Claudia Roden Recipe and Interview
Claudia Roden Recipe and Interview

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Claudia Roden Recipe and Interview

Claudia Roden is a cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist based in Hampstead, London. Born in 1936 in Cairo, Egypt, she published A Book of Middle Eastern Food (her first volume) in 1968. Since then, she has gone on to release 20 titles ranging from Picnic: The Complete Guide to Outdoor Food to Tamarind and Saffron: Favourite Recipes from the Middle East, and, most recently, The Food of Spain in 2011. Roden has also worked as a food writer and TV presenter for the BBC, and is co-chair with Paul Levy for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking.

Claudia has contributed a recipe (below) to the booklet accompanying our latest edition, A House With A Date Palm Will Never Starve by Michael Rakowitz, ahead of the release of a larger volume compiling recipes from chefs around the world using date syrup: the substance at the heart of Rakowitz's Fourth Plinth commission in Trafalgar Square. Below, Roden speaks about her inspiration for the dish, cooking Middle Eastern food in the UK and the power of food to maintain links with our roots.

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.

Claudia Roden
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Chloe Grimshaw

How did you choose the recipe (below)?

Claudia Roden

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.

CG

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

CR

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.

CG

Where did you find your ingredients?

CR

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.

CG

How did you meet Michael?

CR

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.

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Claudia Roden and Michael Rakowitz

CG

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

CR

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.

CG

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

CR

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.

CG

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

CR

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.

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.

Claudia Roden
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Tahina and date syrup - 'Dibis wa Rashi'

CG

Are you still busy writing?

CR

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

CG

Can you tell me about your new projects?

CR

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.

CG

Do you cook for friends and family?

CR

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.

CG

What is your next project?

CR

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!

Claudia lamb recipe

Claudia's Roast Lamb, illustration by Michael Rakowitz

Dates have something of a sacred character in an Arab culture born in the desert. They symbolize hospitality and are much loved and prestigious. A favourite food of the Prophet Muhammad is said to have been hays, a mixture of dates, butter and milk.

Claudia Roden

Roast Shoulder of Lamb With Couscous and Date Stuffing

Dates have something of a sacred character in an Arab culture born in the desert. They symbolize hospitality and are much loved and prestigious. A favourite food of the Prophet Muhammad is said to have been hays, a mixture of dates, butter and milk. He also liked fat meat. When a lamb or a kid was being cooked, he would go to the pot, take out the shoulder and eat it.

Bedouin tastes spread to all corners of the Islamic Empire. This is sumptuous but extremely easy dish is Moroccan. The meat is cooked very slowly for a long time until it is meltingly tender and you can pull the meat off with your fingers. The stuffing is sweet with dates and raisins, and crunchy with almonds. The couscous needs plenty of butter as there is no sauce. Use soft dried dates like Medjoul, Tunisian Deglet Nour or Californian varieties. A shoulder of spring lamb is always fat but most of the fat melts away during the long cooking.

Serves 6

Ingredients
1 shoulder of lamb
salt and black pepper
250g medium grain couscous

1 tablespoon orange blossom water
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons sunflower or vegetable oil
150g dates, stoned and cut into small pieces
50g seedless raisins
100g blanched almonds, chopped coarsely
65g butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons date syrup plus more to pass around in the jar
To garnish: 8 – 12 dates and 8 blanched almonds

Method

Put the joint, skin side up in a baking dish or roasting pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in an oven pre-heated to 250°C for 20 minutes. Then lower the heat to 160°C and cook for 4 - 5 hours until the skin is crisp and brown and the meat is juicy and meltingly tender. Pour off the fat after about 2 hours.

For the stuffing, put the couscous in another baking dish, and add the same volume of warm water – about 300ml, mixed with a little salt, the orange blossom water and cinnamon. Stir well so that the water is absorbed evenly. After about 10 minutes, add the oil, and rub the grain between your hands to air it and break up any lumps. Mix in the remaining ingredients, apart from the butter, cover with foil, and put in the oven with the lamb for the last 20 minutes or until it is steaming hot.

Before serving, cover the meat with the 2 tablespoons of date syrup. Stir the butter into the couscous so that it melts in and is absorbed evenly. With a fork, fluff up the couscous stuffing, breaking up any lumps. Add a little salt to taste, if necessary.

For the garnish, remove the stones from each date and replace them with the blanched almonds. Serve the meat with the couscous stuffing decorated with these dates.

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Claudia Roden and Michael Rakowitz

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