Elysian Kitchens: Recipes Inspired by the Traditions and Tastes of the World's Sacred Spaces

Links between religious practice and food run deep in the world’s sacred communities, from convents to temples, mosques to gurudwaras. 

Here, Jody Eddy, a food journalist and former editor of Art Culinaire, visits eleven such sites scattered around the world, exploring their similarities and differences and sharing recipes adapted from and inspired by the people who are part of their communities.

Whether a kosher soup kitchen in NYC, a Buddhist monastery in Japan, or a Sufi spiritual center in Morocco, these places recognize a connection between feeding people’s bodies and their broader missions in the world. 

The food they prepare may include ingredients they have collected themselves, such as the honey from the hives kept by the Benedictine monks of Saint John’s Abbey in Minnesota. And it is not sternly absentious, as both the sloe gin fizz and salted caramel fudge brownies from another Benedictine community testify; this time from the sisters of Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Ireland.

Thoughtful and surprising.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout