Claudia Roden's Mediterranean

Claudia Roden's Mediterranean

Introduction

An adventure that never ended

When my three children left home all at the same time thirty-five years ago, I decided to leave, too, and travel around the Mediterranean. I went alone, à l’aventure—without plans or arrangements.

A childhood memory lived inside me of the exhilarating moment we arrived in Alexandria by the desert road from our home in Cairo and suddenly saw the sea. To me, Alexandria was a different world, with other trees and flowers and new smells and villas painted yellow and pink.

Compared to the serious and restrained Cairo, it was a city of freedom and pleasure. You felt the exuberant lighthearted mood in the cafés along the seafront. Italian, Greek, and French were spoken in the street. The city was part of another world, one to which Marseille and Barcelona, Genoa, Athens and Algiers, Beirut and Tangier also belonged. That world had a culture all of its own, so powerful that the whole country was influenced as though the sea was its center of gravity.

I wanted to find that spirit again.

Back in the 1980s, a woman traveling alone was strange and suspect, but researching food gave
me a mission and a reason to be there. It allowed me to make contacts, to ask for help, and to spend time in restaurant kitchens. It allowed me to accost people and introduce myself on trains, in cafés, or in the sitting rooms of pensions, or small hotels. I would start a conversation with “I’m an English food writer researching your cuisine. Can you tell me what your favorite dishes are?” They didn’t always buy the “English,” but were always happy to talk about their food. My interest was
in home cooking and regional food. I was invited into homes where people still cooked as their parents and grandparents did. Part of the pleasure of researching food was meeting people, sharing a moment of their lives, and discovering their worlds. There is a special conviviality and intimacy in the kitchen that you don’t quite get in the living room.

The Mediterranean has remained the focus of my work. This book is based on remembered dishes that I have encountered over decades. Working on it has kept me happy, thinking of people and places, magic moments, and glorious food. It might be cold and gray and raining outside, but in my kitchen and at my desk in London I am smiling under an azure sky. The smell of garlic sizzling with crushed coriander seeds takes me back to the Egypt of my childhood. The aroma of saffron and orange zest mingled with aniseed and garlic triggers memories of the French Riviera. I still cook the dishes in this collection for family and friends. They capture so well the special charm and spirit of a world that enthralls me.