Introduction / Richard Tapper and Sami Zubaida -- Food production in the Middle East / Tony Allan -- National, communal and global dimensions in Middle Eastern food cultures / Sami Zubaida -- PART I: CUISINES, DISHES, INGREDIENTS: From the Caucasus to the roof of the world: a culinary adventure / Bert Fragner -- Social reality and culinary fiction: the perspective of cookbooks from Iran and Central Asia / Bert Fragner -- The Mayhane or McDonald's? Changes in eating habits and the evolution of fast food in Istanbul / Holly Chase -- The taste for layered bread among the nomadic Turks and the Central Asian origins of baklava / Charles Perry -- Rice in the culinary cultures of the Middle East / Sami Zubaida -- Al-Kishk: the past and present of a complex culinary practice / Francoise Aubaile-Sallenave -- PART II; FOOD AND THE SOCIAL ORDER: The revival of traditional cooking in modern Arabic cookbooks / Peter Heine -- Jewish food in the Middle East / Claudia Roden -- Food and gender in a Yemeni community / Ianthe Maclagan -- You are what you cook: cuisine and class in Mecca / Mai Yamani -- Eating habits and cultural boundaries in Northern Iran / Christian Bromberger -- PART III: THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD: Beyond taste: the complements of colour and smell in the medieval Arab culinary tradition / Manuela Marin -- Blood, wine and water: social and symbolic aspects of drinks and drinking in the Islamic Middle East / Richard Tapper -- Of leaven foods: Ramadan in Morocco / Abedelhai Diouri -- Food as a semiotic code in Arabic literature / Sabry Hafez.