"Matthew's presence transports me back to the Cairo kitchen, where I am tasting the ful that Ahmet, the cook, prepared and helping Grandmaman Marguerite mix dough while she sings songs to me in Arabic. Her family pride was profoundly linked to the kitchen, so when I attempted to make sambousek once for my friends and did not follow her recipe for this cheese-filled golden dough faithfully, she was outraged. "This recipe is at least hundreds of years old. You do not change it!" she shouted. I see her standing at the stove, a diminutive woman usually dressed in black. Her thick, curly,  henna-dyed hair was pulled upward in a large chignon; there was always a lock of hair escaping that she would try, again and again and without success, to push back into her chignon.  My daughter Marianne, who looks like her, has the same gesture of trying to push a lock of curly dark hair behind her ear. I smile as I watch the curl fall down in front of her eyes." From Memories of a Lost Egypt Colette Rossant's privileged childhood was marked by tragedy and dislocation. Her father, the Egyptian descendant of Sephardic Jews who eventually settled in Cairo, met her French mother in Paris, where he was the European buyer for his father's department store. He died in 1939 when Colette was only 7, and her mother then left her in Cairo with her grandparents. She returned three years later to enroll Colette in a convent school in the hope that her daughter would convert to Catholicism, much to the chagrin of her in-laws. Although Rossant's memoir of these wrenching events is often sad, it's leavened by a wonderfully sensuous evocation of Middle Eastern life in the 1930s and '40s, including recipes for the savory foods that nurtured her childhood: semits (soft pretzels with a sesame seed crust), ful medamas (a fava bean stew), and sambousek (a golden, cheese-filled pastry). The warmth of her grandparents and their Arab servants softened the impact of her thorny relationship with an often capricious mother, whose sharp edges Rossant does not sentimentalize, even in the chapter about her dying days. Returning to Cairo in 1997, the author realizes that, despite the absence of her mother during those crucial girlhood years, she had been blessed by "a city and a family that nurtured me and gave me a strong identity." --Wendy Smith This autobiography, which grew out of an article in Saveur magazine, has two themes: first, it is hard, if not impossible, to go home again, and second, the kitchenwith its flavors, smells, and associationsis a powerful source of sentiment and memory. Born in France but raised in Egypt, Rossant knows both cultures well, as evidenced by numerous recipes, most quite simple, ranging from familiar French dishes like mussels marinire to a classic Egyptian tamiyya (falafel) made with fava beans. Rossant, a columnist for the New York Daily News, an editor at McCalls, and the author of six cookbooks, does an excellent job of conveying the sadness and longing felt by many former expatriates who try to recapture the past. This will appeal to fans of history, biography, and travel as well as readers interested in exotic cuisines and settings. Recommended for large general collections.Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. w's presence transports me back to the Cairo kitchen, where I am tasting the ful that Ahmet, the cook, prepared and helping Grandmaman Marguerite mix dough while she sings songs to me in Arabic. Her family pride was profoundly linked to the kitchen, so when I attempted to make sambousek once for my friends and did not follow her recipe for this cheese-filled golden dough faithfully, she was outraged. "This recipe is at least hundreds of years old. You do not change it!" she shouted. I see her standing at the stove, a diminutive woman usually dressed in black. Her thick, curly, henna-dyed hair was pulled upward in a large chignon; there was always a lock of hair escaping that she would try, again and again and without success, to push back into her chignon. My daughter Marianne, who looks like her, has the same gesture of trying to push a lock of curly dark hair behind her ear. I smile as I watch the curl fall down in "I am so enchanted by this little memoir. This is the kind of writing about food that stimulates your senses and connects you to the important traditions of the table." --Alice Waters A James Beard award-nominated journalist for an article on Egyptian cuisine published in Saveur, Colette Rossant , columnist for the Daily News and a contributor to many food and travel magazines, is also the author of eight cookbooks. Today she lives in New York with her husband in a SoHo townhouse. CHAPTER 1 My Mother I am peeling shrimp for my mother. most likely, she'll refuse them. She eats nothing at the Mother Cabrini Hospice, where she is dying of cancer. Three months ago, the doctors gave her three months to live; it is clear to me tha