Memories of a Lost Egypt: A Memoir with Recipes

I've a soft spot for windows into lost worlds, doubly so when those worlds were Jewish, and triply so when they revolve around food. Here, cook-book author Collete Rossant lets us peek into the Oriental opulence of bourgeois Jewish family life in pre-revolutionary Egypt, and by implication North Africa, a world also revealed by Claudia Roden in her masterly "The Book of Jewish Food," -- strangers all in strange lands. Unlike the Roden work, however, which is a cookbook with reminiscences, this is a memoir with recipes, which commands comparisons with Madhur Jaffrey's (yet another cookbook author among many other accomplishments) "Climbing the Mango Trees," a Memory of a Childhood in India. That brilliantly written work, of course, peers back into a different lost world of even more striking Oriental opulence -- pre-partition India. I don't know which is a more poignant tale!

This book is not only charming but is beautifully written. I had tears in my eye as I read it. The recipes are mouth watering and I ran to buy some Egyptian ingredients to try the recipes. Colette Rossant gives an evocative picture of the life of a Jewish family during second world war.

If you are like me, you enjoy reading cookbooks that are more than just compilations of recipes but also include evocative text that recreates another time and place. "Memories of a Lost Egypt" is such a book. The author's vivid and touching reminiscences of her childhood often center on food and her relationships with her family's cooks, and she skillfully interweaves her narrative with recipes for the delicious dishes she savored and learned to prepare.Another Middle Eastern cookbook that I treasure is Sonia Uvezian's "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan." It too evokes a strong sense of time and place, and it is filled with outstanding recipes.

Being from New York I follow Mrs. Rossant's weekly column, in the Daily News. When I found out that she had written this book, I was very eager to buy it. After reading it, I was captivated by her description of her childhood, and all of those Great recipes. This book is a great find and I highly recommend it.

I think that Rossant has a great gift for evocating her past. I felt that she really gave us an idea of what Egypt was like in the 40's. The recipes are excellent, I have already cooked from it.

Colette Rossant's dreamy reminiscences of her childhood in Egypt, intermingled with her olifactory memories of exotic foods and spices, are a revelation. I especially liked the idea of including recipes -- it seems Rossant is an accomplished cook -- so that the reader can participate fully in this Proustian return to one's origins. I only wish there were more books as creatively and intelligently written.