The Claudia Roden Round Up

May 3, 2014

Well April has been a challenge one way or another but the biggest surprise has perhaps been how difficult it is to get your hands on a copy of Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food without purchasing one. Clearly it is a book that people own for life and it resulted in us being creative and adaptive this month about the recipes we shared.

Those of us that have a much loved copy of this book, that have been a part of their library for years, have brought some wonderful recipes to the table that they have been creating in their kitchen long before The Cookbook Guru was formed. Add to this the new discoveries that we had via a little sampling of Arabesque and we created some stunning dishes worth making a part of your everyday repertoire. I know that now that I finally own a copy of this book I won’t be allowing it to gather dust as I have many recipes earmarked to create that unfortunately just won’t happen in time for our book club. My advice would be, if you see this book somewhere on a discount table or in a second hand book shop, buy it! It’s a bible on Middle Eastern food for your kitchen that is well worth its weight.

I must thank LadyRedSpecs from Please Pass The Recipe for writing a guest post on this book for us this month. Her insights were wonderful and certainly helped to build up my anticipation of the delivery of my own copy. If you see a book that we have on our list that is a long time favourite of yours and you would like to contribute a similar summary or piece please don’t hesitate to let me know and we can organise something. The more content we have around the books we talk about and therefore the more conversation generated the more I think we will all get out of our experience.

So just what has Claudia Roden brought into our kitchens this month?

Tarama by The Kitchen Witch

A feast entitled Cooking With Claudia from Please Pass The Recipe

Morrocan Stuffed Tomatoes from Jamjnr

Rose Scented Rice Pudding from Please Pass The Recipe

Kisir:Peppery Bulgur Salad from Almost Italian

Middle Eastern Lamb Meat Pies from Sharing The Food With Love

Spanakopitta from Passion Fruit Garden

Kebabed from My Kitchen Witch

Baba Ghanoush from Sharing The Food We Love

Super Smokey Babaghanouj from Almost Italian

Syrian Stuffed Kibbeh from Passion Fruit Garden

Semit – Koulouri from My Kitchen Witch

Ataif – Stuffed Pancakes from Lona’s In The Kitchen

Rahat Lokum (Turkish Delight) from Sharing The Food We Love

Sweet Potato Salad from Jamjnr

Truly a wonderful collection and only a sample of the delicious recipes that lie within Clauda Roden’s book. The effort that went into making some of these dishes was phenomenal and I must thank you for taking the time to contribute such delicious food for us all. I also think we have produced perhaps one of the most comprehensive lists of Claudia Roden’s food online based on the research that we’ve all done trying to find recipes so thank you for highlighting a worthy cook to us all. I hope you enjoyed exploring this book as much as I did.

I look forward to seeing what we come up with in May for Mrs Beeton.

Leah