Uncovering flavours of the Middle East (From Times Series)

Uncovering flavours of the Middle East

2:01pm Thursday 3rd November 2005 in

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She doesn't have a shiny new kitchen in the style of Nigella Lawson or Gordon Ramsay, but this hasn't affected her ability to create award-winning dishes.

Described as a genius' by Ms Lawson, Claudia Roden is now working on her 12th book, having published Arabesque, her latest book last Thursday, focusing on the food of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon.

She says her current work, which revisits the territory of her first, the Book of Middle-Eastern Food, published in 1968, is targeted at a much broader younger public which doesn't want too much information about the past'.

But even here she has given the background to the dishes she creates, for Claudia, who lives in Wildhatch, Hampstead Garden Suburb, is not just a cookery writer.

Her books could just as easily be filed in the historical section of bookshops as she provides social commentary on the ingredients she includes, as well as the people who use them.

"I did go out to look for recipes that I didn't have, but some of them are just a variation of a recipe that I had before," she explained.

"What you find in a Lebanese or Turkish restaurant here is always a standard recipe but the variety in the particular country is unbelievable. There are villages in Lebanon, in the mountains, which have their specialities, and I didn't want to just do what everybody knows."

Claudia was born into a Jewish family in Cairo, Egypt, and came to England in 1952 at the age of 18 after studying art at Paris's Lyce Hlne Boucher.

In London, she attended St Martin's School of Art, studying under well-known tutors Anthony Caro, Elizabeth Frink and Eduardo Paolozzi.

Claudia and her two brothers settled in Temple Fortune, living with a woman called Jane Trenner Auntie Janey' who looked after them as her own.

"The three of us lived as students," said Claudia. "I remained in contact with the people we lived with until recently. Everyone in the whole of Golders Green knew Mrs Trenner and she only died recently, at 105 I think."

Being Jewish and fearing for their safety, her parents then fled Egypt after the Suez Crisis in 1956 and were granted asylum in Britain. Her family, she said, had lived a charmed life in Egypt, which at the time was very cosmopolitan. They spoke French at home but also Italian, which many Jews learned from Italian nannies.

Her father imported all manner of products, including silks from Italy, and as a child she travelled abroad with him. When her family came to Britain with nothing, Claudia went to work for an airline company in the reservations department.

But with three of her grandparents hailing from Aleppo, in Syria, and her fourth grandparent from Istanbul, Turkey, Middle Eastern food was and still is in her blood.

"My real interest in food came because my parents left so abruptly, with nearly everybody else who was Jewish," she explained.

"There was this terrible sense of loss, of Are we ever going to eat this again?', because there weren't any books and nothing was printed."

She started contacting family and friends, and then friends of friends, all over the world for dishes they had cooked, asking for their recipes.

"When I came here the food was not very good," she said. "I started cooking in Temple Fortune because I was living with my two brothers and we used to invite all the people we knew to come and eat, and they were very pleased because we were cooking unusual things but we didn't think it was so special.

"At the time the students were only cooking spaghetti bolognese and mushroom omelettes, the only two dishes that were fashionable.

"We cooked all kinds of things, including French things and Italian things, and a lot of Middle Eastern things."

Claudia still travels, taking a hefty 12 trips a year, either for research purposes, to judge competitions, attend conferences or in her capacity as adviser to a cultural fund in Holland.

Not only has she inspired generations of cookery writers as well as the public, she has also passed on her love of food to her three children, one of whom, Nadia, an artist in New York, has also published a cookery book called Granita.

Despite her heavy workload, Claudia remains excited about cooking and has recently returned from Spain where she was researching her next book.

"Cooking is the most enjoyable part of my work," she said. "The other great part is research, travelling and meeting people. Everything about food is convivial and pleasant.

"I try recipes on friends, and being able to invite people to dinner, and at the same time do your work, is a good thing."

What she likes least is perfecting her recipes, working out the measures, timing and weight.

"It's a bore and you have to be absolutely correct, because I feel a very strong responsibility about people spoiling their dinner."

But with Ms Lawson saying I love Claudia Roden she's a genius', there's probably not much chance of that.

* Arabesque is published by Penguin / Michael Joseph, priced at £25.