Product Description

Since the book first came out in 1968 Claudia Roden has continued to collect recipes and culinary wisdom from the Middle East. As a result of talking and writing to many people, tasting their food and watching them cook.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5414 in Books
• Published on: 1986-10-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
Claudia Roden was born and brought up in Cairo. She finished her education in Paris and later studied art in London. Starting as a painter she was drawn to the subject of food partly through a desire to evoke a lost heritage - one of the pleasures of a happy life in Egypt. The local delight in food, like the light, colour and smells and the special brand of hospitality, warmth and humour, has left a permanent impression. With her bestselling classic, A Book of Middle Eastern Food (Penguin 1970, revised edition A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, 1985), first published in 1968, Claudia Roden revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East. Her intensely personal approach and her passionate appreciation of the dishes delighted readers, while she introduced them to a new world of foods, both exotic and wholesome. The book received great critical acclaim, and the publication of the enlarged edition was enthusiastically welcomed. Mrs Roden has continued to write about food with a special interest in the social and historical background of cooking. In 1981 Penguin reissued Coffee, which was followed in 1982 by Picnic. Then came the BBC television series, Mediterranean Cookery with Claudia Roden, and the accompanying book, Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Cookery, a new, expanded edition of which was recently published. This was followed by The Food of Italy and then The Book of Jewish Food. In 1992, Claudia Roden won the Glenfiddich Trophy, the top prize of the Glenfiddich Awards. The Book of Jewish Food was awarded the 1998 Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Book Prize for Non-Fiction, was the 1998 Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year and the 1997 André Simon Memorial Fund Food Book.

Customer Reviews

The best book on middle-eastern kitchen!
I had one of the earlier editions of this book and it taught me how to cook. The new edition is even better than the previous. How is that possible? Maybe I have, with age, learned to appreciate culinary culture more than I used to.

I am a Turkish woman and most of the recepies Roden explains in her marvellous book are no strangers to me. I have ben living abroad now for many years. Every time I open Roden's book I can smell my grandmother's kitchen.

Here is a personal "thank you" to Claudia Roden from me. Maashallah, forty one times, as we say back home.

If you buy one Middle Eastern cookery book...
...make it this one. The recipes easy to follow, and Roden's writing style is peppered with amusing anecdotes about her childhood in Egypt and historical information that make this book a good read outside the kitchen as well as in.

Whereas many Middle Eastern cookbooks leave out ingredients (presumably to make the dishes seem less scary to Western palates), Roden's recipes are authentic. Many include alternate suggestions and regional variations from family recipes submitted by her friends and readers from across the region, so chances are you'll always have the proper ingredients to hand.

I cook from this regularly, both for everyday meals and special occasions (the appetiser section has loads of dishes that are great for parties). Middle Eastern cooking seems to be designed to make expensive ingredients like meat go a long way, and (although they're not flagged as such) there's some great recipes here if you're on a tight budget.

In other words...absolutely essential.

The best of my cookbook collection (over 300 books!)
I bought the original edition many years ago, and I found it so useful and delightful to read that I bought the new one as soon as it came out. The author mixes folk tales with personal anecdotes, an outline of the origins of certain dishes and of course, a bounty of clear and wonderful recipes. Each one of them is the best I have ever found for the dish in question, well explained, and comes out perfect every time. Thanks to Mrs Roden I have opened a treasure chest, her book is a voyage of discovery of Middle Eastern food, tradition, way of life, folklore, etc. The sun shines on every page!