Mslexia

Mslexia, the magazine for women who write | www.mslexia.co.uk

Interview

Claudia Roden

talks to Daneet Steffens

Issue 46 ◊ Jul/Aug/Sep 2010

Claudia Roden lives in a fairy tale house at the end of a road, tucked into a cluster of trees. The moment I step into her home, she peers at my face: ‘I am trying to see who you look like, your mum or your dad,’ she declares. Both, she decides, and whisks me into the kitchen for a glass of freshly-squeezed clementine juice.

Full disclosure: Roden is a long-time friend of the family, but she and I have not seen each other for decades. Still, as though no time has passed, warmth and friendliness wash across in waves as she fires questions at me. As it did hers, the Mediterranean formed and informed my childhood, and this house – despite its ultra suburban north London setting – feels immediately like home, with an affectionately-used kitchen-and-dining space easily conducive to chatting with guests while preparing feasts; brown tiled floors and blue and yellow tiled walls; and the pleasing prospect of a wild, sunny garden through a large window showcasing a cherry tree in full, glorious bloom.

Roden, 73, who alongside other esteemed chef-authors Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher and Jane Grigson put the ‘writing’ into food writing, is in the throes of prepping her book on Spain for publication, testing recipes like mad – I’m lucky enough to be plied with Andalusian ajo blanco, a cold almond-garlic soup served with grapes, and pichon al vino tinto (baby pigeons in a vegetable sauce of carrot, leek, onion and wine) – and gearing up for a week of food photography. She cooks as we talk, and talks through her cooking. ‘Each time I wonder, should I put the cover on or not,’ she says, coaxing the pigeons in the pot to perfection; this time, she puts it on. ‘So I’ll write down, “Put cover on.”’ Carefully, conscientiously, in the exacting manner of an experimenting scientist, she records what she does and at what time – all fodder for the final recipe. ‘Let me see, how many grapes does one put,’ she says, as she serves up the ajo blanco. ‘One, two, three, four, five,’ she counts, dropping them gently into my bowl.

Roden first threw the foodie doors wide open in 1968 with A Book of Middle Eastern Food, which continues to garner accolades, high-profile as well as quotidian: this May, that book ushered Roden into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame, and in a recent weekend magazine, a query for a ‘good introductory cookbook to Lebanese or Middle Eastern cuisine’ got this reply: ‘Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food is an obvious candidate. Although first published in 1968, it still stands as a captivating monument of scholarship, elegant writing and salivatingly good recipes.’

The book – jam-packed with anecdotes, stories, riddles, sayings and proverbs that bring an intimacy and appreciation of place to the recipes they accompany – hoisted Middle Eastern food ineluctably into mainstream kitchens. Her Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey From Samarkand and Vilna To the Present Day, published 28 years later, proved just as comprehensive and definitive. She’s also extolled the wonders of coffee (Coffee) and outdoor dining (Picnic), and has ventured back to the Middle East (Tamarind & Saffron), to Italy (The Food of Italy) and, most recently, to Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon (Arabesque). Along the way, she’s clocked up numerous awards and effusive peer praise: Arabesque’s cover quote from Nigella Lawson simply reads: ‘I love Claudia Roden – she’s a genius.’

And it all started with a desire to preserve a world that was rapidly disappearing. Roden’s first book grew directly out of the 1956 Suez Crisis.‘I was already here in London as an art student,’ says Roden, whose Syrian Jewish family also has roots in Turkey, and who grew up until the age of 15 in a cosmopolitan Cairo of tolerance and diversity, a warm, integrated community. ‘I had wanted to do all kinds of things,’ she confides, ‘ like science expérimentale, or film studies, but my parents were just, “Il n’y a pas de question – no question!” Art was the only thing. My father said, “You know, if you’re too clever, you won’t find a husband.” Because he knew all the husbands of Egypt were afraid of a woman who was too clever. Suddenly the Suez Crisis meant that the Jews had to leave Egypt – some of them had to leave immediately, within weeks. My parents came to London to join myself and my brothers.’

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