How did you choose the recipe (below)?

I knew from research that I had done in a Thirteenth Century culinary manual found in Baghdad that there were recipes with date syrup. I had several recipes of lamb with dates and I particularly like this Moroccan one with the couscous. So I tried it with a date syrup glaze at the dinner the other night with Paul [Franklyn, co-director of Plinth] and Michael [Rakowitz].

It is interesting how food culture moved from Baghdad to Morocco, when the Islamic empire expanded through North Africa and all the way to Spain. You see the influence of Arab food and Baghdad-style dishes in Morocco, Tunisia and all over North Africa; this recipe, meat with dates, is one of them.

How have things changed from when you started cooking 50 years ago?

Middle-Eastern cooking is very fashionable now. Partly this is down to Yottam Ottolenghi – he has this huge influence. I saw Yottam just last night. The food was his at an event – it was great. He has a wonderful way of re-interpreting traditional dishes. Everyone else is doing the same now. A lot of chefs who do modern British food are also cooking Middle-Eastern dishes in gastro-pubs and restaurants.

Where did you find your ingredients?

When I first came to Britain there was hardly any use of flavourings. You couldn’t ever find ingredients such as tahina or pomegranate syrup, sumac and rose water, and yet I was writing about all of these things. I could only find them in a Cypriot grocer in Camden Town, but now all the supermarkets have them and people have learnt to use just about everything that gives flavour.

How did you meet Michael?

I was invited to one of Michael’s dinners last summer in London and that’s how I got to know him. I didn’t know anything about him, I just went – and I was completely enthralled by the whole event. It was magical. He was cooking an Iraqi-Jewish dinner out in a garden in huge saucepans with Ella and Regine. It was the beautiful garden of the Mosaic Rooms of the Qattan foundation on Cromwell Road. He gave me an apron embroidered with my name and said that I had inspired his cooking which made me very happy. I was sitting at a table with a Saudi woman, a Syrian woman, and an Iraqi Jewish architect.

The food kept coming – for starters mango pickle salad, dried broad beans with lemon, sambusak (little pies) filled with fried onions and chickpeas, dates stuffed with walnuts. The mains were from Michael’s grandmother’s recipes – ingriyyi, minced lamb, onion, tomato and aubergine with tamarind, and kubba shwandar, a sweet and sour beetroot stew with meat-filled dumplings, accompanied by turmeric and saffron rice with raisins and almonds.

Michael made an inspiring speech about reactivating the time when there was harmony between faiths. He makes these dinners regularly. The project, called Dar Al Sulh, began in 2013 as a pop-up restaurant in Dubai. It was the first in the Arab World to serve the cuisine of Iraqi Jews
since their exodus. I come from Egypt where we [Jews] lived very happily amongst Muslims. We were part of the same world – three of my grandparents came from Syria and one came from Istanbul.

What do you think of Michael’s Fourth Plinth commission?

I think it’s very exciting. I think it’s fantastic – the idea, the spirit of the whole thing. And it is so beautiful. It’s such a fun but moving way of showing something that has been destroyed: something of such value. [The Lamassu] had an unimaginable value to the whole of humanity, stretching back thousands of years before it was destroyed. Michael engages with difficult questions with such a light touch – I am thrilled that he is on the plinth.

Every country in the world is represented in London...

London is a city of immigrants and we were asylum seekers in 1956. At that time, I was already here as a student but my parents had to leave Egypt very suddenly. Tens of thousands of Jews came out of Egypt within weeks; they had to leave after the Suez war because Israel was involved with Britain and France in attacking Egypt.

That is when I started collecting recipes, more than 60 years ago. People came out of Egypt over several years, and we kept on seeing all these refugees who were settling in different countries – wherever they were allowed to stay. In the midst of that upheaval, they were so into their food and asking each other for recipes. That is when I started collecting recipes … to record our joint legacy.

When the Suez Canal opened in the late 19th century, Egypt became the great trading centre of the Middle East. People came from all over the Ottoman Empire to settle there - that’s what brought my grandparents, and plenty of others. The recipes I was collecting weren’t just Egyptian; they were Syrian and Turkish, but also from everywhere else – from Morocco, Iran… That’s why I did a Middle Eastern book and not just an Egyptian one. Now I find that Syrian refugees are pining for the same dishes that my family was pining for, all those years ago.

I showed Paul and Michael a photograph of my great-grandfather who was the Chief Rabbi of Aleppo – he wore Ottoman clothes, with a turban and medals from Sultan Abdul Hamid.

Is it hard to hold onto recipes and food memories, as an immigrant?

Usually, for immigrants, cuisine is the last thing that they lose. Even when they stop listening to their music and wearing their clothes and even speaking their language, they go on eating their food. They hold onto it for generations.

Are you still busy writing?

I’m 81 and I don’t want to stop working. It’s what I love doing.

Can you tell me about your new projects?

I am working on a new book but every day this week I’ve had one young person or another coming to the house – chefs doing a podcast, supper clubs or working on a book. One young man turned up and said ‘I want to cook for you’. He came on a bicycle with a soup he’d made. He was just out of university, and he was passionate about food. He’d started a blog and an instagram account. He brought this extraordinarily delicious lentil stew and a whole lot of ingredients and started taking out all my saucepans.

It was really funny. Of course, I could have said ‘no, I’m busy’ – but it’s so inspiring to see people really passionate about food. When I started, no one was interested in food. It was considered a taboo subject, frivolous and totally unimportant. Nobody talked about food.

Do you cook for friends and family?

When I’m alone I eat good food but just the simplest thing, I don’t spend any time. I always invite friends, members of my family, children or grandchildren, to come when I am trying new dishes. I make an effort and want to see what people think of them.

What is your next project?

I’m working on a new book about Mediterranean food – I had a book come out more than thirty years ago on Mediterranean food and I also did a television series. Since then I’ve been travelling and collecting a lot more recipes. I don’t have a deadline, but I hope it will be finished soon!