Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon: A Cookbook

by Claudia Roden

Book Overview

Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon offer some of the world's most exciting cuisines. In this delectable cookbook, the award-winning, bestselling author of The Book of Jewish Cooking and Claudia Roden's Mediterranean translates the subtle play of flavors and cooking techniques to our own home kitchens.

Interweaving history, stories, and her own observations, she gives us 150 of the most delicious recipes:...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 030726498X
• ISBN13: 9780307264985
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 2.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.7" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

Yum

Roden presents Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines with delicious results. The recipes are clear, easy and just plain good. Try the zucchini fritters "kabak mucveri," the roast shoulder of lamb with couscous and date stuffing "dala m'aamra bi keskou wa tmar" or prawns in spicy tomato sauce "kimroun bil tamatem." A glossary would have been a good addition and the book's organization by country is a bit awkward, but the index is thorough and broken down by ingredients. For the cook interested in this food genre, I would also refer them to books by Wolfert and Heiou, as well as Roden's previous writings. A terrific addition to any cook's library.

More great recipes

One expects the best from Claudia Roden, and this book does not disappoint. Some of us remember how her "Book of Middle Eastern Food" burst like a great white light on the culinary scene, way back in 1968. (There is now an even better second edition, 2000.) The present book recycles some recipes from earlier works, but focuses on three particularly good areas, and has absolutely top-flight recipes from them, sparing you the problem of wading through a vast mass of text. Just a couple of quick supplemental comments from some experience: First, there is one bad thing about this book: Ms. Roden's tolerance for bouillon cubes. Their metallic, rancid-grease taste ruins Middle Eastern food. Use homemade stock or just omit. Second, Turkish food isn't "Arab," it really does depend heavily on Turkic roots, plus Greek and Persian influences--only a few Arab ones. And the publishers have badly served the Turkish section by using dotted i's for undotted ones. These write different sounds: the dotted i is the "ee" sound, the undotted is approximately the "uh" sound. This could cause confusion if you ask for ingredients or dishes. One more note on Turkey: For Turkish food, especially the salads, you have to use not just extra virgin olive oil, but Turkish extra virgin oil, or something very similar (Lebanese or the finest Kalamata or Italian). Yep, it costs, so much so that one dish is named "The Imam Fainted" because--according to one story--he found out the cost of the oil in the dish (p. 168)! Finally, Ms. Roden notes that argan oil, a wonderful if obscure oil from southern Morocco, is regarded as "aphrodisiac." Actually, a mixture of argan oil, honey, and ground almonds is called "Moroccan Viagra" in that part of the world. The reality behind this seems to be the combination of sugar for quick energy and protein plus easily digestible, nourishing oil for stamina. It's also used for kids, to make them grow better, and no one thinks it will turn them into sex demons, so we're talking nutrition here, not lust per se. Turkey has an equivalent: lukum candy made from grape juice and walnuts ("Turkish Viagra"--according to Istanbul market men).

A Beauty of a Cookbook

I loved this even before I tried one of the recipes - it is truly a lovely book and a joy just to page through. This is my first Roden cookbook so perhaps I'm not as disappointed as some who feel some of the material has been presented before. I like to learn more about food than just how to prepare it, so welcomed her stories about the origins and significance of recipes and ingredients. As a "regular joe" kind of cook, it pleases me that many of the recipes are accessible to me. But those with a higher level of kitchen skill should enjoy it, too. This would be a wonderful gift book for a friend who loves food and world cultures.

Wow, what a beauty!

I am a big fan of Claudia Roden, and have been collecting her cookbooks for years. This one beat all my expectations. It is beautifully photographed and the recipes are great. One thing I love about her books is that she tells you history of the dishes and makes you feel like you are learning about a culture. I really like the format where it is split into seperate sections for each county. This is one book I look forward to using again and again!

Superior Culinary Travelogue from an expert.

`Arabesque' by the distinguished Egypto-English culinary journalist, Claudia Roden is a culinary travelogue that, according to the subtitle, gives us `A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, & Lebanon'. Ms. Roden states that the choice of these three cuisines was based on the fact that in each of the three countries, there has been something of a Renaissance of ancient culinary traditions and techniques, backed up by the fact that the culinary traditions of all three centers of Arab culture were outstanding to begin with, going back to the eighth century for Morocco and Lebanon and to the even more distinguished background of the Ottoman Turkish cuisines, both original and borrowed from the earlier Persian traditions. There is no question that these three geographical centers are tied together by their Moslem heritage; however it may be just a bit of a stretch to consider them all to be based on Arab traditions, as Morocco had a strong native Berber influence, as well as more recent French influences and the Turks were, I believe not really Arab. But I will not quibble, as Arab influences, especially in their traditions of hospitality show up in all three culinary histories. It is important to take Ms. Roden's subtitle seriously in that this book is more of a taste than it is a `full course meal'. This book is much more like the `culinary travelogue' books `Hot Sour Salty Sweet' and `Mangoes and Curry Leaves' of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid than it is like Roden's earlier works, `The Food of Italy' and `The New Book of Middle Eastern Food'. It is also certainly not like Paula Wolfert's excellent books of culinary anthropology such as `Couscous' and `The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean'. And, this is not a book for the amateur tourist. I constantly run into obscure words or notions that are not explained, since the author seems to believe that we are revisiting some old haunts. If you have read your Wolfert and the earlier Roden books, you will know that `medina' is an Arab market and that souk is a center for spice dealers. If you are a hiker or camper, you will probably also know that a Primus stove is a light small single burner device which burns white gas. Oddly, I really sort of enjoyed being treated like a fellow insider for whom Ms. Roden didn't have to explain every little detail. Madame C. was much more interested in giving us a personal tour of her recent first hand experiences in Fez, Beirut, and Istanbul. Consistent with the travelogue theme, the culinary explorations simply do not go very deep. While we are treated to three different methods for making the Moroccan specialty, salt preserved lemons, no time at all is spent on the details of making couscous or warka, the pastry used to make the other Moroccan national dish, bstilla. All recipes are made with pre-cooked couscous or commercially available fillo dough respectively. Ms. Roden doesn't even spend much time on cooking with a tagine. It turns out my suspicion about this cook