Middle Eastern Cooking

"Claudia is Egyptian-Jewish, born and brought up in Cairo. She was educated at art school in England but her family is impeccably Middle Eastern. A lot of the cooking in the Middle East originated from Persia. And, like the languages, the various cuisines still have much in common. This book travels across the whole area – in fact, there are some Moroccan dishes in here. She talks about the different versions of a dish. It might be prepared differently in North Africa, for example. The great thing about Claudia Roden is that she never makes the food sound too complicated or impossible. She gives you enough of the background to get you interested. It’s terribly approachable. And, crucially, the recipes work. My favourite is the orange and almond cake. People who know this cake don’t always realise it’s Middle-Eastern. You boil oranges whole until they are soft, then put them in the food processor with eggs, sugar and ground almonds. There’s no flour, which of course makes it great for people with allergies. It’s wonderfully moist. I like to serve a small slice of it with some chocolate-covered orange segments as a dinner-party dessert. Delicious."