AClaudia Roden cookbook is a serious deal: You get history, geography, and culture plus recipes, all in one fascinating volume. Indeed Roden herself embodies a cultural mix: Born and raised in Cairo, she completed her formal education in Paris before moving to London to study art. How she went from art to food is another story, one that she touched on in previous books: the James Beard Award–winningBook of Jewish Food,A Book of Middle Eastern Food,The Good Food of Italy: Region by Region,Everything Tastes Better Outdoors,Claudia Roden's Simple Mediterranean Cookery,andArabesque.
Epicurious caught up with Roden on one of the rare occasions when she was at home in England, to talk about her new book,The Food of Spain,how culture and history influence a country's food, the competing forces of traditional versus molecular cuisine, and her plans for the future. Plus, she shares three recipes from the new book:Eggplant Fritters with Honey,Seafood Paella,andAlmond Cake.
Epicurious:How long did it take to write your new book,The Food of Spain?
Claudia Roden:Five years, because of the travels and because I do everything myself and try and retry the dishes. Also I had to learn about Spain and I had to teach myself Spanish—I learned by being there and I managed to read Spanish.
Epi:I found it interesting in the book how all the different cultures came together in Spain.
CR:Yes, and that to me was extremely exciting. There was this mix of Arab and Jewish and Christian and some French, and somehow it created a different style from the Arab style and the Christian style, a real hybrid.
Epi:In the book you talk about the diverse regions of Spain and how geography kept the different cuisines intact. Were you surprised by that, or have you found similar cases in other travels?
CR:我发现在黎巴嫩所有这些山脉nd that is why in the regions in Lebanon—although it's so small compared to Spain—they still had villages that didn't know what other villages were cooking, because of the distance and difficulty. They didn't have major roads until relatively recently. In Spain I found it really thrilling and exciting to find the regionality, but at the same time foods aren't contained within regional borders. That was part of the history of Spain. For example, dishes from the north appeared in the south because they came duringReconquista,the reconquest of Spain, when the people of the north took land from the Muslims and resettled it with peasants from the north. Then you have dishes that weren't part of the south that appeared there. And there were also dishes that were Jewish and had been in the south that appeared in the north, in places like Galicia, for instance.
You wonder how the Galiciantarta de Santiago de Compostela—the famous cake ofSantiago de Compostela—is the Passover cake of the Jews. Why do they have cake there with almond and grated orange peel when they don't have almonds or oranges? And also they were isolated by mountains from the rest of Spain and they had their own dishes, but here was strangely their almost national cake, and it's Jewish. And then I find that there were Jews who left the south when the fundamentalist dynasties tried to convert the Jews. The Jews fled to the north and some of them went to that part of the north and it was quite an important community that settled there.
Somehow things seem to come together like a puzzle all over Spain. There is a story behind every dish, and it's always exciting to find out.
Epi:Did you get most of your information from local people?
CR:I always start with local people, because they tell you something and then you can go and research it. You know it all ties up with what they said. Some might be a myth, but there's always something in it. I find the influences very exciting because I find the story of Spain exciting—it's very dramatic. And I feel it's also my story, because I was brought up with three grandparents who came from Syria—from Aleppo—and my aunt who came to Egypt and played the lute. And I'm also from one grandmother of Judeo-Spanish origin, and so I feel in a way I'm part of the story, or rather the story's part of me.
Of course, my interest is food and the taste of food and how to make it good. History is one part of it, but actually the cooking is for me the major part.
Epi:Ferran Adrià is the most famous, but there are many culinary innovators in Spain today. Do you think these more progressive chefs need to go back to their roots before they can move forward?
CR:I found the chefs' food was very exciting. And I found a lot of other fantastic chefs who were influenced by them to innovate and to deconstruct. But I think there is another side to it: A lot of them seem to think you have to keep making new dishes all the time. Once you've got a good dish, why not do it again next year? People remember it and want to come back to eat it. I don't believe in constant change, and it's changing constantly. Now I also found that most of them were saying that they look to their roots for inspiration, because that's where you have to start and you have your identity.
这个东西的身份,这种感觉的内存,so important in who you are and what you like and where you come from and your ancestry—it's very powerful, even in people who live in the same country and aren't like myself; to me ancestry and roots matter. A lot of the chefs say the same thing: They want to do the dishes of their region, go back to their region and their ancestors' food and the memories they have. Their mantra is they want to evoke memories and emotions.
Epi:Do you find that when a country's had political turmoil or struggles that it makes people more passionate about their country's food?
CR:Yes, I think it does. And I'm not sure why. I suppose when you're very rich and you can just eat anything then you want to eat what's fashionable or what's fashionable elsewhere, what's exotic. And some of the chefs have gone very exotic in Spain, and they bring back every possible flavor and food from every corner of the world. So now there is a reaction to that. The chefs are saying they want to evoke emotions and they are using the products of their region and they are thinking of the history of their region and the influences there that mean something to them, and of course it means something to their customers who are Spanish. But it meant something different to me. To me it meant my grandmother from Spain who actually was born in Istanbul but still cooked Spanish food of 500 years ago.
I also found that Ferran Adrià has such a powerful influence. All the young chefs and culinary students—they all want to be like Ferran. They want to be on television, they want to be great, and they want to be famous, and they want to use science and technology. But at the same time, in Catalonia, there's a very, very powerful group of gastronomes who are protective of Catalan cuisine and traditional cuisine—they are glad that Ferran has put Spain and Catalonia on the map, but they're afraid of losing their traditions. They have collected 900 recipes in Catalonia and 600 in the Balearic Islands. They go around trying to get chefs to go on cooking traditional foods. And there are chefs who do and there are restaurants that cook wonderful traditional foods, and the Spaniards love their food.
Epi:So you think there's a place for both, the traditional and the new?
CR:Well, the Spaniards go mostly for the traditional. They go once a year to Ferran, if they can afford it—they want to see what he does each year. But they love their kind of food and they go on eating it.
Epi:Do you find molecular food soulless or clinical?
CR:No. Some of the chefs who use technology to produce surprising effects and those who "deconstruct" traditional dishes are very passionate about what they are doing and talk of their roots and creating the essence of a dish or food. I'm not personally—although it can be very good to eat—interested in chemistry or technology. I'm about home cooking, and none of that can be done in home kitchens—it has to be in a restaurant with all the machinery and all the technology.
Epi:Can you pinpoint your favorite recipe from your travels?
CR:No, it's too difficult. I keep trying different recipes and in every book I've done I've found many that I love. I have favorites everywhere. When I go to a restaurant, there are some foods I just adore but I usually order what I don't make myself, because I always think I'd probably make it better—what you make yourself with the best ingredients in your own kitchen is bound to be very good.
There are restaurants in England that use my books and they do their own take because it's fashionable to do Middle Eastern, Mediterranean. I love going to eat there and I love tasting them, but sometimes their own take isn't better than the traditional. People innovate, innovate, innovate and it's the take of the take of the take, and then where are you? To change for the sake of changing isn't worth it.
Epi:What's your next project?
CR:Well, I don't know. I'm 74, but I feel as though I'm 24, you know?! I keep saying I've worked too hard and I'm just going to enjoy myself now, but I find that this is part of my enjoyment. I have quite a few plans. My daughter Nadia Roden lives in New York—she's an artist and makes fantastic ice cream. She is also thinking of doing a series of children's books and I might collaborate with her. And I've got a grandson who's a chef, and I'm wondering whether to do something in food rather than write about it. Or to go on writing about it and to collaborate with my daughter in a [children's book series] she's thinking of doing.
Several people have been asking me for years to do a memoir. I know everyone's doing a memoir now. I'm not the kind of person who likes to write about myself, so for years I'd say, "No, I'm not doing a memoir." But maybe it's a memoir about other people rather than myself—I found a thousand letters from one of my great-grandfathers in Paris and it's all about different Middle Eastern, Ottoman countries, and I've got a lot of information on another great-grandfather who was the chief rabbi of Aleppo. Although I never wanted to do a memoir, I might…
Photos: Anita Calero/trunkarchive.com (left); Tony French (right)
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