The New Book of Middle Eastern Food: The Classic Cookbook, Expanded and Updated, with New Recipes and Contemporary Variations on Old Themes Hardcover – September 26, 2000

The five stars is for the book and its author. Shipping quality deserved 2 stars. Book arrived without shrink wrap loose in large box with assorted other heavy items. Cover slightly damaged on bottom front edge. Considered returning since it is a gift but decided that it is a cookbook after all and will likely see much more wear and tear in the coming years.Excited about sharing this author with my friend. Beautifully written exploration of Mediterranean culture, history and foodways. I like cookbooks written from the perspective of a cultural anthropologist who also loves to cook. This certainly more than meets my expectations!

The author of this book is a true connoisseur of ME cuisine. She knows what she's doing and can explain it clearly. We hardly eat meat anymore (like most of the rest of the world) but, of course, still want tasty, satisfying dishes. While some of the recipes are more complicated, there are plenty that are simple yet very well seasoned and use fresh ingredients. A great purchase.

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.

Middle eastern food often will vary in it's name and origin, from one country to the next based on a few interchanging spices and ingredients. One of the things that I liked about this book is that it gave suggestions to alter the ethnicity by slightly changing some of the ingredients, turning it from Egyptian for example to Lebanese. The books first 50 pages are a Middle_eastern culinary lesson in the history and evolution of Middle-Eastern food.Read the how to use this book to help you navigate through the book as it is a bit confusing at first. The recipes are generally good although I disagree on some of the short cuts and substitutions (for example I have always known Muhammara to contain roasted red peppers and not tomato paste) but overall it is the most authentic book that I have been able to find.

I own a lot of cookbooks but this one is my go to. I check here first if I’m looking for a recipe or great instructions on how to make something. Beautifully written, nice stories and photos, very well researched with suggested variations to make a dish more Iraqi, more Lebanese, Syrian, and so on. If I could only have one cookbook on the Middle East, it would be this one.

There are so many wonderful recipes in this book, but I love learning about the history and culture behind them. Parts of the cookbook are more like a history lesson, which I love. I remember making much of the food with my Lebanese grandmother, so it is a treasure to have some recipes she never wrote down and the cultural context behind them.Ms. Roden has clearly put much time into her research and recipe testing; she truly has expertise in middle eastern cuisine. I think that the section of egg dishes is especially well written, each dish I have tried has come out so well. Her instructions are easy to follow. The ingredients are simple and mostly not difficult to find in an average supermarket, but some things like rose water may require mail order if you don't have a specialty store near you. There are so many recipes in this book that you'd be hard pressed to get through them all, but it is a wonderful resource to have in your kitchen.

This is my second Claudia Roden cookbook. I first discovered her through a BBC production when we lived in England back in 1985-87. The food she was preparing was so mouth-watering that I went out the very next day and bought the companion book, 'Mediterranean Cookery'. It has seen much wear, tear and food spattering over the years.The new book encompasses some of the recipes in the old one (which included, Spanish, French and Italian as well as middle eastern). Many of those recipes have a new 'kick' to them. This book is an extremely comprehensive guide to all Middle Eastern foods and I'm having a great time with it. A few caveats: be prepared to go online in search of some of those exotic ingredients if you don't live in a major city. I also would not recommend it for the novice cook. However, if you're willing to go the extra mile to prepare these foods, you are in for a great treat and some very healthy eating.