Claudia Roden left her native Cairo in 1951 at the age of 15, first to attend boarding school in Paris and then to study art in London. When the Jews were forced out of Egypt after the Suez War, her parents — who were of Syrian and Judeo-Spanish ancestry — joined her. But the tastes and smells from her Egyptian youth never left her.
To help keep those memories fresh, she collected recipes from the many Jewish refugees passing through London in search of new homes. As a wife and mother, she cooked those dishes for her family, tinkering with sketchy instructions to make them work. She delved into translations of medieval Arab culinary manuals to learn more about the origins of those dishes, and wrote about them for newspapers. Her 1968 cookbook, “A Book of Middle Eastern Food,” the first of many bestsellers, is widely credited with igniting the popularity of hummus and other Mediterranean classics throughout the Western world today.
“Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Recipes from a Lifetime of Travel” (Ten Speed, $40) takes a deeply personal turn, centering on the solo, open-ended journey through the Mediterranean she embarked on after her kids left home some 35 years ago. Now in her mid-80s, she continues to cook meals shaped by those experiences in her London kitchen, adapted to the dietary preferences of her guests as well as her own. Meat still appears on her menus, but less frequently than the whole grains, produce, nuts and seafood so prized in the Mediterranean diet.
The recipes interspersed between gorgeous photos are minimalist in both ingredients and method. Chicken with Apricots and Pistachios owes its meat-with-fruit legacy to ancient Persia; Yogurt Soup with Orzo and Chickpeas, reminiscent of an Istanbul feast, is one her granddaughter now serves to college friends; a flourless Sephardic Passover Chocolate Cake remains her family’s all-time favorite choice for birthday celebrations.
The joy of recapturing these taste memories is evident throughout. ”It may be cold and gray and raining outside,” she writes, “but in my kitchen at my desk in London I am smiling under an azure sky.”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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