The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

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

Product Description
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.

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.


Claudia Roden is the Middle Easts answer to Julia Child!   October 14, 2000
76 out of 76 found this review helpful

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!


The Best   December 26, 2001
Robyn (Monterey Park, CA United States)
49 out of 51 found this review helpful

I decided not to duplicate the heavy American tradition of the Thanksgiving dinner this Christmas. A good substitute seemed to be to go to the source of Christmas: the Middle East. I checked Claudia Roden's book out of the library. At home, I already had other books with this type of cuisine - Armenian, North African, and the slightly variant Italian - all full of luscious photography which is lacking in Roden's book. In spite of that, in comparing the recipes, many of which were duplicated in the various books, hers were almost always the best. I have been in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, and know authenticity when I see it. Her explanations are detailed, yet clear. If you follow them, you will wind up with results that I feel confident would be applauded in the countries of origin, countries where food preparation and consumption is almost a mystical experience.

For those reasons, I am going to break down and buy the book myself. I can't bear to lose it to the library. I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 only for one reason. In my opinion, a cookbook can't be truly complete without a great deal more pictures than are in this book. (It has 491 pages of text and 24 pages of pictures.) If you have been to the countries where these recipes arose, your mind will remember how those dishes looked that you sampled there. Otherwise, you'll need a few supplementary picture books - or make the dishes blind and with confidence that by following the instructions, the results will be right.

PS - the Christmas dinner was extremely well received. It was served as a buffet and was unusually easy entertaining due to the large number of cold dishes in this cuisine which could be prepared in advance.


A Delectable Read   June 13, 2003
22 out of 22 found this review helpful

Although I've never met the great woman, I can honestly say that I grew up in Claudia Roden's kitchen. My mother adhered to the sacred culinary tenets that Ms. Roden set out in her 'Book of Middle Eastern Food' with religious zeal. The results were (what else?) subime. Yet after twenty years of wear, tear, and the best babaganoush you'll ever taste, we retired our tattered paperback copy of the book to the safety of a ziploc baggie and upgraded to Ms. Roden's 'New Book of Middle Eastern Food.' Here Ms. Roden disproves the old adage about gilding the lily. Enhanced by gorgeous color photos and the author's characteristically unpretentious attitude towards cooking, 'The New Book of Middle Eastern Food' is as much a cookbook as it is a culinary ethnography of the Middle East. The recipes are simple, the ingredients are accessible, and the results are delectable. When you're not cookinng out of this book, you'll probably be enjoying the explanations, comments, and characters to which Ms. Roden introduces us.