Middle Eastern Cuisine

The Fertile Crescent region—the swath of land comprising a vast portion of today’s Middle East—has long been regarded as pivotal to the rise of civilization. Alongside the story of human development, innovation, and progress, there is a culinary tradition of equal richness and importance. In The Culinary Crescent: A History of Middle Eastern Cuisine, Peter Heine combines years of scholarship with a personal passion: his knowledge of the cookery traditions of the Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts is matched only by his love for the tastes and smells produced by the contemporary cooking of these areas today. In addition to offering a fascinating history, Heine presents more than one hundred recipes—from the modest to the extravagant—with dishes ranging from those created by the “celebrity chefs” of the bygone Mughal era, up to gastronomically complex presentations of modern times. Beautifully produced, designed for both reading and cooking, and lavishly illustrated in color throughout, The Culinary Crescent is sure to provide a delectable window in the history of food in the Middle East.

Growing up in an Arab American household, rich traditional Arabic dishes were central to Blanche's family's life. However she noticed that previous generations of her family did not document these heirloom recipes on paper, but passed the cooking techniques only by word of mouth. So Blanche began a mission of cultural preservation, taking down the cooking methods and exact ingredients of these hundreds of year old recipes. She launched a popular YouTube cooking show called ''Feast in the Middle East'' to not only share these recipes with her family, but with the world. Some of these dishes are classical favorites, like smoky Syrian Muhammara dip with walnuts, pomegranate molasses and roasted peppers, ''Warak Enab, '' or rice and lamb rolled into tender grape leaves and cooked in a tomato broth, or Lebanese semolina custard scented with rose water called ''Layali Lubnan'' or ''Lebanese Nights''. Other dishes, like Musakhan, come from small and obscure villages like Ein Erik in the Palestinian West Bank. Musakhan is a sumac spiced chicken roasted on bread and smothered with caramelized onions and toasted pine nuts. Ancient recipes like chewy semolina date ring cookies called Ma'moul commemorate both Easter and Ramadan, while an over 1000 year old cinnamon spiced bulgur wheat porridge called Burbarra celebrates the Feast of Santa Barbara in the Arab Levant, Malta, and even Eastern Europe. While many of these dishes used to take hours to make, Blanche modernized these recipes to adapt to today's western palate and busy lifestyles. Readers will be able to recreate street foods like Chicken Shawarma and crispy Felafel in their own kitchens using easy techniques and familiar ingredients. Fusion dishes like Baklava Granola with pistachios and cardamom, Middle Eastern Nachos or ''Machos'' with pita chips and cucumber yogurt sauce, and a Lemon Cheesecake made with creamy labneh cheese adapt middle eastern spices and ingredients to western tastes. Today the ''Feast in the Middle East'' YouTube series has brought together a global cooking community in an unexpected and beautiful way. Now viewers are making these recipes in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, Spain, Korea and beyond. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY: Blanche Araj Shaheen is the YouTube personality and host of the popular cooking show, Feast in the Middle East. Prior to her foray into food, she was a television host and reporter in both entertainment and news. She reported and hosted programs for PBS, G4 Television, and Link Media's ''Mosaic World News of the Middle East.'' She also became the first Arab American entertainment reporter, as a contributor for the ABC live show called ''View From the Bay.'' In 2010 Blanche made the switch to hosting her own YouTube cooking show, sharing heirloom recipes preserved by her mother and grandmother. With her journalism background, she decided to document the recipes in this cookbook, and Feast in the Middle East was born. She gives the historical relevance of many signature dishes, and shares personal stories from her own family traditions and trips to the Middle East. Aside from her ongoing cooking series on YouTube, Blanche's Feast In the Middle East has been featured on Virgin America Airlines AUTHOR HOME: Los Altos, C

From Morocco, Malta and Andalucia in the west, to Turkey, Lebanon and Iran in the East, the food and flavours of the Middle East permeate almost every aspect of daily life in that region. Orange blossom and rose petals, spice- encrusted slow-cooked meats, fermented yoghurts, dates and olives - these are the flavours that have captivated visitors for centuries and that have experienced a recent surge in popularity in western kitchens. Following on from the popular television series, Spice Journey the book takes readers on a whirlwind tour of Middle Eastern food at its best. Awardwinning Maltese-Australian chef Shane Delia journeys to the well-trodden souks, street food stalls as well as private dining rooms of locals across six countries in the Middle East, in search of the most authentic and representative local recipes to bring back to his kitchen. Spice Journey offers 80 of these recipes distilled for the home cook, accompanied by hundreds of stunning images shot on location. This is a stunning volume for anyone who has ever dreamt of taking their own spice journey.

Tangy lemony tabbouleh, smoky, rich baba ghanouj, beautifully spiced lamb shank...the recipes in Olives, Lemons & Za'atar provide something irresistible for every occasion. These dishes represent the flavors of Rawia's Middle Eastern childhood with recipes copied faithfully from family cookbooks (her mother's most treasured harissa), and then developed with a creative flourish of her own. Her food is deeply personal and so she includes the classics but also the Mediterranean influences that come from summer holidays in Spain and living in Bay Ridge, the old Italian neighbourhood in Brooklyn. The result is a sensational cross-cultural mix and provides you with everything you need to enjoy the best home cooking and share the most convivial Middle Eastern hospitality.

Contemporary Lebanese recipes from the host of PBS shows Cooking with Julie Taboulie and the Julie Taboulie’s Lebanese Kitchen. Since she was six years old, Julie Ann Sageer (nicknamed Julie Taboulie by her close-knit family) has had a passion for cooking the meals of her Lebanese heritage. Just like in her Emmy-nominated cooking show Cooking with Julie Taboulie, each of her recipes comes with hands-on instructions, tips, and tricks for making homemade Middle Eastern dishes using heaps of fresh, seasonal ingredients. Here you’ll find dishes that range from classics like falafel, shawarma, and (of course) taboulie, to warming Bazilla—a stew of tomato, green pea, and lamb—to honey and rosewater-infused desserts. In these 125 recipes, you’ll learn how easy it is to make such Lebanese staples as fresh labneh (strained yogurt) and how to put together your own delicious, multi-purpose spice mixes. In addition to the delicious meat and chicken dishes, Lebanese cuisine offers a wide variety of vegetarian, pescatarian, vegan, and gluten-free dishes, usually with no substitutions whatsoever! Every chapter includes a multitude of dishes for eaters of all kinds and preferences, from meat-lovers to veggie-heads and everything in between.

The definitive volume on Middle Eastern cooking, a modern classic from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Book of Jewish Food and Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Originally published in 1972 and hailed by James Beard as "a landmark in the field of cookery," this new version represents the accumulation of the author's years of extensive travel throughout the ever-changing landscape of the Middle East, gathering recipes and stories. Now featuring more than 800 recipes, including the aromatic variations that accent a dish and define the country of origin: fried garlic and cumin and coriander from Egypt, cinnamon and allspice from Turkey, sumac and tamarind from Syria and Lebanon, pomegranate syrup from Iran, preserved lemon and harissa from North Africa. Claudia Roden has worked out simpler approaches to traditional dishes, using healthier ingredients and time-saving methods without ever sacrificing any of the extraordinary flavor, freshness, and texture that distinguish the cooking of this part of the world. Throughout these pages she draws on all four of the region's major cooking styles: • The refined haute cuisine of Iran, based on rice exquisitely prepared and embellished with a range of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts • Arab cooking from Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan—at its finest today, and a good source for vegetable and bulgur wheat dishes • The legendary Turkish cuisine, with its kebabs, wheat and rice dishes, yogurt salads, savory pies, and syrupy pastries • North African cooking, particularly the splendid fare of Morocco, with its heady mix of hot and sweet, orchestrated to perfection in its couscous dishes and tagines From the tantalizing mezze—succulent bites of filled fillo crescents and cigars, chopped salads, and stuffed morsels, as well as tahina, chickpeas, and eggplant in their many guises—to the skewered meats and savory stews and hearty grain and vegetable dishes, here is a rich array of Middle Eastern cooking.

Create a culinary mosaic with this Middle Eastern cookbook! When Faith Gorsky married her Syrian husband, she was introduced to a cultural and culinary world that would forever change how she experienced food and cooking. Gorsky's mother-in-law took her under her wing, and in 6 months gave her a thorough course in Middle Eastern cooking that became the basis for her popular website, An Edible Mosaic—and now this book. The growth and success of her website and her growing interest in dishes from the Middle East led to even more trips to the area, where she deepened her knowledge of the food and acquired more recipes to cook and share with her husband and the online community. In this Syrian cookbook, Gorsky shares her favorite recipes from throughout the region: Lamb or Beef Kebab, Several Ways (Mashawi) Creamy Chickpea and Yogurt Casserole (Fetteh) Parsley Salad with Bulgur Wheat (Tabbouleh) Sumac-Spiced Chicken (Musakhan) Pan Seared White Cheese And 75 more, paired with 175 color photographs Her love for the cuisine of her husband's homeland comes across in her enthusiasm for putting together these Syrian recipes, and in the awareness that Middle Eastern cooking is more than just a means of sustenance—it lies at the epicenter of gatherings with family and friends.

Arabic Cuisine is a Middle Eastern recipe book for people looking to cook their own meals at home and with absolute ease. It is suitable for beginners who never tried cooking before and want to start out using simple to follow recipes. It is also great for people who already cook and want to add variety to their tables or simply like to experiment with new styles of cooking.The book contains over 80 recipes in the following categories:Soups, Salads, Snacks & Starters, Main Dishes, Vegetarian Dishes, Sweets and Desserts.