The fact is, some books simply need to exist. Burma: The Cookbook is one of these. Burma is culturally rich and complex in many ways, but perhaps nowhere more than in its extraordinary food culture. It's at the crossroads between the food of the great Indian subcontinent (to its west) and the food of Southeast Asia (to its east), with a dash of Chinese influence (from the north), making it an amazing place in-between. With simple recipes for food that manages to be elegant and earthy at the same time, plus stories of a place and a people that inspired Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, and George Orwell, this may be Duguid's most enchanting cookbook yet. The book features photographs throughout--of the finished dishes, of people, of a hauntingly beautiful land--as well as travel tips, a history of Burma, extensive glossaries, and a bibliography.

Naomi Duguid is a writer, photographer, teacher, cook, and world traveler. Her most recent cookbooks, Burma and Taste of Persia, transported readers into cultures and flavors not yet celebrated in the West, and respectively won the 2013 IACP Cookbook Award for Culinary Travel and both the 2017 IACP Cookbook Award for Culinary Travel and the 2017 James Beard Award for Best Book of the Year, International. Her previous award-winning titles, coauthored with Jeffrey Alford, include Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas, their first book, which won a James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year; Seductions of Rice; Hot Sour Salty Sweet, also a James Beard Cookbook of the Year; Mangoes & Curry Leaves; and Beyond the Great Wall.
 
Duguid’s articles and photographs have appeared regularly in Lucky Peach, Food & Wine, and other publications. She is a frequent guest speaker and presenter at food conferences. She is the host of Toronto’s Food on Film series and has a strong online presence (Twitter and Facebook). Her stock photo agency, Asia Access, is based in Toronto, where she lives when she is not on the road.

Naomi Duguid's profile page

• Short-listed, James Beard Cookbook Award - International
• Short-listed, Gourmand World Cookbook Award

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST 2012 – Gourmand World Cookbooks Award—Asian Cuisine
FINALIST 2013 – James Beard Foundation Book Awards—International
WINNER 2013 – International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award—Culinary Travel
WINNER 2013 – Taste Canada Food Writing Awards in the Regional/Cultural Cookbooks category

“A timely, as well as absorbing and gorgeous, guide to a cuisine that has remained relatively unknown and untouched.”
—Julia Moskin, The New York Times

“A colorful immersion into the daily market and table of the Burmese people, this volume is an invitation to celebrate the Burmese people and their transformation.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like her other cookbooks, it’s a richly photographed tome that gives armchair travellers a look at a country’s culture through its food.”
—The Georgia Straight

“A book of genuine discovery, a transportive and hunger-stoking look into what may be one of the world’s last great but little-known cuisines…. One of the great qualities she brings to her books, over and above her curiosity and her ability to bring a far-away place into three dimensions: her gentle coaching. The food seems strange, but anybody can make it. She empowers cooks in a way that few other authors do. Eating with Duguid [feels]…like discovering a lost world.”
—Chris Nuttall-Smith, The Globe and Mail
“She isn’t merely offering up a culture’s recipes, she wants us to understand our oil (Is it hot enough? Is it too hot?) the way a Burmese cook does.”
—LA Weekly
“Duguid’s thoughtful efforts to capture the taste of the country more than satisfy homebound, curious palates.”
—The Boston Globe

“Extraordinary.”
—The Gazette