 53:42
  They were, I mean, they were ready to pick when we were there.
• 53:44
  It was a beautiful, and there's nothing like it.
• 53:47
  And the Traverse City area and that whole area, the, the, it's a wine
• 53:51
  region, fruit known for fruit, and it is because of the microclimate.
• 53:55
  It's um.
• 53:56
  Cooler temperatures and, uh, delicious, delicious cherries grown there.
• 54:01
  So, um, I love that you included that in your book and that, that to
• 54:05
  me is a fun thing about cookbooks.
• 54:08
  You know, the Lebanese Baking Cookbook, but yet it still has a flavor of you
• 54:13
  and who you are and where you're from.
• 54:15
  And, um, I think it's always great that we can include things like that.
• 54:21
  Very much so.
• 54:22
  Thank you.
• 54:22
  Yeah.
• 54:22
  There's also a tart cherry cake in the book that's delicious.
• 54:27
  I make it in a bunt cake and a bunch pan, A heritage bunt pan
• 54:31
  that has a beautiful crevices and it has a cherry glaze over it.
• 54:36
  And you pop the cherries, push them down into the batter in the pan.
• 54:41
  It's fun to make and really delicious.
• 54:45
  That sounds great.
• 54:46
  Let's talk a little bit about, uh, stocking the pantry or some
• 54:49
  staples that people might need to think about having on hand.
• 54:52
  How would you recommend they approach this if they're going to try to do some, uh,
• 54:56
  baking, check out the front of the book, which has the important ingredients to
• 55:04
  keep on hand and stock your pantry with?
• 55:08
  One of the wonderful things about these ingredients is that
• 55:11
  they have a long shelf life.
• 55:13
  So rose water, orange blossom water, tahini, cardamom, anis
• 55:20
  seed, these are all sesame seeds.
• 55:24
  The, the coconut, the desiccated coconut that shows up in some of these dishes
• 55:30
  that these, these recipes that include coconut are really, really wonderful too.
• 55:37
  But I think if you are willing to.
• 55:41
  Stock yourself, your pantry.
• 55:44
  With some of these ingredients, you'll find yourself using
• 55:48
  them in these recipes and more.
• 55:50
  Once you get to know how fragrant and beautiful the flower waters are, for
• 55:56
  example, the pomegranate molasses, you start experimenting and wanting
• 56:00
  to have them in other recipes too.
• 56:05
  Yeah.
• 56:05
  So they um, certainly good to know that information and also, um, how
• 56:11
  people can, um, source them and have them in their own kitchen.
• 56:14
  So they're ready to do some delicious Lebanese baking.
• 56:19
  You can source them from my online shop as well.
• 56:23
  We have pure flower waters from Lebanon that are just divine
• 56:27
  and pomegranate molasses.
• 56:29
  The same Lebanese pine nuts, which are the most beautiful, biggest, most
• 56:35
  buttery pine nuts I've ever seen.
• 56:39
  So those ingredients.
• 56:41
  W are available through my shop as well as you're seeing them more frequently
• 56:45
  in your local grocery stores too.
• 56:48
  Yeah.
• 56:48
  That's great.
• 56:50
  So the photography is a whole, uh, it's like its own thing in this book.
• 56:57
  They're beautiful photography's, many of them, like I mentioned, process shots.
• 57:01
  Um, tell us a little bit about the photography for this book and how it
• 57:05
  happened, because it's obviously a very big part of the way the book is laid out.
• 57:12
  There's a photo for every recipe, at least one photo for every recipe,
• 57:18
  just so illuminating and beautiful, and helps you to visualize where
• 57:22
  it is you're going, what, where you're headed here in this recipe.
• 57:26
  Everyone loves a picture.
• 57:28
  Everyone wants to.
• 57:30
  Celebrate and enjoy what it is that they're about to make or what they have
• 57:35
  made, and to see how they can make it look the way it should look or the way
• 57:40
  that traditionally the recipe should be.
• 57:44
  So the photos are just so essential.
• 57:47
  And Kristen Teague and her team, and Alison Chi, who designed the book, they
• 57:52
  brought such an amazing joy to this book through, through their creativity.
• 58:00
  We all gathered up in northern Michigan at my house and we did the photo shoot there.
• 58:07
  It was like, it was this, it was just a really creative experience because
• 58:11
  we had the place, the atmosphere of where we were contributing to
• 58:17
  the pleasure of making the book.
• 58:20
  And I think that the results were affected by that, you
• 58:24
  know, in, in a, in positive way.
• 58:27
  We had props from my own kitchen, a lot of props from my own
• 58:31
  kitchen that, that are in there.
• 58:34
  And that's such a personal touch.
• 58:36
  Even the light was special because the light in northern
• 58:41
  Michigan is, is a beautiful thing.
• 58:44
  It's very luminous and we were able to work with that light in the house there.
• 58:53
  Yeah.
• 58:54
  Beautiful.
• 58:54
  Added a lot.
• 58:54
  Beautiful.
• 58:55
  Yeah, it does.
• 58:55
  You can really tell.
• 58:56
  So, um, I think it's something that people will enjoy about this book in
• 59:01
  addition to, uh, the breadth and depth of the recipes is the photography that
• 59:06
  goes along with everything that's in it.
• 59:09
  So, uh, congratulations on that and you know, it's a, a, uh, experience
• 59:14
  that you won't ever be able to recreate and I think it's a special
• 59:17
  time for a cookbook author to be involved in the photography for a book.
• 59:22
  And, um, so glad that it sounds like you had a wonderful experience with that.
• 59:27
  So true.
• 59:27
  Thank you.
• 59:28
  It was a pleasure.
• 59:29
  Delight.
• 59:30
  Yes.
• 59:30
  So in the beginning you mentioned that writing a cookbook is a labor of love,
• 59:34
  and there are people that listen to this show, that have a cookbook that
• 59:40
  they can see maybe in their future, a cookbook they wanna write on their heart.
• 59:43
  So I didn't know if you had a message for anyone who's listening that wants
• 59:48
  to write a cookbook of their own,
• 59:52
  anyone who wants to write a book, a cookbook of their own should do it.
• 59:57
  And there are different ways to go about doing this.
• 1:00:01
  You can write a book, a collection that's just for your own use or for your family's
• 1:00:07
  use, and you've done a wonderful thing for your family and you've created this book.
• 1:00:12
  If you're someone who wants to write a book that is published by a
• 1:00:17
  traditional publisher and you are.
• 1:00:20
  Or on the bookshelf at your local bookstore, then you have a process to
• 1:00:25
  follow and that that process is very distinct and clear, and it can take time
• 1:00:32
  to follow that path, but it's very doable.
• 1:00:36
  Many, many people write cookbooks and publish cookbooks every day, but you
• 1:00:41
  start with, you start with writing a proposal about your book, and that
• 1:00:47
  proposal process is no small thing.
• 1:00:49
  It's, it's maybe 60, 70 pages of a very thoughtful
• 1:00:57
  look at what it is you're going to do here, and you explain what you're writing
• 1:01:02
  and why you should be the one to write this book, and what your marketing
• 1:01:08
  outlets are, and what other comparative titles are out there in the world.
• 1:01:13
  There's a whole science, there's a whole.
• 1:01:17
  Approach to writing a cookbook proposal.
• 1:01:19
  And there are resources out there of people you can hire to help you do it.
• 1:01:24
  Not that they're writing it for you in any way, but they're gonna help
• 1:01:27
  guide you and help you make it better.
• 1:01:29
  And that's very worthwhile.
• 1:01:31
  Yeah, because sometimes doing this alone, if you're not sure what you're doing, it
• 1:01:35
  is helpful to have, uh, support for that.
• 1:01:38
  And what do you think about some proposals in some, um, even agents now accepting
• 1:01:45
  online submissions for proposals where you don't actually submit the entire document,
• 1:01:50
  you're just submitting the parts that they want, almost like, um, in an online form.
• 1:01:58
  That's interesting.
• 1:01:59
  I think that if you're prepared with what it is that they're looking for,
• 1:02:07
  whoever it is you're submitting to.
• 1:02:10
  That can be done just as easily, just as well.
• 1:02:13
  But you really, you really need to be clear about what it is you're doing.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  And understand what it is that whoever you're submitting to is looking for.
• 1:02:23
  Yes.
• 1:02:23
  That's right.
• 1:02:24
  That's right.
• 1:02:24
  So I think you still need to take all the time to prepare the document, have things
• 1:02:28
  ready, and it's almost that, that point then just like copying and pasting in
• 1:02:32
  the things that you've already prepared.
• 1:02:34
  Um, yes.
• 1:02:34
  Sending them exactly what they want.
• 1:02:37
  And you did have an agent for this book and the process is similar.
• 1:02:40
  Now, this was an agent that, uh, you mentioned, uh, before we started
• 1:02:44
  recording, that you had worked with before, but if someone wants
• 1:02:48
  representation from an agent, it's often very similar in that you would
• 1:02:52
  propose a book to them as well.
• 1:02:56
  Yes.
• 1:02:57
  You would do your networking.
• 1:03:00
  Do as much networking as possible, and I will tell you before I started
• 1:03:03
  writing cookbooks for years, I just put myself into these scenarios
• 1:03:09
  where all of these people would be editors, agents, consultants, to
• 1:03:16
  proposals, and I met them and other cookbook authors and food writers.
• 1:03:22
  This was an important part of my process because this is how I met people and
• 1:03:27
  I was able to then bounce my ideas off of them long before I was saying,
• 1:03:33
  here's a proposal for this book.
• 1:03:34
  I would be able to talk with these experts and get really
• 1:03:39
  good feedback from them about.
• 1:03:42
  About the current climate, what's, what's popular, what's
• 1:03:46
  been done, what needs to be done.
• 1:03:49
  This is really helpful to, to do, to network.
• 1:03:51
  The International Association of Culinary Professionals is a really
• 1:03:55
  great group to get involved in.
• 1:03:57
  Everybody's there, you can learn so much.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah.
• 1:04:00
  By doing that.
• 1:04:01
  Yeah, taking the time and and engaging an agent is a wonderful,
• 1:04:05
  helpful, and important thing.
• 1:04:07
  Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  And
• 1:04:10
  you just, again, wanna be prepared when you approach
• 1:04:14
  someone with, with a solid idea.
• 1:04:18
  Yeah.
• 1:04:19
  Yeah.
• 1:04:19
  Very good.
• 1:04:20
  Thank you so much for those tips.
• 1:04:21
  And as we're wrapping up, one of the last questions I like to ask all my guests
• 1:04:26
  is, since we are here to talk about cookbooks and everyone listening loves
• 1:04:32
  reading, writing, or collecting cookbooks, I like to ask if there's a favorite
• 1:04:37
  cookbook of yours that's been a favorite through the years and what that might be.
• 1:04:42
  I love this question.
• 1:04:45
  There are so many books on my shelf, but my favorite book is
• 1:04:49
  a vintage book only vintage in that it was my mother's cookbook.
• 1:04:54
  It's the Betty Crocker Cookbook, 1971.
• 1:05:01
  It's so well used, so well worn.
• 1:05:04
  And her notes are in it and her post-it notes and her other recipes that
• 1:05:10
  she handwritten, had handwritten are tucked into the inside of the book.
• 1:05:15
  She, even when the book was falling apart, covered it with
• 1:05:18
  wallpaper from our kitchen.
• 1:05:21
  So I hold this book and I have so many memories and I just
• 1:05:26
  feel my mother's presence.
• 1:05:28
  My mom is not with us anymore.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  So you can understand why I just wanna connect and I want this
• 1:05:35
  book to be with me all the time.
• 1:05:38
  I love it.
• 1:05:39
  It's, it's old fashioned.
• 1:05:41
  I have so many great books that I have learned from and that
• 1:05:44
  I bake from, but this book is the book that I love and that.
• 1:05:49
  Was with me through my childhood.
• 1:05:51
  I baked out of this book so much.
• 1:05:54
  I was always in the cakes and the cookies and the candies, chapters making divinity.
• 1:06:00
  I remember learning to make divinity, the little marshmallow, like, oh yeah, these,
• 1:06:04
  with this book and so many other recipes.
• 1:06:09
  I love it.
• 1:06:10
  It's amazing.
• 1:06:11
  I love it.
• 1:06:11
  And, um, many authors talk about, uh, special family cookbooks at
• 1:06:19
  this juncture, this question.
• 1:06:22
  And the second to that are cookbooks that, um.
• 1:06:27
  People maybe haven't heard of, uh, time for discovery of new books.
• 1:06:33
  And then there's been a couple like salt fat, acid heat that have
• 1:06:36
  been mentioned more than one time.
• 1:06:37
  So it's a really fun question and I appreciate your, uh, sharing with us.
• 1:06:41
  Your mother's 1971 edition of Betty Crocker covered with wallpaper
• 1:06:46
  from the kitchen, which is classic.
• 1:06:49
  It brings you back to the kitchen also.
• 1:06:51
  And what wallpaper was on the wall at the time?
• 1:06:56
  Yes.
• 1:06:57
  Yellow and green phase.
• 1:06:58
  Yes, exactly.
• 1:06:59
  It's very nice.
• 1:07:00
  Very nice.
• 1:07:01
  Okay, so, um, one thing I also would love for you to share is how
• 1:07:05
  people can connect with you online.
• 1:07:09
  I would love to connect with everyone on Instagram, on
• 1:07:16
  YouTube and on my own website.
• 1:07:20
  mbo.com where you'll find all of the recipes and info that
• 1:07:25
  you might be looking for.
• 1:07:27
  And I just love to hear from people, so shoot me an email any time.
• 1:07:31
  I just really enjoy that exchange so much and love to see everyone.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah, great.
• 1:07:38
  And I'm sure because you, uh, this might be new, a new type of baking,
• 1:07:43
  different ingredients, uh, names of things that might be unfamiliar to people
• 1:07:48
  that you're open, like you said, to talking to people, communicating with
• 1:07:52
  people, and helping everyone have great success with their Lebanese baking.
• 1:07:57
  Love for them to reach out.
• 1:07:58
  Yes.
• 1:07:59
  Yes.
• 1:08:00
  Well, it's been terrific to have you on the show.
• 1:08:02
  The book is, uh, just newly published.
• 1:08:05
  Is there any events or anything coming up that you want people to know about?
• 1:08:11
  I will be in Chicago and DC and all around Michigan.
• 1:08:17
  I have an events page.
• 1:08:19
  Please check it out.
• 1:08:20
  It's on my website.
• 1:08:21
  I will love to see you and meet you in person.
• 1:08:24
  Yeah, great.
• 1:08:24
  So I'll, um, we'll link to the website.
• 1:08:27
  Everyone can check out the events page and keep an eye on it throughout
• 1:08:30
  the fall because a lot of times, you know, sometimes things will be
• 1:08:33
  coming up, sometimes things are added.
• 1:08:36
  So if you wanna meet Maureen in person, that's a great way to certainly do that.
• 1:08:40
  Uh, get a copy of her book and have her share her signature and autograph with you
• 1:08:46
  and really connect with cookbook authors.
• 1:08:47
  I know, uh, writing my own cookbooks, that was the biggest joy was when we
• 1:08:51
  get a chance to go out and meet the people who will be using the book.
• 1:08:55
  It's, uh, you know, there are lots of joyful things all along
• 1:08:59
  the way, but meeting the readers is, uh, just a great time.
• 1:09:02
  It's a special joy.
• 1:09:04
  Very.
• 1:09:04
  That's for sure.
• 1:09:05
  Well, thanks again so much for coming on the show.
• 1:09:08
  I wish you nothing but the best with your beautiful new book, Lebanese
• 1:09:12
  Baking, more than 100 recipes for sweet and savory baked goods.
• 1:09:18
  Thank you so much, Maggie.
• 1:09:20
  You are doing a wonderful thing with your podcast.
• 1:09:23
  It's just terrific.
• 1:09:24
  It's been a lot of fun to do and meeting people like you is exactly why.
• 1:09:29
  And, um, helping people spread the love and the word about this
• 1:09:34
  genre of book, which I can from my perspective, it's still going strong.
• 1:09:39
  People love to have a printed copy of a cookbook in their kitchen
• 1:09:43
  because it's a curated set of recipes and yours is no exception.
• 1:09:47
  So it's a joy to, uh, do this work.
• 1:09:51
  Thanks Maggie.
• 1:09:53
  Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 1:09:57
  Again, all the links can be found in the show notes@www.cookbooklove.co.
• 1:10:03
  And if you are interested in writing a cookbook of your
• 1:10:06
  own, please check out the free.
• 1:10:08
  Cookbook writing masterclass called How to Get Paid to Write a Cookbook.
• 1:10:13
  It is designed specifically for food or nutrition experts,
• 1:10:17
  and you can check that out at www.cookbookwritersacademy.com/free.
• 1:10:25
  So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:10:28
  This is your host, Maggie Green, and until next time, have a great
• 1:10:31
  day and keep loving your cookbooks.
• 1:10:38
  Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:10:41
  You can find out more information@www.cookbooklove.co.