Food For Thought

Claudia Roden is a Francophone Egyptian Jew whose ancestors were spice traders,and she's a one-woman window on the Middle East.Her new cookbook,"Arabesque:A Taste of Morocco,Turkey,and Lebanon,"offers fresh insight on a region many view in terms of politics and religion.With 150 recipes and dozens of essays on unfamiliar ingredients and customs,"Arabesque" whisks the reader through history,from the ancient Phoenicians to the kitchens of the Ottoman sultans,from ninth-century Baghdad to the Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s and '80s.For example:couscous,she writes,was brought from Ethiopia to North Africa in the seventh century by conquering Arab armies,perfected by Berbers and was recently voted the most popular dish in France,There's also a brief taste of politics:among both Palestinians and Israelis the subject of falafel can spark debates as vehement as those about Jerusalem.