Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A food writer whose books blend culture, anthropology and recipes, best known for works on Middle Eastern and Jewish cuisine.
On the island
Eight records
Traditional Arab Music of Cairo
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.
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.
L'AccordéonisteFavourite
That song for me was terribly important, especially of all the songs, because I was once at the Fête de l'Humanité... And on that occasion, [Picasso] 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.
Joan Sutherland, London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge
I've chosen this because my parents used to go to the opera a lot in Egypt... And my father loved Italian opera, and when I hear this piece, it it just makes me a little bit tearful.
Greek Laiki Ensemble conducted by Mikis Theodorakis
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... I would put the music on and she would come rushing down.
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 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.
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.
English Suite No. 1 in A major, BWV 806: Prelude
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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:33Give me a picture 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?
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.
Presenter asks
5:00What sort of language did you speak [at home]?
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.
Presenter asks
12:19How quickly did events take over [after the Suez crisis] and your parents had to flee?
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.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
one reason is that for me like the [Madeleines] 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.
The luxury
paints, oil paints and brushes
I've I went to art school and I used to paint a lot ... now I have this great wish to start painting again and I would love to do it on a desert island.
Presenter asks
12:52Was [your father] able to bring anything here at all?
No, he came with nothing... Absolutely not. 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.
Presenter asks
22:36Was it a liberation in a way when you started to travel to be independent? Because suddenly you were on your own.
Yes, it's true. And I had never been on my own before. And uh I was wandering around all by myself.
“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.”
“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 again.”
“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. But we could preserve at least the food, and it was that part of our heritage that gave us a lot of pleasure.”
“Being able to ask people for a recipe is a way into their life 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?”