OP: A Book of Middle Eastern Food
Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Hardcover. Very Good Plus. First US printing, signed.
Claudia Roden’s (1936– ) A Book of MIddle Eastern Food (1968) was one of the first books to introduce the English-speaking world to the flavors and aromas of Middle Eastern cuisine. It set the stage for Paula Wolfert’s seminal Couscous and Other Food from Morocco, which was published the following year.
If you can imagine, hummus, halloumi, couscous, labneh, shakshuka, phyllo, and all the rest, were essentially unknown to the average British and American households before these books were published.
A 32-year-old Egyptian exile living in England at the time, Roden, like so many other immigrants in a similar position, wrote her cookbook out of necessity and of yearning. She says, “It is the fruit of nostalgic longing for, and delighted savoring of, a food that was the constant joy of life in a world so different from the Western one.”
Roden approaches her subject with genuine curiosity and thoughtfulness in providing context for the dishes she lays out—an important development in mid-century cookbook writing, and essential here considering the wide geography and many regional cuisines covered.
A sampling of the breadth and variety in the 400-plus pages:
- Turkish wedding soup, or dügün çorbasi
- Leek meatballs from Salonika
- Tunisian fish couscous
- Persian chicken and rice, or morg polo
- Egyptian brown bean stew (ful medames), topped with hard boiled egg
- Iraqi fried potato fritters, stuffed with spiced ground meat and pine nuts
- Sephardic orange and almond cake
