Advertisement 1

Claudia Roden taps into sunny Mediterranean memories in her latest cookbook

'It was a way of bringing back the past,' the legendary author says of Claudia Roden's Mediterranean. 'But always the pleasures of the past. Because food is about pleasure, luckily'

Get the latest from Laura Brehaut straight to your inbox

Article content

Our cookbook of the week is Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean by Claudia Roden. To try a recipe from the book, check out: Stuffed peppers with breadcrumbs, anchovies, olives and capers; bullinada (Catalan fish soup with mayonnaise); and green barley “risotto” with peas and asparagus.

At home in London, England, Claudia Roden finds culinary inspiration in her memories of lifelong travels.

Advertisement 2
Story continues below
Article content
Article content

“Much of the winters past, just thinking about the Mediterranean and recipes kept me happy. I went into living in my head,” she says, laughing.

The food writer and author thought she might have trouble tapping into memories for her latest book, Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean (Ten Speed Press, 2021). But as it turned out, she needn’t have worried.

Her time in the Mediterranean flooded back as she blistered eggplants, scrubbed clams and simmered barley.

“The fact of cooking really brought back very vividly times gone by — and some of them very long ago. And so, it was a way of bringing back the past as well,” says Roden. “But always the pleasures of the past. Because food is about pleasure, luckily.”

Roden is renowned for writing dozens of scholarly classics, including A Book of Middle Eastern Food (1968), The Book of Jewish Food (1996) and The Food of Spain (2011). In these works, she saw it as her role to record traditions, to educate and to provide context underpinned by extensive research and fieldwork.

For Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean, though, she turned inward — sharing 100 of the recipes she makes for family and friends, which she gathered from decades of travel in the region.

Article content
Advertisement 3
Story continues below
Article content

Instead of immersing herself in research, revisiting field notes or documenting other people’s recipes, she relied on her own spontaneous recollections of the past.

“In this case, I thought, ‘Now it’s my turn just to do things for my pleasure.’ And also (for) the pleasure of my friends,” says Roden. ”We want to eat good food; let’s see what is the best we can eat in the way we like to eat today. Because today is very different from before.”

Claudia Roden's Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel
Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel. Photo by Ten Speed Press

When Roden’s debut — A Book of Middle Eastern Food — came out 54 years ago, the flavours, ingredients and techniques she featured were unfamiliar in the West: “It was completely strange, and also exciting for everyone,” she adds. “But by now, everybody knows all the things that I wrote about.”

Today, you can buy harissa, sumac and tahini at the supermarket — a development that some have attributed to the “Ottolenghi Effect.” As well-acquainted as home cooks in the U.K. and Canada are with the Middle Eastern pantry, many are unaware that Roden’s books laid the groundwork.

“Often people say, ‘Oh, you introduced the U.K. to these ingredients.’ Which is completely wrong and I say, ‘No, actually Claudia Roden did,’” chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi told the Guardian in 2021.

Advertisement 4
Story continues below
Article content

“It just took maybe another 35 years or so, when Sami (Tamimi) and I started cooking and publishing cookbooks, for the penny to finally drop, and for people to realize how wonderful these recipes are, how simple and fresh the cooking is.”

Roden was born to a Syrian Jewish family in Cairo, Egypt in 1936. In 1951, at age 15, she left Cairo for boarding school in Paris. Then, three years later, moved to London to study art at Saint Martin’s.

She began collecting recipes for what would become A Book of Middle Eastern Food in 1956, when, after the Suez Crisis, tens of thousands of Jews were forced to leave Egypt.

Roden’s parents left as refugees and joined her in London, where they hosted many Egyptian exiles over the years. Assuming they would never see each other again, people exchanged recipes as mementos.

“It was a very traumatic time,” says Roden. “So, it was very, very important for me — this collecting. But it was then that I realized that all of the people, the Jews of Egypt, were a mixed lot. Three of my grandparents came from Syria — we went on eating Syrian food — and one grandmother from Turkey. And people were eating these foods.”

Advertisement 5
Story continues below
Article content

The recipes she collected may have come from Egyptians, but their roots were far-flung. Stuck on what to call them, Roden landed on “Middle Eastern food.”

Some countered the term, saying that the cuisines of the region — whether Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian, or Turkish — were distinct and as such, shouldn’t be lumped into a single category. “And it’s true: It’s all different,” says Roden, “but they had things in common.”

Recommended from Editorial
  1. Stuffed peppers with breadcrumbs, anchovies, olives and capers from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean.
    Cook this: Stuffed peppers with breadcrumbs, anchovies, olives and capers from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean
  2. Bullinada (Catalan fish soup with mayonnaise) from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean.
    Cook this: Bullinada — Catalan fish soup with mayonnaise — from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean
  3. Green barley
    Cook this: Green barley 'risotto' with peas and asparagus from Claudia Roden's Mediterranean

Many chefs, food writers and home cooks have taken inspiration from her work on Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Jewish food. For those interested in understanding the culinary history of these regions and peoples, Roden’s books are benchmarks.

Her travels — such as those underlying Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean — have been the most important part of her 60-year career, she explains. Earlier on, she may have felt a want to travel; now she feels it was a need.

Advertisement 6
Story continues below
Article content

The Egypt of her youth was cosmopolitan, Roden recalls. After the Suez Canal was built in the 19th century, the country became a major mercantile hub attracting residents from all over the world.

People spoke many different languages; her family spoke French and Italian at home, as well as Arabic, English and Judeo-Spanish. “But also, I felt there was a kind of relationship with people that was easy. That was humorous. That was convivial,” she says.

Because she had come from a part of the world that was very different from Britain at the time, “there was a kind of way of life — a kind of culture of living that was something that I missed.”

Her travels around the Mediterranean fuelled her work, but they also brought a sense of connection. “I find being in Marseille, or Barcelona, or Genoa, or in some of these seaports is where I feel very, very much at home. And I feel I belong, as well.”

The way of life in the Mediterranean has changed immensely over the course of her career, Roden says, and there are contradictory culinary trends. On the one hand, there’s a desire to invent, to be creative; on the other, a pull towards “Who are we?” as people turn to their traditions for inspiration.

Advertisement 7
Story continues below
Article content

As a result, there’s a renewed interest in the food of the place: “What is there and also what has been handed down through tradition — down the families, down the villages.”

While writing Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean, she revisited these traditions with an eye to the style of dishes and type of ingredients she prefers today: plenty of grains, seafood and vegetables with an emphasis on simplicity.

“It is the Mediterranean way to have meals to be convivial — as something for the spirit, as well as for the senses,” says Roden.

“And l feel if it’s too complex, where you’re trying to show off about the latest thing you can do — no. It’s got to be easy, easy and tasty. Pleasure, pleasure. But not difficult, because I want you to keep doing it.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our cookbook and recipe newsletter, Cook This, here.

Article content
Get the latest from Laura Brehaut straight to your inbox
Comments
You must be logged in to join the discussion or read more comments.
Join the Conversation

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.

Latest from Shopping Essentials
  1. Advertisement 2
    Story continues below
This Week in Flyers