Claudia Roden
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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General AAS
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Regional & International -> Middle Eastern
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Highly overrated 2 out of 5 stars.
11 of 17 people found this review helpful.
I was quite disappointed with this book. Many of the recipes yield very mediocre results, and some don't work at all. For example, the recipe for tabbouleh produces a salad that has little but a name in common with the genuine article. To begin with, it calls for 1/2 pound (2 cups) fine burghul, which doesn't make sense since 1/2 pound yields only about 1 1/4 cups. The quantities for other ingredients are also incorrect. For each cup of burghul one should use at the very least three times as much parsley as specified and about twice as much onion, mint, olive oil, and lemon juice. "A little tomato" is suggested as an option, yet this salad is hardly worth making without a generous amount of tomatoes. Also, the recipe doesn't specify that flat-leaf (not curly) parsley and spearmint (not peppermint) should be used. The author writes that tabbouleh is traditionally served with boiled vine leaves, or raw lettuce or cabbage leaves. Actually, it is served with fresh vine leaves, romaine, or white cabbage leaves.Ms. Roden's burghul pilaf is another disaster. Her recipe calls for 4 cups burghul, which serves at least 12 (not 6)! It neglects to specify what size burghul to use (it should be coarse rather than fine), calls for an excessive amount of butter, and uses less than half the quantity of liquid required. The recipe for meat eggah (omelet) doesn't work because the meat should be browned (not raw) before being combined with the eggs. The recipe for dondurma kaymakli (ice cream) asks for 1 teaspoon sahlab or cornstarch, which is wrong. Far more sahlab is required for this recipe to work, and cornstarch will not work at all.
The recipes often fail to provide essential information, nor are they consistent. They frequently neglect to specify the type and size of pan needed, whether or not to cover the pan during cooking, how long to cook the ingredients and if and when to stir them, whether to use high, medium, or low heat, and how far to place the food from the heat source when broiling or grilling. They often don't specify the amount of butter or oil needed, what kind of vinegar to use, what size and/or weight eggplant is required, and, sometimes, what size burghul to use.
Recipes for many well-known dishes are missing. There is little information on Middle Eastern breads; some of the most important ones, for example khubz markuk and its regional variations, are not even mentioned. Several countries, among them Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Yemen, are very poorly represented.
The book could have been better organized. For instance, rice and burghul aren't discussed in the same chapter, which would have been appropriate since they are both grains and can often be substituted for each other in recipes. Also, the index leaves much to be desired.
This cookbook is hardly the standard work it has been made out to be. Readers will need to look elsewhere.
Editorial Review:
More than 500 recipes from the subtle, spicy, varied cuisines of the Middle East, ranging from inexpensive but tasty peasant fare to elaborate banquet dishes.
