In Review: The Books of Claudia Roden

Peace, Shalom, Salaam my friends,

             Claudia Roden was born in Cairo,Egypt in the 1930s to a wealthy and important Jewish family. She had a happy and comfortable life there, but while she was studying art in the U.K., the Suez Canal Crisis of the 50s forced her family to leave  their beloved Cairo: and take up residence with her in London. Ms. Roden never returned to life in Egypt, and she missed the culture and the food of her homeland terribly.

      She married in 1959 and raised a family in her adopted London, but the marriage ended in 1979, and she found herself in need of an occupation. Ms. Roden had been collecting recipes from older family members, and other sephardic home cooks for years, and had taught herself to cook. She began to teach middleastern cooking in her london home, and has been a part of the professional food world ever since(Jewish Women's Archive, article by Joan Nathan).

            Claudia Roden writes from the soul, her memories of life in the Sephardic world of yesteryear inform and color her  descriptions of life in theJewish Quarters and Mellahs of North Arifca,and the Levant.  An inate comprehension of the food ways of the Oriental Sephardim, as well as those, of the Muslim Arabs who were her neighbors,make her recipes exquisite story telling in and of themselves.

          Roden has written around seven cookbooks, but I just want to discuss, here, the two that I own. The first one I will talk about is Arabesque: A taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon , Alfred A. Knoph; New York. The cuisine of each of the perspective countries comprises a section, and each section is sub-titled Introduction, Starters, and Deserts. In the introductory sections Roden provides an overview of that country's cuisine, as well as the cultural ideosyncracies which give it its unique character.In her introduction to Morocco, Roden tells of The Dadas and their secrets, she writes,"Men are excluded from all kitchens.The great cooks-family cooks, professional cooks, those who cook for weddings and parties, the gaurdians of the great cullinary traditions-are the dadas. They are all women and most of them are black. Who they are is a taboo subject; the hidden face of Morocco"(16). The recipes in Arabesque, as in all of Roden's cookbooks, are thouroughly authentic, yet painstakingly tested, and perfectly modified for preparation in 21st century kitchens. The recipes will be equally appealing, and satisfying, to the world traveler and the non jetset foodie alike. 

               The second book I wish to discuss with you is my "food bible", it is entitled, The Book of Jewish Food: An OdysseyFrom Samarkand To New York; Alfred A, Knopf, New York. My copy of this volume has been so utilised, and perused, and studied that the binding fell away completly, and the pages had separated into three chunks; so now it is all held together by yards of Scotch Tape, but I digress. Roden's Book of Jewish Food is the best Jewish cookbook I have ever read. Roden's passion for the subject and her meticulous research and testing provides the reader with the most workable and appealing recipes a home or professional cook could ever ask for, her extensive travels and expertise, especially regarding sephardic cooking, bring the culinary history and folklore of the Jewish people to life, on the page, as never before. In The Book of Jewish Food, Roden adresses Jewish cooking in two halves. The first half of the book covers Askenazic cooking and the sedond half covers Sephardic and Mizrahi cooking. It's almost like two cookbooks in one. Both sections are thourough and will satisfy the desires of Europhiles, as well as, Mediterraneophiles. The Sephardic section is in my opinion the hands down authority on sephardic cooking and its cultural significance.
        I f you don't have these two volumes in your kitchen collection, your cooking library is incomplete.