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Title: The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden ISBN: 0-375-40506-2 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 26 September, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (12 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: "Mary Smith's Book of European Food"?
Comment: I question the usefulness of whole region cookbooks in general. Imagine a cookbook with a title like my review title. Would the author really be conversant with all the techniques and ingredients of the European continent?
In the case of Ms. Roden, there is the additional problem that her memories of Cairene food are dusty; in some recipes she confesses she had never heard of the dish when she had lived in Egypt. Ms. Roden also depends on ingredients she has at hand (in London apparently). As a result she recommends items one can now buy fresh in America. One example is the pomegranate paste she uses in Persian Fesenjun. Iranian cooks make their own juice with fresh pomegranates; we can buy 100% pomegranate bottled juice from California.
Many recipes have not changed from her original Middle Eastern Cooking book. That would be a good thing if the originals reflected traditional recipes but I am afraid what we are often left with are 1950-60's versions of dishes from ex-patriot wives in the Middle East or Westernized takes from immigrant Arabs. I don't know how often Ms. Roden checks in with the current kitchens and families of the Arab world today.
I treasure the recipes she passes on from Middle Eastern Jewish families. Her comments on Islamic customs, however, are less than flattering and downright maddening. The Middle East constantly at war? And this supposed state of perpetual conflict has produced the cuisine? How people forget. Our short history on this continent has been one of constant war, with others and between ourselves. And did the Civil War produce a special cuisine? No need for war to spread good cooking ideas and tastes around; that's what traders and travellers have always done.
For more credible culinary history of the region, I recommend Ayla Algar's books, especially "Classical Turkish Cooking for the American Kitchen"(Harper Collins Pub.). Algar's cookbook titles are curiously missing from Roden's bibliography, while hard-to-find books on Turkish food published in Istanbul are included.
I like the Mulla jokes, even though some of them are completely lost in translation.
Rating: 5
Summary: all my fav middle eastern recipes!
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Culinary Atlas of Arab, Persian, Berber, and Ottoman Worlds
Comment: 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.
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Title: The Book of Jewish Food : An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden ISBN: 0394532589 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 26 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Lebanese Cuisine: More Than 200 Simple, Delicious, Authentic Recipes by Madelain Farah ISBN: 1568581793 Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows Pub. Date: 30 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Egyptian Cooking: A Practical Guide by Samia Abdennour, Abdennour Samia ISBN: 0781806437 Publisher: Hippocrene Books Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Claudia Roden's the Food of Italy: Region by Region by Claudia Roden ISBN: 1586420623 Publisher: Steerforth Italia Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Kibbee 'N' Spice and Everything Nice : Popular and Easy Recipes for the Lebanese and American Family by Janet Kalush ISBN: 0967266300 Publisher: Partner's Book Distributing Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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