Middle-East food guru Claudia Roden's new book, Arabesque - which celebrates the cuisine of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon - will be published on October 27.

It's her eleventh book since her seminal Book of Middle-Eastern Food, which awoke a generation of foodies to the pleasures of Arabic cooking.

You can read an interview with Claudia Roden here

To order your copy of Arabesque, click here


Dear Claudia, as you know, the often subtle difference in the spices used in different Middle Eastern cuisines are fundamental to their character - yet what is available in most of the UK is just a limited range. Any suggestions as to how to capture, say, the flavours of Lebanon as opposed to Turkey or Egypt with the limited resources to hand? John Joseph, Edinburgh

Top supermarkets are now good on aromatics. You can find herbs such as coriander, mint, dill and flat leaf parsley, and spices such as cumin, cinnamon and allspice, cardamom, ginger, saffron and turmeric. Specialities such as sumac, the sharp red lemony spice, tahina paste and pomegranate syrup and rose and orange blossom waters, which are used in Turkey and Lebanon, can be found in Turkish, Lebanese and other Middle Eastern stores as well as in Asian ones. I hope you will find them in Edinburgh. Otherwise when you come to London it would be worth a visit to The Green Valley Lebanese supermarket on 36–37 Upper Berkley Street, London, W1H 7PG. Tel: 0207 402 7385.

Hello Claudia. I believe they were called Loukoumades - delicious, melt-in-the-mouth beignet-like little bundles of pastry dusted in icing sugar that street sellers cooked before your eyes on the streets of Egyptian towns. As I'm not much of a cook, would you by any chance have an easy recipe for making them, in shaalla? Margaret d'Armenia, London

There are many different recipes for Loukoumades, called Zalabia in Egypt. They are served soaked in sugar syrup or dusted with icing sugar. I use a recipe that is delicious although the fritters do not come out quite round. It is not an easy recipe but I hope you enjoy making it.

ZALABIA
Serves 6
For the sugar syrup
1kg sugar
500 ml water
The juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 tablespoon rose or orange-blossom water

For the batter
500g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 packet fast action dry yeast
750 ml warm water (1 part boiling to two parts cold)

Light vegetable oil for deep-frying.

For the syrup, put the sugar, water and lemon juice in a pan and simmer for 15 minutes or until it is thick enough to coat a spoon. Add the rose or orange-blossom water and simmer a few seconds longer, then chill, covered.

For the batter, put the flour in a large bowl, mix in the salt and yeast, then stir in the water gradually, beating vigorously for about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour, then beat the batter once more and let it rise again.

Make the fritters in batches. Pour little balls of batter by the teaspoon or tablespoon (they can be small or large) into sizzling but not too hot oil and fry until puffed up, crisp and golden, turning them to brown them all over. You may find it easier if you dip the spoon in oil so that the batter rolls off easily. Lower the heat a little so that the fritters have time to get done inside before they are too brown. The batter is light and produces irregular, rather than perfectly round, shapes. If the oil is not hot enough to begin with the batter tends to flatten out.

Lift the fritters out with a slotted spoon, drain on kitchen paper and dip them in the cold syrup for a few seconds, or let them soak up the syrup for longer. They are at their best hot, but are also good cold.

For variation, you can pour over the fritters honey heated up with about half the quantity water. You can also sprinkle instead with icing (confectioner’s) sugar and cinnamon.

My late father, who was born in Istanbul, told me he and his family would eat a dish composed mainly with broad beans on weekends (something like the fabada asturiana or the French cassoulet). Would you know the recipe? What is the dish called? I used to live in London (ex BBC World Service producer) and miss seing you on TV. Patrick Gerassi, Vigo, Spain

If it was like favada or cassoulet, the dish would be with large white beans or butter beans rather than broad beans. What your father ate in Istanbul would probably have been Guvecte (sorry I can’t do accents on my computer but it is pronounced Yuvesht) Kurufasulye. It is a bean dish with fried onion, garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, sometimes pieces of lamb or pastrma (cured beef).

My daughter has recently married and Israeli and I would love to be able to make him good hoummos (we all love the new food he has brought to our table). Can you give me a good recipe please? Thank you. Helen Risbridger, Fleet

Here is a good recipe for hoummos:

Serves 6
250g chickpeas, soaked in water overnight
5 tablespoons tahini
juice of 2 lemons
3 cloves garlic, crushed
salt
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Drain the soaked chickpeas and put them in a pan with plenty of fresh water. Bring to the boil, remove the scum and simmer for 1- 1 1/2 hours, until they are very soft. Drain, reserving the cooking water.

Blend the chickpeas to a purée in the food processor. Add the remaining ingredients, except the oil, and a little of the cooking water, just enough to blend to a soft creamy paste. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Pour the hummus into a shallow dish and dribble over the olive oil.

For optional garnishes, sprinkle on plenty of finely chopped parsley; or make a star design with lines of paprika and ground cumin; or sprinkle with ground sumac and a little chopped flat-leaf parsley; or garnish with a few whole boiled chickpeas, or with pine nuts lightly fried in butter.

For a hot version, pour the hummus into a shallow baking dish and bake for 15-20 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 200°C/400°F/Gas 6. Lightly fry 100g pine nuts in 4 tablespoons of butter or extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle them, with the melted butter or oil, over the dish.

Balila is a warm chickpea salad. Boil the soaked and drained chickpeas in plenty of water for 1_ hours. Turn them out into a serving bowl with just a little of their reduced cooking water and crush them only slightly with a fork. Stir in, to taste, plenty of extra virgin olive oil, a generous amount of crushed garlic, a pinch of chilli pepper (optional) and some finely chopped mint.





I am looking for Jewish recipes from Libya. I notice that many Sephardi Jewish cookbooks cover all of North Africa but very rarely anything from Libya, particularly Tripoli. I would be very interested in hearing of any specialities or anything you know about relating to Jews in Tripoli (I have just married into such a family!). The only cookbook I can find is in Italian, which is very slow to translate. Are there any books or anything else out there which might help? Emily Tammam, London

In 1941, under Italian occupation which began in 1911, 25 per cent of the population of Tripoli was Jewish and now the greater part of the community has settled in Italy. Libyan Jewish cooking is a mix of Italian and North African with both pasta and couscous and a Spanish touch from the original fifteenth century settlement. A few Jewish restaurants in Rome offer Cucina Tripolina. I found it difficult to research Jewish recipes from Libya. I did meet people eventually who could have helped but too late for my Jewish book. I did not find any of their recipes in cookery books and did not see those in Italian but here is one recipe that was passed to me for a very peppery hot garlicky fish:

FISH HRAYMI

Serves 4
6 - 8 garlic cloves, crushed
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teasp paprika
1/2 teasp harissa or to taste, or a very good pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons tomato paste
The juice of 1 lemon
Salt
4 white fish steaks or skinned fillet weighing about 1 kg (2 lb)
4 tablespoons chopped coriander

In a frying pan, fry the garlic in the oil until it only just begins to colour. Stir in the paprika, harissa and tomato paste. Add the lemon juice, a little water (about 175ml (6 fl oz - 3/4 cup) and salt. Stir well and simmer for 5 minutes. Then put in the fish and cook 7-10 minutes, turning over once, until the flesh just begins to flake. Serve hot sprinkled with coriander.

How can I get the authentic taste of aubergines roasted on the fire - and how can I more easily skin them? Miriam Teeman, Leeds

To get the authentic smoky flavour of aubergines roasted on the fire turn them over embers on the grill of a barbecue or on the flame of a gas ring until they are very soft and blackened all over. You can remove any charred bits under a cold water tap. A good alternative which does not have the exact smoky flavour is to turn them under the grill or to roast them in the highest oven.

Have you a recipe for 'Lebanese Cream'?. It would appear to be a not very firm cornflour blancmange flavoured with mastic, but how much mastic to a half litre of milk? The fact that you mention mastic in your Mediterranean Cookery has encouraged me to consult you about this. Vivienne Triseliotis, Edinburgh

Muhallabiy, your "Lebanese Cream", is usually made with cornflour in restaurants. At home, ground rice is used or a mixture of both. It is a special refinement to pour a little honey syrup over the top and to garnish it with a large amount of chopped nuts. It is very easy to make but it needs attention and patience during the long time it needs stirring. For a version with mastic see the variation. Mastic has a very strong flavour so you must use very little (1/4 teaspoon powdered for 1 litre milk) or the taste will be unpleasant.

Serves 6
2 tablespoons cornflour
50g ground rice
1 litre milk
125g sugar, or more to taste
1 tablespoon orange blossom water (p.00)
11/2 tablespoons rose water
3 tablespoons clear honey
50g blanched almonds, coarsely chopped
50g pistachio nuts, coarsely chopped

Mix the cornflour and ground rice with about 100ml cold milk, and beat well, making sure that you break up any small lumps. Bring the rest of the milk to the boil in a large, preferably non-stick, pan. Add the cornflour and ground rice mixture, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon.

Keep over a low heat, and stir constantly, until you feel a slight resistance. Continue to cook gently over a low heat for 15–20 minutes or until the cream thickens further, stirring occasionally. Be very careful not to scrape the bottom of the pan; the cream burns slightly at the bottom, and if it is scraped it will give a burnt taste to the pudding. Add the sugar towards the end.

Stir in the orange blossom water and 1 tablespoon rose water, and cook a few moments more. Let the cream cool a little before pouring into a glass serving bowl. Let it cool, then chill in the refrigerator, covered with cling film.

When the pudding is cold, prepare a honey syrup in a small pan by bringing to the boil the honey with about 125ml water. Stir well and add the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of rose water. Let it cool and pour over the cold, firmed cream. It will seep in a little.

Serve sprinkled with a pattern of chopped almonds and pistachios.

For a variation, for the version with mastic, add 1/4 teaspoon pulverised mastic (grind it to a powder with a pinch of sugar with a pestle and mortar) stirring it in vigorously at the end when you have turned off the heat. Omit the honey.

Dear Claudia, living in Jerusalem, I can't help but love all the local tastes. There is one dish I am desperate to master. I have been trying to make stuffed peppers by frying mince and rice and putting them in peppers in the oven in a dish with some water. However I found the peppers quite tasteless and the meat dry. Do you have any tips - should I boil the peppers first? How can I make them taste sweet? Please help. Rachel Steiner, Jerusalem

For your peppers stuffed with mince meat and rice, the stuffing has to be cooked first (although slightly undercooked) with enough water so that the meat and rice remain moist. A finger of water should go in the baking dish with the peppers.

My dear Madame Roden, many years ago I was a devotee of an Israeli restaurant in the Charing Cross Road next to Wyndhams Theatre, where I worked. They had the most delicious lätkes I had or have ever tasted. And to reward them, I introduced them to the joys of a pastrami sandwich with greens and mayonnaise - which they added to their (informal) menu as 'The Crazy Sandwich' to much laughter and teasing. In any case, do you have the-best-in-the-world-ever recipe for (potato) lätkes? I have only two of your books and it's not in either of them, that I can find. Doug MacQuillen, St Catherines, Ontario, Canada

Here is a a very simple recipe for potato latkes. They can be marvelous if properly prepared, just before eating. Those that can be made a long time in advance have a lot of flour which makes them less appealing.

POTATO LATKES
Serves 6

1kg potatoes
2 large eggs
Salt

Peel and finely grate the potatoes. Put them straight into cold water then drain and squeeze them as dry as you can by pressing them with your hands in a colander. This is to remove the starchy liquid which could make the latkes soggy.

Beat the eggs lightly with salt, add to the potatoes and stir well. Take serving spoonfulls, or as much as 50 ml (2 fl oz - 1/4 cup) of the mixture, and drop into hot oil in a frying pan. Flatten a little and lower the heat so that the fritters cook through evenly. When one side is brown, turn over and brown the other side. Lift out and serve very hot.

For a variation, you may add black pepper, chopped parsley and finely chopped onion.

Miss Roden, you ignited my interest in cookery many years ago when I saw you on TV cooking a Moroccan Bean Soup (which I still make!). I remember your enthusiasm and knowledge for the area and its ingredients - but we haven't seen you on TV since. When will you remedy the situation? Surely you are due a TV programme of your own so the rest of the country can benefit from your wonderful dishes the same way I have. Susanne Fitzpatrick, Telford

Thank you for your kind words. I’m afraid there are no plans for a TV series.