Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2001, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a food writer. Her books are as much about culture and anthropology. The following Paris and started her working life as a painter. It was only when her family fled

their homeland after the suis 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

Rodin. 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 almost the country that is the most multicultural and

multi-racial 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 our country.

Isn't that wonderful?

Because of course 40 years ago or more when you came here that wasn't the case at all.

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