On-The-Go Schwarmas: And Other Middle-Eastern Dishes

Part of the Kids Dish series which includes desserts, snacks, dinners, lunches, Italian dishes, Chinese dishes, Mexican dishes and special occasion recipes, this picture book cookbook introduces Middle Eastern recipes, grouped by difficulty level based on the skills and time required as well as the number of ingredients and tools needed. Adult help and supervision is required for all recipes. Each book starts off with a food pyramid, then Notes to Kids from the author, then Notes to Adults, Special Tips and Glossary, Metric Conversion Chart, and Kitchen Tools section with lots of graphics and illustrations that would make this series extremely accessible and attractive for older students who are not top-notch readers. The recipes each include number of servings, how long the process will take, a quick one-sentence note about the recipe's relationship to the culture as well as ingredients list, tools, and numbered pictured steps. It all makes the recipes look really easy, but for the most part they are from-scratch and somewhat challenging, at least to me, admittedly the world's worst cook. Recipes in the Easy chapter include Poppin' Peppery Hummus; Couscous; Perfect Party Pita Chips; Super-Sweet Hamentaschen, Coconut Nibbles; Chlada Fakya (no help with pronunciation here); On-the-go-Schwarmas. The Intermediate section has No Prob Kabobs and Super-colossal Falafel; Advanced recipes include Tasty Tabbouleh, Scrumptious Salad; Baba Ghanouj; and Baklava. Each volume is indexed by category, main ingredients, as well as preparation time. Food Facts and other sidebars (at the bottom of the pages) add interesting amplification to recipes. While the publisher fact sheet indicated that there is a booklist, I did not find one. Reading level is fairly easy, but the recipes are all somewhat challenging in my opinion for the publisher recommended age level (grades 1-3). Maybe in some parallel universe, second graders can make Baklava from scratch, but not in my world. At the end of the index is a mention [...] as the portal to safe internet sites related to this book, the only one of which was [...]. Never having tackled any from-scratch Middle Eastern dishes other than couscous out of a box, this one will remain on my "high challenge" cookbook shelf for the days when I can deal with a steep learning curve.