Claudia Roden

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a food writer. Her books are as much about culture and anthropology as they are about recipes. She was born into a Jewish family in Egypt, educated in London and Paris, and started her working life as a painter. It was only when her family fled their homeland after the Suez crisis in 1956 that she took up the profession that has made her famous. In her relatives' isolation and despair, recipes seemed one of the most important things they'd lost. In her book of Middle Eastern food, she lovingly recreated the world which they remembered. She's written more since about eating out of doors, Mediterranean food, and, most importantly, a book of Jewish food, the culmination of 16 years of research. And she's been rewarded with many literary and cultural prizes. Food is just a part of culture, she says. Once you understand the table, you're likely to accept the people as well. She is Claudia Roden. On that basis, Claudia, we British are truly multiracial, aren't we? Because over the last 40 years we've adopted and integrated so many different cuisines into our own. Yes, I think you are. Yeah.

Claudia Roden1:36

Almost the country that is the most multicultural and multiracial in its food interests. If you go to Italy or to France, you hardly find in the supermarket or even in the restaurant trade so much variety from all over the world. So we are really the most adventurous, most open to

Presenter1:59

Isn't that wonderful? Because of course forty years ago or more when you came here, that wasn't the case at all. We were very sort of uptight about our cooking, weren't we?

Claudia Roden2:08

That at all. And certainly when I started writing or collecting recipes and I was telling people, I was writing about Middle Eastern dishes and collecting them, people would ask, oh, is it going to be sheep's eyes and eyeballs? But certainly we've come to like strong flavors much more than we did years ago. We're improving. We're improving. But I saw in one supermarket a sign saying.

Speaker 12:24

Mm.

Presenter2:29

You're improving.

Claudia Roden2:34

Garlic-free on on some of the foods. So still, obviously.

Presenter2:39

Some people are afraid. And now Middle Eastern food is very much coming into vogue, isn't it? It's it's part of the sort of modern British cookery. I think the star chefs are cooking pigeon and lentil soups and all the things that you know so well.

Claudia Roden2:51

Yes. On one hand, it's got to do with the Lebanese who came after the civil war and the Iranians who came after happenings there. But also there is another thing, is that the Mediterranean has become the ideal diet. And of course, part of the Middle East is the Mediterranean. And people have gone from Spain and Italy to liking the Eastern Mediterranean and Southern. More food to come, but tell me about your first record.

Claudia Roden3:19

The first record is Arab music of Cairo, and it's called Takassim. Somehow it reminds me entirely of my childhood. I had several cousins. The girls got together and we used to lock ourselves up in the living room so that nobody could come in and we would put the music on and dance, belly dancing. And I still like doing it now.

Presenter4:13

Part of the Takassim, the traditional Arab music of Cairo, and memories for Claudia Robin of Belly Dancer. Well, not memories, you still do it, you say. I still do it.

Claudia Roden4:21

Uh

Presenter4:21

Yeah.

Claudia Roden4:22

Instead of doing aerobic sword.

Claudia Roden4:25

I I also make sure that nobody's in the house.

Presenter4:29

Yeah.

Claudia Roden4:29

All by yourself.

Presenter4:30

All by myself.

Claudia Roden4:31

Yeah.

Presenter4:31

Uh

Claudia Roden4:31

Yeah.

Presenter4:31

In North London.

Presenter4:33

Let me ask you to give me a a picture, if you would, of your childhood, because you were born and brought up in Cairo during the late thirties, early forties, apparently on an island in the middle of the Nile. How so?

Claudia Roden4:45

Yeah.

Presenter4:45

Uh

Claudia Roden4:45

Well, it was part of Cairo. It was in the middle of Cairo, but it was an island. We lived in a block of flats. But we used to have a big balcony where we spent a lot of time eating there and calling downstairs and looking at the people and sometimes sending a basket down for food. And what sort of language did you speak? My mother tongue was French. We spoke French and also Italian because we had an Italian nanny who came before my older brother was born. And we also had a bit of Spanish, ancient Spanish, Judeo-Spanish. And of course, I went to an English school, so we spoke English. Where you were fed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, apparently. Yes, we were.

Claudia Roden5:32

And somehow we just felt that the English did not like anything else but that. And when we invited our friends home, we would tell my mother, make sure you've got rice pudding or jelly and that kind of thing.

Claudia Roden5:50

Well, she actually managed that. Did she? But did you cook then? Did you go into those kitchens? Well, we had a cook, and the cook came from Upper Egypt, and he just learned to cook everything that my mother had shown him to do. But we didn't cook, of course, on a daily basis. But when there were big parties, for those occasions, relatives came to help us cook. And then the children always wanted to be there, mainly to hear the gossip of what was going on. What things would you cook? Little pies of all kinds, little pastries. I mean, all the dainty things my mother used to make. So, as children, we were given the little things like rolling up little snakes of dough.

Presenter6:18

Yeah.

Presenter6:34

Uh Yeah.

Claudia Roden6:34

Yeah.

Presenter6:34

With

Claudia Roden6:34

The

Presenter6:34

The flavours and the smells of your children.

Claudia Roden6:36

The flavors and the smells were really all the kinds of spices from cinnamon and allspice, cumin and coriander. Even now, when I smell cumin and coriander frying together, I'm totally elated. You can't imagine how exciting it is, because it was really the taste of one of the national dishes of Egypt, which was called melochaya. It was a soup. And somehow all the Egyptians, when they smell that smell, become very excited.

Claudia Roden7:09

Tell me about your second record.

Claudia Roden7:11

The second record is a Judeo-Spanish song by a group called Guerinaldo. Judeo-Spanish was in my life in Egypt because my Istanbul grandmother spoke Judeo-Spanish, and we did hear her sing sometimes Spanish ballads, and her friends as well used to sing.

Speaker 27:32

La hop killed hop up, killy la hop, killy la hoppa.

Speaker 27:39

Buenas no ches ha no dudu respuesta mi palavra.

Speaker 27:46

Istanoche rogo albio thurmir nuna tama. Kirilai la hop, kirilaila hopa.

Presenter7:55

Lay

Speaker 27:56

Idila ho, idi la la ho.

Presenter7:59

The Spanish group Guerinaldo singing Ventanas Altas, a wedding song from Salonika. So, Claudia, there was a great sense of family back in those early days, obviously in in Cairo, large, extended family.

Claudia Roden8:11

Yeah.

Presenter8:12

Great happiness, yes?

Claudia Roden8:13

We were extremely happy. We did have a very large extended family. And I came to feel really that everybody in Cairo and Alexandria was my relative. And we had huge clans. And somehow we felt everybody was our cousin. Lots of picnics in the dunes near Alexandria, I'd read. What would you eat what would you eat?

Presenter8:34

There. Uh

Claudia Roden8:34

One of the great picnics was to go.

Claudia Roden8:37

At the time when the quails used to arrive, they would be migrating birds and they would be tired from travelling across the Mediterranean and they would fall onto the beaches. And people were there with big nets arranged to catch them, and they would arrive, they were caught, and they were plucked at once, and they were marinated with a few spices and oil, and they were cooked there and then on open fires. And that was

Presenter9:05

On a file and it

Presenter9:09

It was a great time. Uh

Claudia Roden9:10

Uh

Presenter9:10

But it was a very male chauvinist society, wasn't it? You've written that women were there to give joy to others, but you were always aware that your your brothers were m more important than you, as it were. They were looked upon as being people who would achieve much more than you. Yeah.

Claudia Roden9:28

Mr President, certainly women were there to give joy and pleasure to others, to nurture. Some of course were victims, it depended on their situation, but on the whole they were pampered and spoiled because even though what they said was not considered important, they still manipulated and somehow ran their husbands and they got jewellery and you know it wasn't that bad.

Presenter9:55

But difficult for you when because you were going to cross the cultures and and and and come to to Europe, to England and to Paris to be educated. Very difficult for you because you hadn't really been used to being on your own or handling money.

Claudia Roden10:07

Yeah.

Claudia Roden10:08

Yes. I mean, you weren't supposed to earn any money. You were supposed to be married very early and looked after. And you were marriageable when you were about thirteen or so. Some of my aunts married at thirteen. Did that really happen to you? It almost did. I was engaged at fifteen, but I managed to get out of it. But when I was at school in Paris, I was fifteen, and my brother was there. We were both boarders, and he was four years younger. But he was told to look after me. And he had to look after our money. And he would come with me to the

Presenter10:20

Yeah.

Presenter10:23

How was it

Claudia Roden10:44

train station to get to my boarding school to buy my ticket.

Claudia Roden10:49

And I would take my ticket. And somehow I didn't mind that. And he was terribly proud. And when I think back now, my grandsons who are eleven, I can't imagine them looking after somebody.

Presenter11:03

Next record.

Claudia Roden11:04

Uh

Claudia Roden11:05

The next record is Edith Piaf. The song is La Cordeoniste. That song for me was terribly important, especially of all the songs, because I was once at the Fête de l'Humanité. The L'Humanité is the Communist newspaper, and they had these great feasts. And in that feast, Picasso had painted a big dove. And on that occasion, he was there. There was Louis Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Monsignor, all the great of the French left whom I admired and adored. And I was there, and somebody suddenly got up and sang this song. And it was such a magnificent moment that I was carried away.

Speaker 211:47

Il Roua la Grava, and Rava, Gen Cordonesouva, and Oswald. He says, I'm worse people than ever, Lil Dua que non de la retika. Tali ra ga popa la vau parlour, and all mit loves the music.

Presenter12:16

Edith Piaf singing La Cordioniste.

Presenter12:19

Of course, in nineteen fifty six you were in England, Claudia Roden. You were at art college, you'd have been twenty, and the Suez crisis blew up. How quickly did events take over and your parents had to flee?

Claudia Roden12:32

Yeah.

Claudia Roden12:32

Well, within a few months of Suez, they left Egypt, as did many, many of my relatives as well, and they came to England and they were able to come because my mother had a British passport.

Presenter12:49

Because your father was a merchant, wasn't he, in Egypt, and he'd done very well there.

Claudia Roden12:52

Yes, he was in trade, he was a merchant. Was he able to bring anything here at all? No, he came with nothing. And it was I mean somehow absolutely nothing. It was a terrible time, but I don't remember him behaving as though it was terrible. Somehow he was always a a positive man who was always a sort of seeing the best in everything. And somehow he he was very motivated to start again, and he did. And he was happy to be in England. But he did miss his whole life in the past. He always said how much in a way he

Presenter13:02

Absolutely not.

Claudia Roden13:33

regretted that all the people who had been in his life were not in

Presenter13:37

And that in many ways was the inspiration for you to start collecting the recipes, wasn't it? The the flavours of his life. Are you

Claudia Roden13:45

Yes, it is through nostalgia. In a way, it's always the emigrades who write the books. That's while you are there, you don't have the need to. What happened was that nobody had a cookery book. There was not a single Egyptian cookery book and not a single cookery book of our community or of any of the communities. And it was feeling that we would never get to eat those foods.

Presenter14:13

Again. And I have this image, therefore, of of lots of your family coming out, coming over here, and then more and more of the people you knew from Egypt, and all sort of descending on you in North London and arguing about food.

Claudia Roden14:25

Yes, as soon as my parents managed to buy this house, they hadn't even got furniture, but we had a lot of people coming and sleeping on the floor and also coming on Friday night. And during our dinners there, Friday nights, I realized how much food had been important, was important, and it was that part of our heritage that we could still preserve. We couldn't preserve our world.

Claudia Roden14:55

But we could preserve at least the food, and it was that part of our heritage that gave us a lot of pleasure. So I thought that was what I had to do. It was very much, therefore, a labour of love that you set out on, wasn't it?

Presenter15:02

I thought

Presenter15:08

Yeah.

Claudia Roden15:08

Yes, it was a very big labour of love.

Claudia Roden15:11

Next piece of music.

Claudia Roden15:12

The next piece of music is Caronome from Act One of Verdi's Rigoletto. I've chosen this because my parents used to go to the opera a lot in Egypt. The scala used to come to Egypt every year, and my parents were members and they would go. This was the great thing. And my father loved Italian opera, and when I hear this piece, it it just makes me a little bit tearful.

Speaker 215:51

The fire said.

Speaker 216:16

This year will praise me in the south of the world.

Presenter16:41

Joan Sutherland as Gilda singing Caro Nome, Dearest Name, from Act One of Verdi's Rigoletto with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning. So you started, Claudia Redding, to collect all these recipes, you put the word around, the letters started to come in. But because nothing had ever been written down, there must have been a lot of argument about them and about what was right and what was wrong.

Claudia Roden17:00

Yeah.

Claudia Roden17:01

Yes, and I did get recipes from different people for the same recipe just to be able to decide which one was the best. That's why I keep putting variations.

Presenter17:14

But lots of eccentricities. And and you mentioned in one that someone said you could tell whether your dough was the right texture by rubbing the lobe of your ear.

Claudia Roden17:22

Yes, because they never had scales, so they didn't weigh or measure. With adding the dough, for instance, they would always say as much as it takes. You mix the oil and the water and you add flour, as much as it takes. And then when I said, But how do you know how much it takes? And she said, Well, just feel the lobe of your ear and feel the dough. And when it feels the same, that's

Presenter17:47

Fit.

Claudia Roden17:47

Ha ha.

Presenter17:47

But what about length of cooking? Because I think in Cairo a lot of things have been sent off to public ovens. People didn't have their own ovens, did they?

Claudia Roden17:55

Yes, a lot of people didn't. And they cooked on primer stoves. They didn't. And they would say you had to look. And in a way, I think it's a right way of doing things, of writing, because now people have a formula of how to cook. And they've got exact measures, exact timing. And the thing is, they don't trust that good sense nor their taste anymore. In the past, that you had to taste and you had to look at the oven to see if it's ready. And you knew, I mean, if you didn't know the first time, you'd know the second time that it would burn if you left it too long. But now people have lost this way of trusting themselves.

Presenter17:57

And they cooked on prime as the

Presenter18:36

But what we also learn from this book is that there are all sorts of things that we take for granted that in fact were originally Middle Eastern Sorbet, for example.

Claudia Roden18:44

Yes, a lot of things that came into Europe and particularly into England came from the Arab war.

Presenter18:51

So we get the spices and lemon, of course. I think they introduced lemons into Europe.

Claudia Roden18:51

So we

Claudia Roden18:55

So

Claudia Roden18:58

Yeah.

Presenter18:59

Uh

Claudia Roden18:59

Yes, well the croissant was through later, really through the Ottoman Empire, because the Ottoman Empire also had a huge influence. The Croissant was something that came to Vienna because the the Viennese had just managed to repulse the Turks from their gates. And one of the things they did was to shape one of their pastries, which is a puff pastry, also has an Arab origin, into the shape of the Turkish crescent. It was something of an act of triumphalism, I think.

Presenter19:30

But the most amazing thing of all you mention is mint sauce. Now I thought that was us, and we've taken a lot of stick from the French over the years for putting vinegar on our meat. But the Turks are to blame, are they?

Claudia Roden19:43

Well, it's earlier than the text. Actually, it is an early Iranian sauce, this mixture of of mint with vinegar and a tiny bit of sugar.

Claudia Roden19:54

Backward number five.

Claudia Roden19:56

Record number five is Vraho Vraho, played by Greek Laike Ensemble. It was something that my children absolutely adored. When I was looking for my youngest one, who is who when she was about three or four and she was somewhere in the house, we were on three floors, I would put the music on and she would come rushing down. She couldn't resist running around the coffee table.

Presenter20:52

Bratto, ratto My grief is like a rock played by a Greek Laiki ensemble conducted by Mikis Theodorakis. Um, actually, while we're on the subject of what isn't our own, Claudia, um and mint sauce, you say, isn't, I gather fish and chips isn't either.

Claudia Roden21:06

Uh

Claudia Roden21:06

No, fish and chips. The first person to actually sell fish and chips was a Russian Jew in the East End. He had got this way of cooking fish by putting it into a batter and frying it from the Jews who had come from Portugal. At the same time, in the East End, the Irish had come because of the famine, the potato famine, and they were chippies. They brought the potato into the East End, and he was the first person to put them together.

Presenter21:36

Fascinating, isn't it? Where it all comes from. Certainly without any kind of marketing at all. That one certainly took off.

Presenter21:43

But the result, therefore, of pulling all these recipes together in the first place, and eventually deciding that that there was a book in it and it wu you know, that you should publish it, that must have been difficult for you, because again, that was you.

Presenter21:56

Going forward to earn money, which is not what you did in your family.

Claudia Roden22:01

Yes. Even when my father was a refugee and I had to leave art school because I was at St. Martin's School of Art at the time, I went to work because they came and they were penniless and he was so embarrassed and it was such a shame for him that he made me pretend that I wasn't working. And I had to do all kinds of things like take a day off when relatives came from abroad so that they could see me at home, or else go and run from where I was working at Alitalia and meet them somewhere in a coffee house.

Presenter22:03

Mm.

Presenter22:36

So that eventually, because your all the research you did for your books has meant you've had to travel a lot, you know, I mean, I'm moving on some years now, it must have been slightly strange for you. Or was it a a liberation in a way when you started to travel to be independent? Because suddenly you were on your own.

Claudia Roden22:53

Yes, it's true. And I had never been on my own before. And uh I was wandering around all by myself.

Presenter23:01

I suppose if you do feel um a little bit threatened, you can always ask somebody for a recipe and that's a great revel.

Claudia Roden23:06

Well, exactly. Well, actually, being able to ask people for a recipe is a way into their life.

Presenter23:06

That was

Claudia Roden23:13

and their kitchen, and somehow it's a very unthreatening thing. I've learned so much about people's lives just by meeting people even on the train and saying, have you got any recipes? And then sometimes in Italy in particular, all the people on the train who here want to come and give you their recipes. I don't think it would work in England if I asked somebody on a train.

Claudia Roden23:40

It wouldn't be the same, but it did in Italy.

Claudia Roden23:44

Record number six.

Claudia Roden23:46

Number six is Pavarotti singing Osolemio. One of my best, best jobs I ever got was when the Sunday Times sent me to Italy to do a series on the regional food of Italy. And I would go à la venture without any fixed or prearranged direction. And going into Naples, I was walking through the streets and I heard through the window of a house where there was also washing hanging up, somebody singing Os Solemio. And somehow this was incredibly exciting and wonderful.

Speaker 224:29

Peppellacos Naria Serena Pona Pesta.

Speaker 124:31

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 224:42

When are you fresh from a journey of us?

Speaker 124:42

Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 224:56

What the

Speaker 225:05

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 225:22

Sign of lawn a pan

Presenter25:26

Cavarotti singing O Solomio and Memories of Italy for Claudia Roden. Your your book of Jewish food, Claudia, is said to be your masterpiece, and I I so it should be, because I think it took you sixteen years of research, didn't it? Yes, it did. Not least, of course, because of the Jewish diaspora, they're so scattered across the world. But there are two distinct

Claudia Roden25:38

Yes, okay.

Presenter25:46

Cultures of Jew aren't there which you can define by their food.

Claudia Roden25:51

Yes, there's the Ashkenazi Jews who come from Eastern Europe and their food is gefelti fish and chopped liver and simmers, carrots, cabbage, pickled herring, pickled cucumber, that kind of food.

Presenter26:06

Good strong peasant.

Claudia Roden26:08

Pleasant food, well cooked. Yes, it is mainly the kind of food that you would find in Germany and in Poland.

Presenter26:15

But the foods of the Sephardi Jews are much more the Mediterranean foods, aren't they? The aubergine, the courgette.

Claudia Roden26:18

Yeah.

Claudia Roden26:20

Yes. It is the aubergine, the courgette, the lamb, the tomatoes, the garlic, the spices, the herbs, the saffron. It's all about good food and good eating.

Presenter26:32

What we also um learn from this book though, uh again, you overturn so many preconceptions and and there are several uh biblical beliefs that you overturn. Manna for a start, you say, didn't come from heaven. It was there all the time in the wilderness.

Claudia Roden26:46

Yes, and certainly in it's in Iraq, and it is an insect that makes a tiny cut in a Tamil tree. And in the morning there is this white stuff that comes out of it, and they do sell it now. I mean, it's a it's a sweet.

Presenter26:46

What is that?

Claudia Roden27:06

And you bite in Israel. I've eaten quite a bit of it and it is called.

Presenter27:10

And it is called manna as well. And then you say that the land of milk and honey had no bees. So what.

Claudia Roden27:17

What do you mean?

Presenter27:17

We have anything.

Claudia Roden27:18

That the honey that was called honey in the Bible could have been a date syrup.

Claudia Roden27:25

Or grape syrup. And this is what people say was really the original honey.

Claudia Roden27:34

I've chosen part of Alta Yiddish tans played by the Hevriza Ensemble. They're playing an old Jewish dance. It's klezma music, which is the music of the Eastern European Jews played by traveling musicians who went from shtetl to shtetl. I've chosen this music because when I was researching the book, I was playing klezma music all the time when I was cooking Ashkenazi dishes.

Presenter28:32

Part of Alter Yiddish Tanz, old Jewish dance, played by the Grevrieser Ensemble, led by Stephen Greenman and Zef Feldman. I have to ask you, Claudia, were you re this is a difficult one. If you were really a castaway on a desert island and you were going to be allowed one last meal, shall we say, before you go there, what would you choose? Give me three courses of all the things you've ever

Presenter28:55

tasted or cooked or know about.

Claudia Roden28:57

Actually, I'm used to having little sort of always not one first course, but lots. And that's how I always serve, and that's how I always like to eat little bits of things. And it could be an aubergine salad with uh various spices mixed together, or it could be roast pepper with preserved lemons and anchovy. But also the usual I still love stara masalata, but the real thing, I wouldn't accept one from the supermarket. And your main course? Something that I really love is stuffed pigeons. But they're Mediterranean pigeons. They're not English pigeons, and so they're more like baby poussins and stuffed with couscous, which is mixed with pistachos, almonds, other nuts. And it's cooked in a honey sauce, onion and honey sauce. And I do love that, and sometimes I serve it myself on a little mountain of couscous.

Speaker 129:28

Wife of

Presenter30:00

And w do we need a pudding after?

Claudia Roden30:02

Yes, I always need a pudding. But I would have a fruity pudding. And it could be just a perched fruit on a rice pudding. And the rice pudding, I would flavor it with mastic. Mastic is an Arab flavouring. It's also a Greek flavouring. Mastic comes from the island of kiosk. It's only found there. And it gives a very particular taste to rice pudding.

Presenter30:04

Yeah.

Claudia Roden30:27

Uh

Presenter30:27

It sounds wonderful.

Claudia Roden30:29

Last record.

Claudia Roden30:31

Last record is Bach's English Suite number one, played by Marie Peraya. I want it really because all the other music reminds me of people, reminds me of things, but this one is for me so beautiful, so emotionally uplifting and also so peaceful that it's the kind of music that I would love to hear on a desert island.

Presenter31:54

Murray Pariah playing the prelude to Bach's English suite number one in A major. Now, Claudia, if you could only take one of those records with you, as opposed to all eight, which one would you choose? It would be Edit Piaf.

Presenter32:06

BAAC.

Presenter32:06

Memories of Paris and memories of Picasso and such.

Claudia Roden32:08

Yeah.

Claudia Roden32:09

Yes, and also because French is my mother tongue and I miss it. And what about your book?

Claudia Roden32:16

I would choose Marcel Proust a la Rocherche Temp Perdieu. One reason is that for me

Claudia Roden32:23

like the Madlens and the tea, every dish for me tells a story. And this is why I always put the stories in my book, that a dish is not just a dish, it's everything that it represents and everything that's behind it.

Speaker 232:31

Uh Uh

Speaker 132:31

That

Claudia Roden32:37

And a luxury you get.

Claudia Roden32:39

A luxury would be paints, oil paints and brushes, and if I can have a canvas, but otherwise I would be painting on trees and on stones because I've I went to art school and I used to paint a lot and somehow because I have given so much time to cooking, to writing about food, that now I have this great wish to start painting again and and I would love to do it on a desert island.

Presenter33:09

Claudia Roden, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert.

Claudia Roden33:11

Thailand discs.

Presenter33:12

Yeah.

Claudia Roden33:13

Thank you very much for having me on.

Speaker 133:22

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.