Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein loved eating okra and lentil soup, as well as his favourite fish soups from his wife’s native Tikrit, which contained onion, tomatoes and almonds, a new book by Polish author Witold Szablowski, exclusively cited by the Daily Mail, reveals.
The work is titled “How to Feed a Dictator: Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Enver Hoxha, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot Through the Eyes of Their Cooks” and provides some written accounts of the cooks who were working for the world’s most famous and now deceased rulers on the subject of their bosses’ food preferences. According to Abu Ali, Saddam Hussein’s long-lasting chef, the Iraqi president just loved fresh meat and ordered his butcher to slaughter a lamb and several chickens every day, preferred to eat eggs for breakfast, was fond of barbecue, and made his cooks try the food before eating it in order to check whether it was poisoned.
He also gave quite a lot of expensive presents to his cooking team, including specially-tailored Italian clothes and a new car every year.
Meanwhile, Cuban leader Fidel Castro was just adored by his chief Erasmo Hermandez who said that his boss was “sweet like a father” to him, loved vegetable soup and ate meat only on rare occasions.
The book, which also contains accounts of the chefs of Cambodian Prime Minister Pol Pot, Uganda’s president Idi Amin and others, is expected to be released at the end of the month.
