A Zest for Life

Legendary food writer Claudia Roden on turning 85, her love of solo travel and how cooking stopped her feeling lonely during lockdown.

Veteran food writer Claudia Roden is reaching a major milestone birthday just days after we speak, and she is in disbelief.

“Well, I just can’t imagine that I’m 85,” the author of more than 20 cookbooks, who was born in Cairo, tells me on a Zoom call, sitting in the study of her North London home, rows and rows of books lining the wall behind her. “I thought I would forget things about my travels.

But then suddenly it all comes back. When I cook, for instance, something with fried garlic and crushed coriander, then memories of Egypt come, and I just feel happy.”

Having relocated with her parents to London in the 1950s, Roden began her career focusing on Middle Eastern food, before turning her attention to the Mediterranean, an area she is revisiting with her latest book, called simply Med.

Her love affair with the Mediterranean stretches back to her early childhood, when her family holidayed in Alexandria on Egypt’s coast and she found the city joyous.

She remembers: “Cairo was strict and prudish – Alexandria was the opposite. The kind of life there was, for me, something wonderful and happy. I just felt the Mediterranean was where I wanted to be.”

So after her marriage of 15 years had ended in 1974, her three children had become independent in 1983, and she found herself free to travel, she decided to head back to the Med.

“When my children left home, they all left on the same day and I decided I would leave on the same day as well,” she says.

And so began “my way of life for decades”, crisscrossing the countries that bordered the sea, munching her way through the kitchens of southern France and Spain, the islands of Italy, as well as North Africa, Syria and Turkey.

“For me, traveling to research the food was a way to be acceptable as a woman at that time. As a woman, traveling alone was considered peculiar or rather strange and suspect. People were always asking me, ‘Where’s your husband?’ or ‘Haven’t you got children?’ That, for me, was an adventure – one that never ended.”

Nowadays, lone female travellers are not such a rarity, but the kind of warm welcome Roden received as a roaming foodie isn’t always so easy to find.

“I found when I travelled, especially in the Mediterranean, at that time everybody was glad to speak about food. Everybody was there, outside in the piazza, looking for somebody to chat with, have a conversation. It doesn’t work anymore.

Because now everybody has a mobile phone and they don’t want to be disturbed.”

Her classic Mediterranean Cookery was first published in 1987 – but three decades on, when she had reached her Eighties and wanted to bring the culinary delights of the area to the next generation, she decided against venturing out on another expedition: “I didn’t have the strength to travel, and research and drive and carry a suitcase, sometimes up a hill.”

Instead, she decided to go on doing what she loved most – cooking and having friends and family round her kitchen table.

The aim of her book Med was to find the dishes mined from her memory or, as she calls them, “remembered magic moments” that gave them the most pleasure.

Five years in the making, the book was completed during the pandemic, when she enlisted the help of her three children – Simon, Nadia and Anna – and six grandchildren to test and sample recipes. Family and friends would gather in Roden’s garden to gobble fragrant spiced rice and roasted veg, warming lentil soups, meaty Spanish stews, Arabic-inspired filo pastry parcels, steaming bowls of seafood spaghetti and more.

“When it was raining, they even came with umbrellas. I have photos of them sitting and eating under umbrellas. My garden was the only place where they could meet.”

Being separated from friends was “the hardest part” of the Covid restrictions for Roden, but beavering away in her kitchen and study kept her from “getting miserable… I didn’t feel either lonely or unhappy”, as did long strolls on nearby

Hampstead Heath: “Before, I felt it was a waste of time to walk. ‑ at I’ve learned, and I’m not going to unlearn.”

Now that lockdown has ended, the octogenarian is looking forward to celebrating her birthday with a dinner party at her daughter’s house. So will she be putting her feet up and leaving the cooking to someone else?

“We’re all going to cook for my birthday – I’m cooking as well,” Roden says with a smile. And there’s certain to be music, chosen to evoke treasured memories from a lifetime of globetrotting.

“When I travelled, I always bought music.

In Italy, it was all Pavarotti, I would put on O Sole Mio. When I’m cooking French dishes, I’m putting on Edith Piaf and singing La Mer. And then I’ve got Arab and Spanish music… I just think cooking a dish from somewhere really makes you feel good. It makes you feel that place.”

Green Olive, Walnut And Pomegranate Salad

A sensational salad that’s crunchy and fresh with a hint of chilli. Claudia Roden describes this dish as “a thrilling mix of flavours, textures and colours that is almost too glorious to look at. It is a speciality of Gaziantep, a Turkish city on the border with Syria, famous for its gastronomy.”

(SERVES 4)

INGREDIENTS:

◆ 100g good-quality pitted green olives in brine, drained

◆ 50g walnuts

◆ 3 spring onions, chopped

◆ bunch (25g) of flat-leaf parsley, leaves chopped

◆ 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

◆ 1 tbsp lemon juice

◆ 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses

◆ salt, to taste

◆ chilli flakes, to taste

◆ 3 tbsp pomegranate seeds

METHOD:

➊ Coarsely chop the olives and walnuts, place in a serving dish and mix with the spring onions and parsley.

➋ In a small bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon juice and pomegranate molasses with a little salt and chilli flakes to taste. Pour over the olives and walnuts and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

Catalan Fish Soup

Called bullinada in Spanish, this creamy soup is flavoured with white wine and garlic. “The Catalan bullinada is like the bourride of the French Riviera and the gazpachuelo of Malaga – a fish soup with garlic mayonnaise stirred in. It has a mysterious delicate flavour and beautiful warm colour.” Claudia suggests using fish such as hake, monkfish or cod cheeks, and adding squid or prawns if you like: “You can make much of it in advance and finish the soup a few minutes before you are ready to eat.”

(SERVES 6)

INGREDIENTS:

◆ 1 large onion, chopped

◆ 2 tbsp olive oil

◆ 8 garlic cloves: 6 finely chopped and 2 crushed

◆ good pinch of saffron threads

◆ 2 litres fish stock (use 3 fish stockpots)

◆ 100ml dry white wine

◆ 800g new potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5cm slices

◆ 1 tsp fennel seeds

◆ strips of peel from ½ orange

◆ 800g skinless fish fillets, such as hake or monkfish

◆200ml good-quality bought mayonnaise

◆ juice of ½ lemon

◆ good pinch of chilli pepper, plus extra to serve

◆ 4 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley

◆ salt and black pepper

METHOD:

➊ In a wide pan, fry the onion in the oil over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes until it begins to soften. Add the chopped garlic and stir for 2 minutes until it just begins to colour.

➋ Stir in the saffron and pour in the fish stock and the wine, then put in the potatoes, fennel seeds and orange peel and season with salt and pepper.

Simmer, covered, for 20–25 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

➌ Ten minutes before you are ready to serve, remove the orange peel and put in the fish. Cook, covered, over low heat for 4–10 minutes, depending on the fish and the thickness of the fillets,

until the fish becomes opaque and the flesh begins to flake when you cut into it with a pointed knife. Break the fillets into pieces.

➍ In a jug, beat the mayonnaise with the lemon juice, the crushed garlic and a pinch of chilli.

➎ Just before serving, add a ladleful or two of the hot stock into the mayonnaise mixture and beat it in, then gently stir into the simmering soup.

Heat through but do not let it boil or the mayonnaise will curdle. Serve sprinkled with parsley and pass round some chilli for anyone who would like to add more.

Yoghurt Cake

Originating in Turkey, this baked dessert is simple but delicious. “­This Turkish cake is like a light, airy, fresh-tasting cheesecake,” says Claudia, who suggests serving it with macerated strawberries.

“We make it all the time in my family and you really must try it.”

(SERVES 6-8)

INGREDIENTS:

◆ butter or sunflower oil for greasing

◆ 4 large eggs, separated

◆ 100g caster sugar

◆ 3 tbsp plain flour

◆ 400g full-fat Greek-style yoghurt

◆ grated zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lemon

FOR THE STRAWBERRIES:

◆ 500g strawberries

◆ 60g caster sugar

◆ juice of ½ lemon

METHOD:

➊ Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas

4. Butter or oil a round non-stick cake tin (about 23cm in diameter) with a removable base.

➋ Using an electric whisk, whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form.

➌ In another bowl, using the same whisk, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until thick and pale. Add the flour, yoghurt, lemon zest and juice and beat to a homogenous cream.

➍ Gently fold the egg whites into the yoghurt mixture and pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 40–45 minutes, until the top is lightly browned – watch it carefully for the last few minutes of cooking so that it doesn’t brown too much. The cake will puff up like a soufflé and then subside.

➎ Let it cool a little before lifting it out onto a serving plate. Serve warm or cold.

➏ For a beautiful accompaniment to the yoghurt cake, briefly rinse 500g strawberries, hull and cut them in half through the stem end, then sprinkle with 60g caster sugar and the juice of ½ lemon and leave for 1 hour.

Med by Claudia Roden, photography by Susan Bell, is published by Ebury Press. Available now.

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