Customer Reviews

Book of Middle Eastern Food

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This cookbook celebrates the culinary diversity of the Middle East with a wealth of traditional recipes from many countries. The author's enthusiasm for the dishes she describes is evident throughout, and the recipes span the spectrum from everyday meals to more elaborate preparations for holidays and special occasions. Most of the ingredients are readily available, and the food is nutritious, flavorful, and economical. Whether you are an experienced cook or only a beginner, this book has something for you.

Also recommended: "Recipes and Remembrances from an Eastern Mediterranean Kitchen: A Culinary Journey through Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan," by Sonia Uvezian. This seminal work captures the essence of the region's traditional foods in hundreds of distinctive recipes interspersed with superlative cultural and culinary background material, including unparalleled information on ingredients and utensils.

Ms. Roden casts a wide net and captures many a treasure in this indispensible survey of the many foodways and cultures of the Middle East. If all you know of Middle Eastern cookery is pita bread and fallafel, get your hands on this book ASAP! Recipes from cultures as diverse as Persia, Turkey and Morroco are included with many delectables from Ms. Roden's hometown of Cairo, along with culinary insights from the great Arab food writer of the 13th century, Al-Baghdadi. All the recipes are put together in an easy to follow format, with good information on ingredients (though it does appear that she was writing for a British rather than American audience, so some of the terminology may not be immeadiately familiar to readers in the U.S.). Sometimes I think that the book would benefit from photos of some of the finished dishes, but other than that this is a superb introduction to Middel Eastern cookery. Enjoy!

I have a dog-eared copy of this that is over 20 years old, and it remains one of my favorite cookbooks. The recipes are well written and for the most part approachable. The scope of the book is comprehensive. There may be better books on individual cuisines (Lebanon, Morrocco, Iran, etc.) but nothing can compare to this for its depth and breadth. The chapters on appetizers, salads, soups and substantial dishes are perhaps the best. The book is also a joy to read, and gives you a good idea of the cultures that produced the cuisines.

This book is now some 26 years old. Modern cook books have adopted a format which consists of a series of illustrated steps which make it easy to produce food. This book is basically text based although it has some line drawings. This puts it at a bit of a disadvantage when following the recipes and trying to work out how the final result should look.

Despite that it has qualities which have become rare in modern cook books. That is it exudes a passion for a cuisine which in the 70's was little known in the west. Each chapter has a narrative which are based on the author's affectionate memories of her time living in the middle east. She relates folk tales and old myths and contemporary stories. Her book had the sort of quality that Elizabeth David's books had. That is she portrayed a cuisine and a style of life that seemed exotic but attractive and which people explored.

With the preparation of food when a cook has some experience one tends to alter recipes slightly depending on taste and to achieve the sort of texture and thickness one desired. Thus unlike previous reviewers I have not had many recipes not work although this is to say it might not have happened.

This book arrived in Australia about the same time that we started to have significant numbers of migrants from the middle east. It started to sell at the time when Lebanese and Turkish restaurants started to become popular. It enabled people to make hommos, felafels and flat bread at home.

To some extent the work of the book has been done as now most of the food products are available in supermarkets.

The acceptance of Middle Eastern Cuisine has enriched Australia. In a time in which all of us are becoming health conscious it allows one to incorporate a range of low fat items into our diet which are rich in vitamins and proteins.

This book may be a little dated but it will always remain a classic.

One of my favorite cookbooks in the sense of creative cookery -- it gives me starting points for my own innovations, although the recipes would be reasonably easy for beginners to follow.

The book goes far beyond recipes, with valuable information on the culture, and the origins of foods. It's as valuable to read before a trip to a Middle Eastern restaurant as it is as a companion in my own kitchen.

I've had Claudia Roden's book since shortly after it was first published. It was invaluable at a time that I was looking to learn how to present enticing "healthy" foods which, at that time, meant a broad range of vegetables, grains and legumes. It was my best friend at a time when my cooking time was limited and I was looking for easy-to-prepare, delicious meals. It was, and remains, a great help when I am looking for a different approach to chicken (or beef or lamb). Finally, in addition to the recipes, it contains historical and social commentary on the dishes presented. After Julia Childs' "Art of French Cooking," it is the cookbook that I have used for the longest period and still refer to on a regular basis.

Frankly, there isn't a better book on Middle Eastern cooking. If you want healthy, mediterranean style cooking and are tired of Italian food, this is a great book to use.

A great classic, this cookbook is completely practical, but at the same time literate and cultured. It is the thinking person's cookbook -- rather than presenting twenty different recipes for various stuffed vegetables as found everywhere from Morocco to Iran to Greece, she unifies their treatment into a marvelous discussion of vegetable stuffing in general (with amusing literary anecdotes), a half-dozen different stuffing formulations, regional preferences and variants, and considerations on how to choose among all these variants.

Although she knows her own tradition (Egyptian Jewish) very well, she is cosmopolitan and even-handed, neither sniffing at such innovations as the Greek use of pork (anathema to both Jews and Muslims), nor claiming that her tradition is superior or more ancient than the others.

I only have three minor complaints about this book:
-- The hardcover edition is out of print!
-- Most dishes are given only their Arabic names, and not their Persian, Turkish, and Greek names.
-- I wish it there were more of it!

-s

I was quite disappointed with this book. Many of the recipes yield very mediocre results, and some don't work at all. For example, the recipe for tabbouleh produces a salad that has little but a name in common with the genuine article. To begin with, it calls for 1/2 pound (2 cups) fine burghul, which doesn't make sense since 1/2 pound yields only about 1 1/4 cups. The quantities for other ingredients are also incorrect. For each cup of burghul one should use at the very least three times as much parsley as specified and about twice as much onion, mint, olive oil, and lemon juice. "A little tomato" is suggested as an option, yet this salad is hardly worth making without a generous amount of tomatoes. Also, the recipe doesn't specify that flat-leaf (not curly) parsley and spearmint (not peppermint) should be used. The author writes that tabbouleh is traditionally served with boiled vine leaves, or raw lettuce or cabbage leaves. Actually, it is served with fresh vine leaves, romaine, or white cabbage leaves.

Ms. Roden's burghul pilaf is another disaster. Her recipe calls for 4 cups burghul, which serves at least 12 (not 6)! It neglects to specify what size burghul to use (it should be coarse rather than fine), calls for an excessive amount of butter, and uses less than half the quantity of liquid required. The recipe for meat eggah (omelet) doesn't work because the meat should be browned (not raw) before being combined with the eggs. The recipe for dondurma kaymakli (ice cream) asks for 1 teaspoon sahlab or cornstarch, which is wrong. Far more sahlab is required for this recipe to work, and cornstarch will not work at all.

The recipes often fail to provide essential information, nor are they consistent. They frequently neglect to specify the type and size of pan needed, whether or not to cover the pan during cooking, how long to cook the ingredients and if and when to stir them, whether to use high, medium, or low heat, and how far to place the food from the heat source when broiling or grilling. They often don't specify the amount of butter or oil needed, what kind of vinegar to use, what size and/or weight eggplant is required, and, sometimes, what size burghul to use.

Recipes for many well-known dishes are missing. There is little information on Middle Eastern breads; some of the most important ones, for example khubz markuk and its regional variations, are not even mentioned. Several countries, among them Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Yemen, are very poorly represented.

The book could have been better organized. For instance, rice and burghul aren't discussed in the same chapter, which would have been appropriate since they are both grains and can often be substituted for each other in recipes. Also, the index leaves much to be desired.

This cookbook is hardly the standard work it has been made out to be. Readers will need to look elsewhere.

A close friend of mine had this particular edition years ago. She often talked to me about the pictures and the authors' personal stories. I ended up buying the book for my friend. She was extremely grateful. Thanks for having it available.