The gardens are pin neat in the quietly affluent street where Claudia Roden
has lived for over 40 years; but hers, at the end of the no-through road, is
mysteriously, blousily overgrown. The visitor has to duck under branches of
bright pink fuchsia on the path up to the porch and a big oak front door.
Inside the comfortable, workmanlike kitchen, the dresser strewn with family
photographs, there is an unexpected visitor, her brother and neighbour
Ellis, a retired surgeon, dapper and courteous in a lovely puffy bow-tie. He
gallantly takes my coat, promising that he will not be staying to disturb
our interview. But before he goes he is anxious to establish Roden’s
credentials. “My sister writes about food in a very special way,” he
confides, “a little like Elizabeth David except Claudia is nicer. Elizabeth
was not . . . a friendly person.” Roden protests. “That is enough!” she says
fondly, bundling him out with kisses on both cheeks.
On the table is a dish of plump dates and shelled pistachios and another of
wafer-thin chocolate biscuits. Roden is just back from Spain, where she has
been researching her next book, her twelfth since the seminal Book of
Middle Eastern Food, which awoke a generation of cooks to the sensory
pleasures of mezze, pilau and orange-flower water. Otherwise, she says, she
would have cooked something for my visit.
Her latest book, Arabesque, revisits the cuisines of Morocco, Turkey
and Lebanon; my proof copy has been a cause of great excitement at home,
containing as it does recipes that perfectly accord with the current
appetite for this style of food. “I thought all the time about ease,” she
says. “I think this is how I have changed since that first book, which
contained dishes that were more complex or perhaps an acquired taste. Here I
have concentrated on recipes that are easy, quick, light, healthy and, above
all, pleasing.”
She says she has witnessed huge changes in food culture in Britain. “Now
people have a great ambition to cook, they are willing to attempt things
that they have barely heard of, more so than in countries with a stronger
national cuisine.” She has become aware of health concerns, she says, though
she is not “extreme”. Middle-eastern cooking is healthy food, she says.
“There is not much butter or cream, little meat. It is based on beans,
pulses with vegetables and the addition of small things that make food
delicious: nuts, fruit, aroma. It is cheap food on the whole, but dedicated
to pleasure. Much of it is ideal grazing food for families who may be coming
and going at the table.”
With a life dedicated to cooking, how does she remain so trim? “It must be my
metabolism, partly,” she says. “I eat normally, never diet, but I am not a
compulsive eater; I eat only things that are good. I would not eat a bad
meal, on an aeroplane for instance, just because it was there. When I am
alone, which I am often, I eat simply, but always the best ingredients.”
A son and a daughter live in London, with five children between them: “They
come here most Sundays and the grandchildren on Thursdays, and I go to them
often, taking food that I have prepared. When I make puddings, which I do a
lot, I send them home with the children so I am not tempted to eat them.”
Ellis recently urged her to have a test for diabetes. “It showed I was on the
brink, but at the next test I was normal. Then I realised that the first
time I had been sampling many sweet pastries for my book and they raised my
sugar levels.” What does she think of the national obsession with dieting?
“It’s strange. Eating a little less and exercising a little more: that seems
to be the answer.”
Does she exercise? “I was a swimming champion in Egypt as a girl but have not
exercised in a formal way since then.” But she does dance: “In the kitchen,
when I am cooking. Sometimes belly dancing, or I put on techno music which
is, how do you say?” Aerobic? “Yes, that’s it.” She likes walking,
especially in Paris, where she has a flat. “There I walk everywhere.” And
she feels youthful: “I play football with my grandchildren; we are all great
Arsenal supporters.”
She believes health is partly a matter of attitude: “The minute I wake up, I
am interested to see what I will find out today. I am an optimist, I think.”
And food, she observes, is a very convivial field: “One is mixing with
people who enjoy themselves and this adds happiness to life — which is good
for one’s health of course.” A psychotherapist friend challenged her
recently about her Pollyanna-ish attitude to life. “He suggested that I was
. . . hmmm. What is that word for when you make up a script for yourself?”
Fabulist, perhaps? “No, not that.” She frowns, then her brow clears:
“Denial! He said I was ‘in denial’.” She laughs triumphantly. “I am not, I
told him. What nonsense.”
A food critic has described Roden’s cookery writing as a “mixture of humour,
learning and delicate greed”. Exactly so, and one should add charm. She is
one of the most charming women I have ever met. She has reached what she
coquettishly describes as a “grand age”; she tells me what it is but
suggests it would be unnecessary to record it in print. Suffice to say it is
a surprise; she looks far, far younger than her years. And she talks — oh
how she talks — fluently, passionately, occasionally searching for an errant
thread and then dismissing it with a shrug, scarcely drawing breath,
smiling, dimpling, ranging over nuggets of history, ingredients, anecdote,
personal confidences.
She grew up in Egypt, the daughter of Sephardic Jews who sought asylum in
Britain at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956: “My mother cooked a great
deal and I came to realise how important food was to exiles. It is a way of
feeling at home, happy.” The family was large and highly educated, speaking
French as a first language but also Italian, Arabic and English. Roden began
to write to relatives, scattered by now across the world, asking for
recipes. She haunted the reading room in the British Museum, finding
13th-century manuscripts with accounts of dishes, ingredients and domestic
economy.
When she began to write for magazines, a cousin, the editor of Le Monde,
advised her: “Women writers are paid half what the men get; make sure you
always ask for double what they offer you.” At first, imbued with her
family’s old-fashioned notions about the vulgarity of women working,
especially for money, she was too shy to speak about pay. Later — after her
husband left her — she toughened up: “I became known by magazine editors as
the dragon woman.” She has always tested her recipes, on family and friends,
cooking each dish two or three times before committing it to print; as she
became known for her interest in food from different cultures, people would
send her recipes from all over the world.
Later, when her children were grown up, she travelled, often at the invitation
of ambassadors and governments eager for her to research and disseminate
their culinary traditions. For this latest book, she spent a pleasurable
time in Lebanon in the company of “the golden boys”, two gay young men, one
a “foodie”, the other a fashion designer, who introduced her to current
cosmopolitan food trends. “They knew everyone and I learnt so much from
them.”
Later, as the afternoon draws towards dusk, she plunges into the history of
her marriage, which ended when her youngest child was only 6. She brought up
her three children by herself — “It was not a great inconvenience” —
supporting them with her writing and resolving never to criticise her
ex-husband in front of them: “It is vital that children are free to love
both parents.”
Does she feel lonely? “No, not at all. I like my own company but also I
have many friends and I eat often with my family.” She has been sad, of
course, she says: “Sadness is part of life and you must experience it, not
push it aside, but not let it take you over.” She thinks for a moment. “One
has a nature, I suppose. And it dictates much of how you are in life.”
Arabesque, by Claudia Roden (Michael Joseph, £25), to be published October
27, is available from Times Books First at £22.50, p&p is free.
Call 0870 1608080, or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksbuyfirst
