The latest cookbook from celebrity chef and restaurateur Michael Mina opens on the gritty streets of Old Cairo, at a food cart selling ta’ameya (fava-bean falafel) much like Mina’s Egyptian mother made. The humble fare is a far cry from the offerings of his Michelin-starred flagship San Francisco restaurant or the recipes in Mina’s eponymous 2006 cookbook.
While Mina is widely recognized for the California cuisine he helped popularize, “what I never set aside was my palate, my secret weapon,” he writes in the introduction to “My Egypt: Cooking From My Roots” (Voracious, $40).
He owes his knack for punching up dishes with spices and acid to his mom. But those influences didn’t surface prominently on his menus until the last decade, when he and his company’s corporate executive chef, Adam Sobel, began traveling to the Middle East for research.
Recipes in these pages draw inspiration from those journeys as well as family archives. The heady Spiced Tomato-Braised Lamb Shanks I served for company, preceded by a Middle Eastern Waldorf salad drizzled with a poppy seed-speckled yogurt dressing, is a feast I’d happily repeat.
Next time, if I’m feeling fancy, I might kick it off with Za’atar-Cured Salmon with Tzatziki and Salmon Roe. To Mina’s mind, this mix of homey and refined innovations represents the unspoken rule of Arabic hospitality: Treat your home “like the most welcoming restaurant in the world.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
Sign up for the AJC Food and Dining Newsletter
Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on X and @ajcdining on Instagram.
About the Author
