The Best Middle Eastern Cookbooks

In Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi explore the vibrant cuisine of their home city—with its diverse Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities.

This stunning cookbook offers 120 recipes from their unique cross-cultural perspective, from inventive vegetable dishes to sweet, rich desserts. With five bustling restaurants in London and two stellar cookbooks, Ottolenghi is one of the most respected chefs in the world; in Jerusalem, he and Tamimi have collaborated to produce their most personal cookbook yet.

It is hardly surprising that Aleppo, one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, is also home to one of the world's most distinguished and vibrant cuisines.

Surrounded by fertile lands and located at the end of the Silk Road, which passed through Central Asia and Mesopotamia, Aleppo was a food capital long before Paris, Rome, or New York. Its diverse communities of Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Circassians, and others contributed to its culinary traditions and produced a vast selection of different types of dishes - and no less than 20 kinds of kibbeh recipes.

Syria is where food, memory, and resilience collide: recreate the flavors of this beautiful country in Our Syria, for delicious meals anywhere in the world.

Syria has always been the meeting point for the most delicious flavors from East and West, where spices and sweetness collide. Even now, in possibly the country's darkest hour, Syrian families in tiny apartments from Beirut to Berlin are searching out the best tomatoes, lemons, pomegranates, and parsley to evoke the memory of home, keeping their treasured food history alive across continents.

A soulful tour of Palestinian cooking today from the Ottolenghi restaurants’ executive chef and partner—120 recipes shaped by his personal story as well as the history of Palestine.

In Falastin (pronounced “fa-la-steen”), Sami Tamimi retraces the lineage and evolution of his country’s cuisine, born of its agriculturally optimal geography, its distinct culinary traditions, and Palestinian cooks’ ingenuity and resourcefulness.

In this updated and greatly enlarged edition of her Book of Middle Eastern Food, Claudia Roden re-creates a classic.

The book was originally published here in 1972 and was hailed by James Beard as "a landmark in the field of cookery"; this new version represents the accumulation of the author's thirty years of further extensive travel throughout the ever-changing landscape of the Middle East, gathering recipes and stories.

A dazzling celebration of Palestinian cuisine, featuring more than 80 modern recipes, captivating stories, and stunning travel photography.

Yasmin Khan unlocks the flavors and fragrances of modern Palestine, from the sun-kissed pomegranate stalls of Akka, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, through evergreen oases of date plantations in the Jordan Valley, to the fading fish markets of Gaza City.

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.

Pomegranates and pistachios. Floral waters and cinnamon. Bulgur wheat, lentils, and succulent lamb. These lush flavors of Maureen Abood's childhood, growing up as a Lebanese-American in Michigan, inspired Maureen to launch her award-winning blog, Rose Water & Orange Blossoms.

Here she revisits the recipes she was reared on, exploring her heritage through its most-beloved foods and chronicling her riffs on traditional cuisine. Her colorful culinary guides, from grandparents to parents, cousins, and aunts, come alive in her stories like the heady aromas of the dishes passed from their hands to hers.

The Middle East has long had a vibrant tradition of home-style vegetarian cuisine – from their abundant fresh salads, dips, and breads to their delicious and hearty main meals. Based on the freshest ingredients and cooked from the heart, Greg and Lucy Malouf's approach to vegetarian food comes from their love of traditional Middle Eastern flavor combinations. 

SUQAR (which means 'sugar' in Arabic) shares the secrets of more than 100 sweet treats inspired by Middle Eastern flavors – ranging from puddings and pastries, to ice creams, cookies, cakes, confectionary, fruity desserts and drinks.

The traditional time to eat sweets in the Middle East is not after meals (when fruit is served) but at breakfast, with coffee in between meals or on religious holidays and special occasions. The repertoire of these dishes is vast and varied.