Ramzan 2026: these books on Muslim food are a balm for the body and soul

Across the Islamic world, from Istanbul to Sylhet, Fez to London, Kashmir to Kayalpattinam, Ramzan cooking has always held a careful balance: fasting and feasting, restraint and generosity. Some of the most thoughtful writing on Muslim food reflects this inwardness, offering recipes shaped by memory, ethics, and care.

One of the most moving explorations of this philosophy is Turkish food scholar Nevin Halici’s Sufi Cuisine. Rooted in Konya, the city of Rumi and the Mevlevi order, the book treats cooking as a spiritual act. “For the Sufis, food was sacred, cooking was a form of prayer, and eating was a blessed activity,” Halici explains. The kitchen, she says, held the soul of the Sufi lodge. Initiation into spiritual life often began not with scripture, but by learning to cook and serve others.

Turkish food scholar Nevin Halici
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The book is suffused with poetry and restraint highlighting grain stews, yoghurt soups, and the ritual dish ashura, cooked communally during periods of mourning. “Nutrition is important in Sufi cuisine because worship is possible only in wellness,” Halici notes, adding that moderation and sharing are as central as flavour. It is a way of thinking about food that resonates deeply during Ramzan, when restraint itself becomes a form of mindfulness.

Moderation and sharing are as central as flavour during the holy month of Ramzan.
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Cooking as anchor

If Sufi cuisine turns inward, the James Beard award-winning cookbook, Feast: Food of the Islamic World, by Anissa Helou looks outward. One of the most comprehensive works on Muslim food cultures, Feast spans geographies, from North Africa and the Levant to Central and Southeast Asia. Helou writes with the authority of a scholar and the clarity of a teacher, showing how Islamic cuisines evolved through trade routes, migration and empire. Her food — soups, breads, lentils, slow-cooked stews — is rarely showy, but it reflects the everyday nourishment that sustains long fasting days across cultures.

From Morocco comes a more personal, fiercely contemporary voice. Chef Najat Kaanache’s Najat is part memoir, part culinary manifesto. Born to Moroccan parents and trained in some of the world’s most celebrated kitchens, Kaanache returned to Fez to open Nur, a restaurant rooted in Moroccan tradition but unafraid of modern expression. “Food is history, culture, geography,” she says. “Food is also politics.” For her, a chakcouka made with eggs, tofu, and tomatoes “makes for a comforting dish”. During Ramzan, such humble, deeply sustaining food feels especially resonant.

Ramzan food writing in Britain has also been shaped by migration and memory. In the gorgeously produced Rooza, Nadiya Hussain lists Ramzan specialities across the globe but spotlights her Bangladeshi roots with warmth and accessibility. “As a child of immigrants, I never understood the importance of the food my grandparents and parents left behind,” Hussain reflects. “Now I see how food connects us to our heritage.”

The book moves gently through Ramzan and Eid, offering khichuri, bhortas and sweets, not as nostalgia but as lived practice. Hussain speaks often about balance: “Life will always be busy, but it’s about making time to cook slow, or cook fast, without ever compromising on flavour.”

That sensibility is echoed in the work of Dina Begum, whose Made in Bangladesh foregrounds East Bengali cuisine with simplicity and care. For Begum, festive meals are nourishing plates like khichuri with chana bhuna, light dals, vegetable bhortas. She often returns to the idea of food as comfort for immigrant communities, where markets and everyday home cooking become anchors, especially during Ramzan, connecting families to memory and wellbeing.

A page from Dina Begum’s cookbook Made in Bangladesh. 

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Season of stories

Books like Yasmin Khan’s Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen remind us that Ramzan food is also about endurance. Olive oil, lentils, flatbreads and citrus anchor recipes to land, season and survival.

In India, Muslim culinary history has long been preserved through scholarship and home kitchens. Salma Husain’s Alwan-e-Nemat: A Journey Through Jahangir’s Kitchen opens a window into Mughal court cuisine through a 16th century manuscript. While the recipes speak of royal tables, Husain situates them within broader histories of Persian influence, technique and taste that continue to shape Ramzan cooking in North Indian homes.

A baker with freshly made flatbread in Kashmir.
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From Kashmir, Maryam H. Reshii documents ceremonial and everyday Muslim food shaped by season, geography and collective labour, while chef and writer Sadaf Hussain chronicles Awadhi cuisine with a practitioner’s eye. His slow-cooked qormas, breads and lentil dishes reflect the discipline of fasting as meals that balance rather than offer spectacle. Further south, Ravuthar Recipes: With a Pinch of Love by Hazeena Seyad evokes Ramzan feasting with abandon and joy from Tamil Nadu.

Food becomes a moral language during Ramzan. It is also a season of stories shared over warm bread and passed bowls, and in the company of these books that show us the table as a place of memory, restraint and gratitude.

The writer is the author of Temple Tales and translator of Hungry Humans.

Published – February 13, 2026 07:46 am IST