The New Book of Middle Eastern Food [Hardcover]

Claudia Roden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2000

In this updated and greatly enlarged edition of her Book of Middle Eastern Food, Claudia Roden re-creates a classic. The book was originally published here in 1972 and was hailed by James Beard as "a landmark in the field of cookery"; this new version represents the accumulation of the author's thirty years of further extensive travel throughout the ever-changing landscape of the Middle East, gathering recipes and stories.

Now Ms. Roden gives us more than 800 recipes, including the aromatic variations that accent a dish and define the country of origin: fried garlic and cumin and coriander from Egypt, cinnamon and allspice from Turkey, sumac and tamarind from Syria and Lebanon, pomegranate syrup from Iran, preserved lemon and harissa from North Africa. She has worked out simpler approaches to traditional dishes, using healthier ingredients and time-saving methods without ever sacrificing any of the extraordinary flavor, freshness, and texture that distinguish the cooking of this part of the world.

Throughout these pages she draws on all four of the region's major cooking styles:
        -        The refined haute cuisine of Iran, based on rice exquisitely prepared and embellished with a range of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts
        -        Arab cooking from Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan--at its finest today, and a good source for vegetable and bulgur wheat dishes
        -        The legendary Turkish cuisine, with its kebabs, wheat and rice dishes, yogurt salads, savory pies, and syrupy pastries
        -        North African cooking, particularly the splendid fare of Morocco, with its heady mix of hot and sweet, orchestrated to perfection in its couscous dishes and tagines

From the tantalizing mezze--those succulent bites of filled fillo crescents and cigars, chopped salads, and stuffed morsels, as well as tahina, chickpeas, and eggplant in their many guises--to the skewered meats and savory stews and hearty grain and vegetable dishes, here is a rich array of the cooking that Americans embrace today. No longer considered exotic--all the essential ingredients are now available in supermarkets, and the more rare can be obtained through mail order sources (readily available on the Internet)--the foods of the Middle East are a boon to the home cook looking for healthy, inexpensive, flavorful, and wonderfully satisfying dishes, both for everyday eating and for special occasions.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Claudia Roden has updated and expanded her popular 1968 cookbook for a more savvy and knowledgeable audience. While still filled with old favorites, the third edition acknowledges food processors and other handy kitchen tools, as well as this generation's preference for lower-fat recipes. Not that every recipe is changed; many are not, but Roden does attempt not to rely too much on butter and oils.

Begin your meal with mezze, derived from the Arabic t'mazza, meaning "to savor in little bites." Try Cevisli Biber (Roasted Pepper and Walnut Paste) spread on warm pita bread. Serve with Salata Horiatiki (Greek Country Salad) and then move on to a main dish of Roast Fish with Lemon and Honeyed Onions or Lamb Tagine with Artichokes and Fava Beans. The cookbook wouldn't be complete without sections on rice, couscous, and bulgur--try Addis Polow (Rice with Lentils and Dates) or Kesksou Bidaoui bel Khodra (Beber Couscous with Seven Vegetables). Finish with a traditional dessert like Orass bi Loz (Almond Balls).

Mixed in with the recipes are Roden's personal experiences as a cook and recipe archivist, and Middle Eastern tales that illustrate the history of a particular recipe or food group. "It was once believed olive oil could cure any illness except the one by which a person was fated to die," Roden writes. "People still believe in its beneficial qualities and sometimes drink it neat when they feel anemic of tired." She also includes a detailed introduction to the terrain, history, politics, and society of the Middle East so her readers can more fully understand why the cuisine has evolved the way it has. "Cooking in the Middle East is deeply traditional and nonintellectual," she says, "an inherited art." It's our good fortune to inherit such a rich tradition. --Dana Van Nest

From Publishers Weekly

When Roden published The Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1972, the cuisines of Morocco, Turkey, Greece, Egypt and their neighbors were mysteries in this country. Today, their fresh flavors are better known, and much loved, and Roden has expanded and updated her classic to meet modern needs. The new version includes more than 800 recipes, as well as folk tales, tips, anecdotes and just about all the information anyone needs to reproduce foods from that part of the world. Miraculously, Roden manages to be this thorough while never sacrificing her personal toneDthis is a book that is both encyclopedic and intimate. Much of Middle Eastern food is light tasting and vegetable-based, and the recipes reflect these qualities without neglecting more complex and unusual preparations. A chapter on appetizers and salads includes a Moroccan Lettuce and Orange Salad, Tabbouleh, Lemony Chicken Jelly and even a Brain Salad. While Roden is no stickler for starting from scratch, she always provides plenty of options for those who wish to do so. In a section on yogurtDa key ingredient in many recipes, such as Tagliatelle with Yogurt and Fried Onions, and Chickpeas with Yogurt and Soaked BreadDshe gives both guidelines for buying yogurt and instructions for making your own. A sub-section on Persian sauces for rice is outstanding, as is another on stuffed eggplants. Desserts include Egyptian "Bread-and-Butter" Pudding and Arab Pancakes with various filings. Roden won a James Beard award for The Book of Jewish Food in 1997. She will certainly be in the running once more with this impressive work. 24 pages of color photos. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Revised edition (September 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375405062
• ISBN-13: 978-0375405068
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 1.6 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Middle Eastern

More About the Author

Claudia Roden was born in Cairo, educated in Paris and London, where she has lived for many years. Widely admired as both a great cook and a fine writer, she has written classic works on Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cookery and, most recently, her award-winning The Book of Jewish Food.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

184 of 184 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars all my fav middle eastern recipes!, March 25, 2003

By 

rtistelle "rtistelle" (Denver area) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Hardcover)

I lived in the Middle East for 3 years and grew to love Egyptian, Turkish, Moroccan, and Arabian foods. I ordered 5 middle eastern cookbooks including this Roden volume(to add to my collection which includes 3 others) when I ordered a tagine cooker from Amazon. I could have only ordered this one! It has everything: explanations of ingredients, easy ways to cook and serve the dishes, and my fav recipes.
I was so surprised to see its comprehensiveness. It had the wonderful snake pastry (snake shape, not ingredient!) of Morocco, and gave ingredient amounts befitting a party crowd. Favorite tagine lamb dishes, boreks, kibbie (kibbeh), yogurtlu-steeped meat dishes called to mind many delightful authentic culinary experiences. I even laughed to read both stories I had been told about the dish which killed the priest. And I learned new ones, ie the Sultan's dish story.
I was also delighted by the tone of the book, comments, adjustments for the modern kitchen, and the stories included in the pages. Mullah Nazruddhin Hoja tales have been a standard in my household, and the inclusion of some of his snippets are being relished.
A Persian poet once said: If I have but two dollars, let me use one to buy a loaf of bread to feed my body and the other for a hyacinth to feed my soul. This cookbook has both cuisine - sensual Arabic foods for the body and stuff for the soul.
Need one Middle Eastern cookbook? This is the one! Highly recommended.

122 of 122 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Claudia Roden is the Middle Easts answer to Julia Child!, October 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Hardcover)

Let me start out by simply saying: BUY THIS BOOK!! Almost 10 years ago, I stumbled on a worn out much-abridged paperback version of her original book. I bought it on a lark and was immediately brought back to my grandmothers kitchen and weekend family meals. As a second generation Middle Eastern male, I never really had any type of training in the kitchen let alone recipes to follow...this book proved to be an immense help to me...it helped me rediscover my lost heritage of Lebanese home-cooking.

From years of use and more use, my paperback copy has had so many spills and accidents that it is almost falling apart. When I saw that they re-published the book, I bought it immediately.

As the opener states, Claudia Roden is to Middle Eastern cuisine what Julia Child is to French. She manages to give a history, a story, and a recipe all without seeming disjointed or breaking stride. Her directions are clear and concise and the measures, times, and ingredient amounts all work...something a few cookbook authors have yet to master!

Another factor in recommending this book is that Ms Roden's approach was to take a comprehensive look at Middle Eastern food. She included everything from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf States and on to Iran...most books in this genre only include recipes from one or two countries. She also takes dishes and gives them regional spins (ie: making a traditional Lebanese dish and then showing variations which give it a more Morrocan flavor or Iranian, etc).

I sing the highest praises of Ms Roden and her book. It is a true masterpiece and should be included in any household library of someone who enjoys eating.

Buy the book and eat well!

109 of 111 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Culinary Atlas of Arab, Persian, Berber, and Ottoman Worlds, December 15, 2003

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Hardcover)

Claudia Roden is one of the three great ladies of Mediterranean food writing, joining Elizabeth David and Paula Wolfert to make this cuisine one of the best reported centers of food interest in the English speaking world. The three connect in this book by Ms. David's being the avowed inspiration for Rodin's work and by Claudia Roden's citing Paula Wolfert's excellent book on couscous and referring to one of her other major works in the bibliography. It is also worth noting another literary connection in that the Alfred A. Knopf editor for this book is the acclaimed Judith Jones, the editor for Julia Child's landmark first books on French cuisine. While all of that makes this a noteworthy book with `good connections', it is not what makes the book worth buying.

As the title suggests, this book is a new and greatly revised edition of a volume first published in 1968. In this edition, much academic material, i.e. recipes derived from translations of old historical documents has been replaced and augmented by newer material from the Middle East. Ms. Roden clearly states that this is not a work of scholarship, but one should not take from that the feeling that these recipes are not the real thing. I am certain that like Ms. Wolfert, they are genuinely Middle Eastern recipes, made useable by the modern American or English cook.

The meaning of `Middle Eastern' in the title may not be exactly what a geographer or historian may mean by `Middle Eastern' or roughly from Turkey to Egypt to Iran. Ms. Roden means primarily the region covered by the greatest advance of the Muslim rule and influence in the European Middle ages. Her four principle regions of concentration are:

The earliest and `the most exquisite and refined' is that of Persia, now Iran. This is `the ancient source of much of the `haute cuisine' of the Middle East'. This is the route by which rice from India passed into the Middle East and the West.

The second region is roughly the Arab lands now formed into the states of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. This is where Arab food is at it's best. This includes the Fertile Crescent, which is actually in modern Iraq.

The third region is Turkey, or more broadly, the area influenced by the former Ottoman Empire. This presence had its influence most felt in Europe, especially the Balkans, Hungary, Greece, Russia, North Africa, and even Austria and France. This is the source of kebabs, savory pies, yogurt salads, and paper-thin dough.

The fourth style is the cuisine of North Africa, extending as far West as Morocco on the Atlantic coast of Africa. The strongest native influence here is in couscous from the Berber nomads who collaborated with the Arabs in conquering southern Spain. This region also retains some of the strongest echoes of the cuisines of ancient Persia and Baghdad.

The recipes are divided by the type of central ingredient in dishes, but certain ingredients, most especially olives and olive oil, yogurt, citrus fruits, bulgar wheat, rice, eggplant, and lamb pervade all sections. I was just a bit surprised to find that like the Indian cuisine, clarified butter plays a large role as the `lipid of choice' in this region, keeping parity with olive oil in most regions.

The recipe sections in this book are:

Appetizers, Salads, and Cold Vegetables such as Stuffed Grape Leaves, Falafel, and Baba Ghanouj
Yogurt, including very simple instructions on how to make yogurt at home
Savory Pies including Tagine Malsouka, Spanakopitta, and many other Filo based pies
Soups, including those of lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, spinach, and carrots
Egg Dishes, featuring omelets very similar to the Italian frittata or Spanish tortilla
Fish and Seafood, including marinades, kebabs, and North African seafood
Poultry, featuring pigeons, squabs, quail, ducks, and many varieties of chicken dishes
Meat Dishes featuring lamb, the famous shish kebab, moussaka, meatballs, and sweetmeats
Vegetables, featuring artichokes, spinach, zucchini, eggplant, okra, sweet potatoes, and chickpeas
Rice, featuring pilafs and rice with favas, dates, yogurt, chickpeas, cherries, lentils, and rhubarb
Bulgur, Couscous, and Pasta featuring bulgar pilafs, methods for making couscous, and noodles
Breads, featuring pita, pita, and pita
Desserts, Pastries, and Sweetmeats featuring citrus fruits, apricots, nuts, cherries, dates, and baklawa
Pickles and Preserves featuring preserved lemons, pickled vegetables, chili and tomato sauce
Jams and Fruit Preserves featuring citrus, peaches, walnuts, pumpkins, figs, quinces, and eggplant
Drinks and Sherbet featuring Lemonade, Laban (Yogurt Drink), coffee, tea, almond milk

As one may expect, New World vegetables are present, but not as pervasive as in Italian cuisine.

One can see much of this food at the heart of the perceived to be healthy `Mediterranean Cuisine' plus echoes in raw food preparation and in the cuisines of such luminaries with a Mediterranean background such as Eric Ripert. This book did exacerbate my confusion over the term `Meze'. The Greek food expert Diane Kochilas states that it refers only to small dishes served with ouzo and other alcoholic beverages separate from sit down meals. Roden confirms the connection with ouzo but identifies it with dishes opening a meal. I guess it depends on which country you talk to. Sigh.

This book is a certifiable classic, especially for those interested in food in general or in Middle Eastern food in particular. The bibliography is an excellent jumping off point for exploring this cuisine. Also, the sidebars of Middle Eastern stories are a real hoot. You will not be disappointed.