Claudia Roden: A Life Through Food

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 976 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1968 Claudia Roden published her first book, 'A Book of Middle Eastern Food', and with it introduced many people to an unfamiliar food culture.

When she arrived in Britain in the fifties, foods like hummus and pitta were nearly unheard of, and "to talk about food was a taboo subject". Things have changed. That these foods are now common-place and mainstream is in large part due to Claudia Roden's work.

Going on to write 'The Book of Jewish Food', 'The Food of Spain', 'Arabesque', 'Mediterranean Cookery' and others, and with a new edition of 'The Food of Italy' out next month twenty-five years after its first appearance, Sheila Dillon meets Claudia Roden. Sheila discovers a colourful and turbulent life in which food has meant so much, a life which has shaped a unique and powerful voice in food writing.

Claudia was born in 1936 into a family of Sephardic Jewish merchants, into a cosmopolitan Cairo that has, in the wake of the Suez Crisis, long since disappeared. This is the story of a family in exile and the power of food to sustain individuals and entire cultures.

With the help of Simon Schama, who is a long time admirer since coming across that first book as a young history teacher, Sheila Dillon charts a remarkable life in food.

Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced by Rich Ward.

Transcript

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0:58.0	When I first wrote hummus people would say is hummus the hummus that you put in the soil.
1:06.7	You know, the idea something is called hummus.
1:09.9	I gave recipes for paper thin pastry.
1:13.7	Paper thin pastry, how could it be paper thin?
1:17.0	Today's program is the story of a woman who made the unfamiliar,
1:24.2	familiar, who took us into parts of the world
1:27.2	few of us knew and introduce flavors
1:29.8	that would change British culture forever.
1:32.4	I had recipes for a bread with a pouch in it.
1:36.0	People said how can a bread have a pouch you? And now Peter Bread has become so much part of what is our British food now.
	...

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