Traveling the World for Recipes, but Always Looking for Home
The New York Times
Famous for her scholarly works, the cookbook author Claudia Roden shows off her lyrical side with her latest, “Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean.”
LONDON — If you’ve ever swiped a supple piece of pita bread through a plate of garlicky hummus and your family roots aren’t in the Middle East, you may have Claudia Roden to thank.
In 1968, in the modestly titled “A Book of Middle Eastern Food,” the 32-year-old Egyptian exile gave the non-Arabic-speaking world one of its first detailed looks at this rich cuisine. Through hundreds of traditional, comprehensive and carefully tested recipes, like herb-flecked Lebanese tabbouleh and Syrian lamb kibbe, she introduced western home cooks to the subtle, extensive art of Middle Eastern cooking.
Before her book, she could find no volume of recipes like this published in English or in any European language. If you wanted to make baba ghanouj, you might persuade a Turkish or Egyptian cook to share family secrets passed down through generations. But let’s face it, before 1968, if you were living in Britain, chances were good you’d never tasted baba ghanouj.
