Walter Murch - American Graffiti: The soundtrack (54/320) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2017-09-13 | To listen to more of Walter Murch’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzCodipONmNiROhYCUWyz_UWalter Scott Murch (b. 1943) is widely recognised as one of the leading authorities in the field of film editing, as well as one of the few film editors equally active in both picture and sound. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2016] TRANSCRIPT: We decided to implement this idea of worldizing on a relatively massive scale. So we recorded a two-hour disc jockey program, including the songs and the commercials, and Wolfman Jack, a disc jockey, talking in-between the commercials and the songs, as if it was something you could just turn on your radio. So we had a two-hour tape of all of this, and then we took this tape on a Nagra recorder and another Nagra recorder with a microphone, and we went into the backyard of a house in the suburbs of San Francisco, of Mill Valley. And George stood at one end of the yard with the speaker from this recorder, it was a separate Nagra speaker, and I stood as far away from him as I could in this yard with a Nagra and a microphone. And we started simultaneously. I pointed the microphone at the speaker, and then George would rotate the speaker to the left, and then rotate the speaker to the right, and back again over the course of two hours. And I would do the opposite with the microphone, so at some times, the microphone and the speaker were pointing at each other, other times they were pointing at 180 degrees different than each other and then they would come back in. And then, we did it all again. So it took about four, four and a half hours to do this, but what we had at the end were two worldized, atmospheric recordings of this radio show.And then in the final mix, I was able to sync those two soundtracks up with the original recording, and then I threw one of the tracks a couple of frames out of sync to give a little echo bounce to it. And then in the mixing, I had three faders. And I could choose to use all of fader one and none of the other faders, if I wanted the music to be upfront and big. And then if I needed to go underneath the dialogue, I would fade that down and bring the other two, or one, up and work with them in some proportion. And so again, this allowed us to have this control of the depth of field of the sound, which overcame Verna Fields' objection. Because without her being able to articulate what the problem was, she was referring to the technique that had been used up to that point, which was, play the music low, filter it so that it has a restricted filter, and maybe add a little bit of echo chamber echo to it. The problem with that is that that music still has sonically speaking, it still has sharp edges to it. And the result is that you start playing it lower and lower, and then you reach a certain point where you can't tell what the music is, but there's just something kind of scratching on the soundtrack. It sounds like music that's bleeding through from a print-through or something. It sounds like a mistake, and therefore you say, 'Well, let's just get rid of it.' And that was Verna's impulse. With our technique, we were able to play the music under dialogue, actually quite loud, but because it has no sharp edges to it, and the dialogue does have clearly defined words, that allows the ear to seize hold of the words without tripping over itself, so to speak.
Claudia Roden - From England to Paris (5/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: When I was 15 my parents sent me to Paris. I have to say, they sent me to Britain first, to get my GCSE. Because I had done almost... I had done two terms at the English School Cairo. I was really very young but in Egypt we took the exams young. And so, I had only one more term and they sent me to London – not to London really, to a boarding school in Horsham – to take my exams. And I did, and I passed. I passed all of them, which was something like 11.But I was really, really unhappy. Because the girls were going to be presented to the Queen and they were all into horses and lacrosse and they weren't at all interested in passing exams. I think I was the only one in the school, and the foreign girls who were there, were Iranians. And we stuck together. But the real reason why my parents sent me was that my younger brother had had a terrible badly operated ear problem. He had mastoiditis. And he had infection, then a mastoiditis, and it means that the infection had affected even the bone in his skull. And he was in great danger. At the same time my elder brother had been in England, had done his O Levels and he was going to study medicine. And because my younger brother went to Paris to be operated there by one of the greatest specialists, my mother went with him. So, my father was at home with me, and it was difficult for him. And so, they decided the best thing would be that I'd go to England. And then to Paris because my brother, after his operation, had to stay in Paris to be near the doctor. Because he would keep needing treatment for one or two years. And so, if I was there, we would be supporting each other. And so, yes, I went to Paris. And for me that was one of the most fantastic times in my life.
Claudia Roden - Egyptian culture (2/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Our life was very, very much about entertaining and visiting, and seeing each other. We had this really huge, huge family. For instance, one aunt had 18 children. And on one side, my mother... my father was one of ten, maybe 11, I think. They were all girls. And then, on my mother's side, there five girls and the last one was a boy. But life for most people in Egypt was about visiting, seeing each other, and food was very important.It was a society... where hospitality was one of the most important part of its culture. There was hospitality, sociability, conviviality. I'm saying conviviality because you were supposed to, when you entertained, really entertain. It means people had to be happy. When they were in your house, you had to joke, you had to laugh, you had to say things that were going to be fun.
Claudia Roden - Women in Egypt (3/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I really loved my life in Egypt. But I didn't really want to become what women became in Egypt. Which was, in my background no woman ever worked. They weren't expected, nor allowed to work. Because if they did, they would shame their husband. And so... But the women did have a good life. They had money, because their husband's worked hard, as merchants. Most of the men in the family were merchants. And the wives, they didn't stay at home. They went to the club. They went to play cards at each other's places. They would do petit point, you know, embroidery. And so, they did have a good life, but I didn't find that appealing for me.
Claudia Roden - My childhood in Egypt (1/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was born in Egypt in a large extended family, in the Jewish community. And it was a very, very happy life as I see it. I lived in a block of flats in an island in Cairo. And there were my parents, Cesar and Nelly. And my two brothers, Ellis and Zaki and me. And we had a nanny, Maria Koron, who had been a novice nun in Slovenia. And her stepmother had asked her to come to Egypt to be a nanny and to send money back home. And so, we adored her.We had a cook called Awad. He was also doing other work besides cooking. And he lived upstairs. He lived on the terrace. All the servants in the building lived in little huts or little houses... on the roof. And he had learnt how to cook our food from my mother. She had to teach him. He came from a village. He wouldn't have known. And so, yes, you might be interested in what we cooked. We cooked mostly Syrian food. Because three of my grandparents came from Aleppo. They had come when my father, who was the youngest of ten, was conceived in Syria. They came to Egypt, and he was born in Cairo. And we also cooked Turkish dishes, Judaeo-Spanish dishes. French dishes. Italian as well.Egypt was a very cosmopolitan country where there were many minorities. And we all lived together amongst the Muslim majority, the Muslim community. We were middle class. But we had a very good life. We'd travel to Europe every year. We went to Italy. We went to France. We spoke French at home. And also Italian with the nanny. Because they were Slovenes that had a part of Slovenia that had become Italy for a period, and they had been forced to speak only Italian at school. They could only speak Slovene at home and in church.
Claudia Roden - Growing up in Egypt (4/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I went to an English school, which was called English School Cairo. And it was the kind of school where most of the children were local, of course. Muslims and Copts and Jews and Armenians, and all kinds. And there were English people who had come, not only with the army but they were there because it was an English protectorate, the country, at the time. And so, we were mixing with them. And one thing I remember that we were talking many languages with each other, non-stop. And the teachers would come around and say, 'English only'. 'English only'. And at that time also, I remember it was a time of feminism. Of Egyptian feminism. That a lot of the girls' mothers were feminists. They were part of a movement that was called Bent el-Nil, it means the Daughters of the Nile. And they, of course, would never dream of putting a scarf on. And their daughters were very also, militant. So, I was very, very excited about what was going on.But at the same time, in 1948, Israel had become a state. And it was given part of what was Palestine. And so, all the Muslim countries, and also in Egypt, there was a little bit of turbulence about that. Egypt did go to war against Israel. Actually, Egypt was the only country that sent soldiers. All the other Arab countries sent weapons and money. And, of course, there were... I think, Syrian army as well. But mainly it was the Egyptian army. But they didn't... because the Jews of Egypt had been a good part of Egypt and had contributed to much of good things that were going on. So... but gradually it was becoming difficult when the war continued because a lot of Jews were seen as Zionists. And were seen as pro-Israel. And, of course, even people who weren't Zionists cared a lot about Israel. And they did contribute money to help. So, my parents did worry and wonder about our future. But they still had a business, were happy to be there.
Claudia Roden - Researching the history of food (26/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was also researching food. And I did... at that time, that is when I did have for a very brief period, an au pair, I think for a year. And I went to the British Library. I started then wanting to learn about why the food is what it is. And why there is baklava in Iran, and in Greece and in there... why is there something there and there again. I was interested to find out about the history of food.And so, the first thing I did, but not to find out about the history of food, but to find an Arab cookbook. About Arab food in English. Or in Arabic. I went to the British Library. In those days it was that big place in the round... in the British Museum. And it was very, very dramatic to go there and read. And I went there, and it was difficult. You had to ask in advance. But once you were able to go, I remember then asking the librarian, 'Have you got any books about Arab food?' And he said, 'If you come tomorrow, I'll have something for you'.So, I came back and all he had was... there was nothing at all contemporary, either in Arabic or in English. Everything was from the 13th century. It was three culinary manuals. One, written by hand, from the 13th century in Baghdad, one from the 13th century in Damascus, and one from Spain in Arabic and it is from Andalusia. So, it was Muslim Andalusia. And it was... they had the manuscript, but also for me luckily, they had a translation by a Professor Arberry, of the book in Baghdad. And also, analysis by a French professor called Maxime Rodinson of the manuscript found in Damascus.
Claudia Roden - Work with a photographer (50/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Before I set off, the idea was that I had to work with a photographer. And the photographer was one of the most famous food photographers internationally. Robert Fresson. And he had done a book on the food of France. That was absolutely magnificent. So, he came around to this house and he said, 'I want to travel with you'. And I said, 'No'. Because I knew that photographers took a long, long time setting up. And what he needed was a place where we could spend the day doing several photographs. And I had to go looking for a cheese person, a salami maker, and I had to find people who talked. Because what I needed was words to put in the stories. I needed to know about the past, about the history. About the story of the villagers, what everything that anybody could tell me. But I had to talk to people, and I had to find people to talk to. And then I'd had the... you don't stay the whole day. You have your interview... I didn't call them interviews. But I had my pencil and paper. And I wrote. And I couldn't do it with a photographer.And so, he said, 'Well, you go ahead, and you find the place where I can photograph. And also, can you find me old things, like old plates, and old... because I don't want modern stuff'. Because Italy at that time... it was after the war, they all wanted modern stuff. They wanted stainless steel in the kitchen. They wanted old baskets for making cheese. But actually, for hygiene laws, they couldn't have marble, they had to have stainless steel. They had to have plastic baskets to make cheese. And he said, 'And I want to photograph where there are no cars'. And he said, 'A bicycle okay'. But then he said, 'If you know if there's an old lady who goes there'. You know, he wanted in the end... his image he was looking for was an image of Italy long past. So, I went to antique shops to say, yes, they've got plates here. In Tuscany they had all these antique shops and they had antique markets and so on.But then when I found them, many of the things in these antique shops came from England. Because I think in Victorian times, the English had more stuff than anybody else in the world. In the way of plates and knives and forks, and everything, and furniture as well. And so, sometimes we got plates that came from Yugoslavia. So yes, it had its funny sides. But people adored his photographs. Because it was a dream Italy that really did not exist anymore. And actually, we parted ways. We parted ways because publishers wanted to do my book. There was an auction there again, because as soon as the 'Sunday Times' magazine came out, they would like to have had the words and the photographs. He wanted to buy my words, because he was much more famous than I was, the photographer. And a earned a lot more from doing the photographs than I did from doing the writing. And the recipes, I think. Anyway, that's what the editor told me. But the publishers wanted my words and the recipes. And so, we had parted ways. He was going to find somebody to write other recipes for him. Which was difficult for him, it took him several years and it didn't work. Because it was my recipes that the people that we saw and the photographs he took.
Claudia Roden - Life in Egypt (9/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: In Egypt, when I was 14 already, and a bit younger even, a lot of the older people... I also have to say, when I was in Egypt, most of my life was, apart from the school and going to the cinema once a week with the whole family, I was always with the whole family. I never went out alone. I never took a bus or a tram. And I went mainly to the club. And the club had Olympic swimming pool. And we trained. I say we, because we were... several of us were big swimmers. And I was a swimmer, and I swam in championships.
Claudia Roden - Exploring food in Sicily (55/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: When I got to the hotel I got a note – in fact, right away – as soon as I arrived, from the Trade Office of Italy, saying don't move, we'll come and fetch you. And what they wanted me to... they fetched me to go and see tomato factories. All their industries. And then I said, 'But that's not what I want. I want recipes. I'm here about your cooking, how am I going to find out'. So, they said, 'Oh yes, there is a teacher of cooking who is a chef as well. And he knows, he'll tell you'.And so, he came the next day. And he was wonderful, and a young man. And he said, 'I'm taking you to the convent, where the nuns are making pastries'. And he took me to this convent, and they worked. They had made so many pastries, just for me. He had asked them to. And they were still working on them when we arrived. And I was there, always embarrassed about people being over kind, not over kind, but putting them out. And so, I was thrilled with actually seeing them cooking and actually getting recipes. But then I said, 'Can I pay them for having done all this?' He said, 'Forget it. We pay them all the time, we support them'. And I realised who the... we were.When... he then said, 'I'm sending you somewhere else', which was on the way. Because I was going to another city. But on the way, he said, 'You'll stay in this hotel where they do fantastic food'. And he phoned them, and he said, 'Give her the bridal suite'. And so, I went there. And I went down to meet the chef. And he said, 'We are making something special anyhow tonight, because we've got today... we've got a special, special event'. And what the event was, was a whole army of men. Not army, but there must have been at least ten men. And I was guessing what their affiliation was. It wasn't a food writers, or food critics thing. It was real Sicilian men, planning and plotting. But the food was sensational.
Claudia Roden - A Taste of Italy (45/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: After the Mediterranean series, I was asked by the 'Sunday Times' to do a magazine series on the food of Italy. They called it 'A Taste of Italy'. And they asked me to go to every, it was the regional foods that they were interested in. And they asked me to go to every region of Italy, and to research the food. And they said, 'Go, stay where you like'. I always stayed in very cheap places, and they kept saying, 'How can you find such a cheap place?' The editor, they always wanted to go to a better place. They said I showed them up. Because I wanted to go to pensione, I didn't want to go to hotels. I wanted to go where tourists didn't go. Where the local people were on holiday. And I could then go into, where everybody was sitting and say, 'Have you got any recipes?' But also, it was the real Italy. And... yes.So, I did... for me that was the most fantastic job I could ever imagine having. And they also said, 'Eat everywhere you like. You can invite somebody, so that you are not alone. Invite people. Go where you want. Eat everything you can possibly eat. And come back with lots of stories'. Because they said they wanted it to be a series. They took up 16 pages of the magazine each week. Almost all of the magazine. Because they wanted men to be interested. So, 'Bring back stories that men want to read'. Because in those days, food was only for women's pages. Men just weren't interested. And so, what men were interested in is what I was interested in anyway.
Claudia Roden - BBCs Claudia Rodens Mediterranean Cookery (44/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: From this time, I only went to the Mediterranean every time I've travelled. And so, it was really like my patch of work. And I went gradually around. But after Morocco... and in Morocco I met a lot of strangers as well. And you know, one woman who is... some who weren't strangers is the cousin of the ambassador in England. He had given me her address. And it was the most extraordinary cuisine. And so, I had all kinds of experiences in Morocco.But while I was travelling around the Mediterranean, right from the beginning, the BBC had been interested in doing a series on the Mediterranean. Because they had done a series on healthy food. Healthy cuisine. And it ended with an event in Italy where some great special nutritionists were saying, 'Mediterranean food is the healthiest'. And because there had been an early... American nutritionist who had done research in six countries, and he found that in all the Mediterranean countries, people lived longer. They had less vascular diseases. A whole lot of things. And so, the BBC... I was involved in that series, but just doing the Middle Eastern thing when I didn't know about the healthy values.And so, they asked me could I do a television series with them. And I did. And I was more behind the scenes. I was the presenter, only to present each different programme. But I was the voice explaining where we were, what we did, and the television series was called 'Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Cookery'. And so, for me, this was marvellous, because the paid for travels. But also, we are able, because of their money, to go to all kinds of places. And also, everybody wanted to help. Because to be in the BBC programme, is something. And so, we went to seven countries. Including Egypt and Greece and we went to Spain. And for me it was my first trip to Spain. But I had already travelled quite a lot and so they used my contacts and my knowledge, and also, my knowledge of events to do their film. For instance in Morocco, I knew there was going to be a wedding. And so, they went out without me – they went out mostly without me – to film the wedding. And it was a wedding in two houses. The men in one, the women in the other. The cooking. And I knew the whole culture. By then, I had already done a lot of finding out.
Claudia Roden - Exploring the Mediterranean culture (37/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: But I did get to meet a lot of interesting people who came. And who... some of them are still friends. In fact, one of them is my sister-in-law, a new sister-in-law. Gill came to the course. And I had men coming to the course as well. Because I did daytime, weekends, evenings, and we cooked. And then we had dinner. And we ate what we cooked. And I told stories as well about... tales about those dishes. And yes. And so, that was really a part of my life. And then, also I learnt a lot from them. I learnt how much they needed to know. How much more you should say in a recipe. And also, what they like doing best and it was really, really interesting.But, when my children left home, they all left home at the same time, because the elder two have... Simon and Nadia had been at home for their studies. Simon had been in Sheffield for architecture, but he then went to Camberwell. Not to Camberwell, sorry. Another place. My daughter did art at Camberwell. But when they had finished that year, Anna left for... my youngest left for university. So, I just thought, 'I can't bear to be alone here'. Now, I don't mind being alone. But then, suddenly an empty house. And I said, 'I'm going away', also on the same day. But it wasn't exactly the same day. But I decided to travel around the Mediterranean. Because I really felt the need to be in that world. Because Cairo isn't in the Mediterranean, but Alexandria is. And somehow there is a Mediterranean culture that I found in every port city. And also, in all the regions near the sea.Apart from the food, that is the food that I've always loved, and I found that there is something about the way of being. The way of joking. The whole culture of hospitability. Of making something of a meal. Of being around a table and chatting and joking and spending time, having time for each other. And all these mezzes, the tapas. But also this is something where you feel you have in common. And of course, I spoke nearly all the languages from around the sea. And so, I just did feel at home. There is a saying that if you're from anywhere around the Mediterranean, you're never a stranger anywhere, around the sea. And this is really how I felt.
Claudia Roden - Dinner at the Gritti Palace in Venice (48/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: My first visit and my first experience was in Milan at a conference. Somebody in Milan at the conference was a food historian called Massimo Alberini. He said, 'Do you want to come to dinner at the Gritti Palace in Venice, when we're having a reunion of chefs from all the regions, who are special group who decided they are going to keep tradition?' And so, I was thrilled, can you imagine, sitting on the terrace of the Gritti overlooking the canal with a long table and all the chefs. And it was heaven. But then, they were all explaining that it was a new thing, just for a time, about this 'nuova cucina' influence from France. And they wanted, not to impound their cuisine, they wanted to revitalise it. So, they were explaining that you don't have to stick exactly to what your mother made in the region, but you revitalise it by refining it. Making it better for a restaurant, which is wonderful. And so, I took a lot of their cards, they were from all the regions, so I could go and visit.
Claudia Roden - Regional divisions in Italy (53/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Italy is a great example about how food reflects life, history, and geography. Because of its huge diversity. The diversity, because of its division, not that long ago, not yet 200 years. Just after 170 years or so, it's division into many states. Different states. There were kingdoms, republics, papal states, all kinds of different ones, all of them had their history, their culture, their food that was different. Also it was different... and people actually at the time that I was travelling, never wanted to eat anything that another region cooked. They didn't know what they cooked, and they didn't want to know. Of course, now they don't get their recipes from mama anymore, they look on the internet. And much of what is going on here, goes on there. But they are still attached to their own cuisine, particularly.But there's also... at the time that I was travelling, there was strong divisions that were regional. You would have, for instance, the division between the north and the south, which was the most marked. And, for instance, you would have butter in the north, pork fat in the centre, and olive oil in the south. And in Milan, for instance, they hardly used any olive oil early on. But when I was travelling, they were beginning to use oil, and they were saying, 'Have you heard of the Mediterranean diet?' Because they had heard of the Mediterranean diet and they were saying, 'Well, we are using olive oil now'. But there was also black pepper in the north, in the south it was chilli, hot chilli. And in the north, it was rice and polenta. In the south it was spaghetti and pizza, and in the centre it was tagliatelle, not spaghetti. So, there was no spaghetti in Bologna. They were angry when people asked for spaghetti bolognaise. They were offended. So, there was this great difference, that to me was very interesting. At that time, the north of Italy hadn't been invaded by the immigrants from the south. Because eventually, most of the cooks in the north were people from the south who had come either to work in factories, in industries, or in the kitchens of the restaurants, and in families.
Claudia Roden - Chefs are inspired by my cookbook (35/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Much later, Marks and Spencer were doing... Much later, Marks and Spencer asked me to – several years later – could I come to taste some foods. Their humus, to see if it's right. And I say that they had my book there. And they had the company that was making it, a Cypriot company, there as well. And they had made it. They wanted to hear what I said. And I just realised that they were using my book. And giving their... that's why my mother found that it was the same phyllo. I don't think it is now probably. Because there's so many millions of books. And also, so many people cooking, they don't need my book now. But originally, this is how that book had an influence.I must say that now, I know that it has an influence on chefs. Because I keep being told by young chefs, who no longer so young, telling me that that is how they started with this book. And perhaps the first chef who told me that, was Alastair Little, who died just a few, I think last week, or two weeks ago. He had a restaurant called 'Alastair Little' in Soho. And... maybe Dean Street, I'm not sure. But he got my phone number. He said, 'Come for lunch'. And I went for lunch. And he was known to have taught himself cooking. He was one of the first chefs who didn't go and learn French cuisine, which was what all chefs who wanted to be great chefs... or earn a living being a great chef, or a good chef, would go to Paris to learn. And he taught himself from books. And I remember he gave me sardines with a stuffing. Two sardines fried together, stuck together. It was like stuffed sardines. And I was, 'This is wonderful'. And he said, 'It's yours. It's from your book'. It was from a book on Middle Eastern food. But he also... by then he was using the Mediterranean Book as well. I think.But early on, Samuel Clark, who started Moro with his wife, Samantha. He said that when he was 14, he was cooking from that book. And so many other chefs have told me, that's how they learnt. Because it was the first book of that cuisine. And so, for many, many years I was the only one they could use.
Claudia Roden - Cosmopolitan Egypt (20/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: And when I was interviewing people, people would tell me about their lives. And I wrote it all down. I wrote about their lives, or where this dish came from. It was from a grandmother in Izmir, a grandmother in Salonica. Somebody from Livorno. Somebody from... because they were the Jews, Sephardic Jews from all over the Ottoman World. This is what our community was in Egypt. We weren't all Egyptian. There was an ancient Egyptian community that was there. That was there since before Islam. But in waves it was joined by others from different parts. From Yemen. There were people from Iraq and Iran. But mostly from the Ottoman World. And the Mediterranean.And that's how I realised who we were. Because they were saying, 'This recipe is from Aleppo'. In our family it was Aleppo. Aleppo. But then I realised that it went even beyond Aleppo. Because some recipes in Aleppo were not Syrian recipes. Like the orange cake. My sister-in-law's grandmother had. And she was from Aleppo. And how could she have an orange cake, only her and her family.And I realised they were... the Jews from Spain who, when banished from Spain, went to Portugal. Then came as Portuguese Christians to Livorno, in the 17th Century. When a whole lot of Marranos, coverts came to Livorno. And then came from there to Aleppo. And they kept the orange cake. They kept a whole lot of other things, like a dish we called calzones. Calzones was a kind of ravioli with cheese inside, which we ate on Thursdays. They weren't Syrian. So, for me I was learning about who we were. But also, a bit about geography, because of where some people say, 'This is Iranian'. So, I was trying to plot. Suddenly all these dishes that we weren't eating in my family, but others had.
Claudia Roden - The Suez crisis (16/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: In my second year... I did a first year and second year at art school. And I did then a lot of different things, apart from art. I did sculpture, printing. We learnt many crafts as well. But suddenly... yes, there was the Suez crisis. And France and England attacked Egypt. Because Nasser then had nationalised the Suez Canal that had been built by French and British companies, without compensating them. And he seized the canal and France and England decided to attack Egypt, and they asked Israelis to join them. Israel was already at war with Egypt.But they asked them to attack at the same time from the sea, while they attacked from the air. And they bombed Egypt. And they, especially Alexandria and several parts. So, for Egypt it was the most... they had never been attacked in that way. And so, it was a failed war, because America stepped in and United Nations to say, you can't do that. And it was like an aborted war. But then, Nasa decided to throw out the Jews. And he did.
Claudia Roden - Youth culture I wanted to be part of (14/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: And I had a lot of friends, new friends that I met, apart from the people at art school. And some of them are still my friend. And just yesterday one of them phoned me from Paris. She is a sculptress. She was Israeli. And she had been gone from Germany just before the war. And she went to live in Paris, married a doctor there, and they were in London just last weekend. And then she phoned me because I couldn't go and see them, I was somewhere else.And so, it was also one of the happiest times for me. You can see I had many in the early days. And afterwards as well. Because I keep wanting to have them again. So, it was also a period of great... apart from the food being horrible, there was theatres and going to the Royal Court, and cinema where they had film... what is it called? The film institute. That we wanted to see everything, hear everything. We would go and dance. When I was first in England, before I went to Paris, I asked my brother, 'Where can you go to dance?' And he said, 'There's no dancing'. There wasn't. The only dancing was maypole dancing. And that kind of dancing. And there isn't anything else. There was nothing for young people. But when I was at art school, it was beginning. And I remember going to a skiffle there, it was before The Beatles. And I remember going there. But also going to hear Ewan McCall and Peggy Seager, folk singers. And there was wonderful youth culture that I felt really very happy to be part of.
Claudia Roden - Pauls mothers clothing business (23/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Paul's mother had come over from Russia. I didn't know which city, because... or which village. I keep asking her, and she said she didn't remember. Or she remembered, but she didn't say. And she had come with her mother and sisters and brother, and she went to work straight away in a fish shop, which was her father's. But when she could, she had started a business of her own. And during the war, I think, she did children's clothes. And she couldn't drive, but she would go to some women who did cutting. Because a lot of people that she knew were in making clothes. It was the trade of most of them who came. And they would cut from patterns, then took the cut cloth and brought them to embroiderers, who did smocks for instance. And so, she specialised in special girls' dresses with smocks. And then she would go and fetch them, she was always with a suitcase, going from one place to another. And she made quite a good business.
Claudia Roden - Student life in London (12/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: So, my brother was studying medicine. And then I finished, and I wanted to stay in Paris and to study film. And I wanted to do science. But my parents just said no, there's no question. And so, they wanted me to live with my brother and to go... the only thing I could do because I didn't have my A Levels, I couldn't go to university anyway, and so I did art. And I did like art. And I liked the art scene. I liked being there.We had a great time there as well. And the friendships there. And the teachers. And I lived... actually, my younger brother then came to live with us, and he went to a French Lycée in London. And my brother was at Guys Hospital. And I was at St Martins School of Art. And I was cooking. The food in London then was horrible. We couldn't believe how anybody could eat it. The foods in canteens, like at the hospital, and at school. It was just awful. And in anywhere where we could eat, we could afford, because my parents sent us money, and we kept saving it and saving it. And we tried not to spend. But the only type of food we could eat was horrible. You couldn't tell what you were eating. You know like a stew, where you couldn't see if... it was all brown or beige. And it was also, then the best thing was macaroni cheese or cauliflower cheese. And it was that. And so, cooking for me was important. And so, I bought a book by Elizabeth David, called 'Mediterranean Cooking'. And I cooked out of her book. But I also cooked dishes that we knew. And so, a lot of my friends, until now, tell me they remember coming and eating stuffed vine leaves, stuffed vegetables, things that they had never ever eaten. And it was difficult to get the things that I needed to do our cooking.
Claudia Roden - I do not want to betray the tradition (30/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: When I started collecting recipes, I didn't dream at all of actually either writing a book or become a food writer. It was totally not a thing. It was for us. But because I collected so much, and I had so much information, I just decided, yes. I think it was when my youngest was – I was pregnant with my youngest Anna – that I decided I'm going to turn it into a book. Because I really have piles and piles of papers and papers and papers, of recipes. And in those days, everything was... was handwritten. But I knew from Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson... they were my model on how to write recipes, both of them... And so, I knew from them how to set out a recipe. But I think very much more than them, I did word for word what people told me. Because I wanted to do exactly what was the recipe. I was... It was absolutely the most important thing to follow tradition. I didn't want to invent. In those days nobody invented anyway. Nobody wanted anything invented. And also people who would want my book, they didn't want any invention. They wanted to learn how it was, in countries that they didn't know anything about. Eventually, they wanted the real thing, at the time. It was... now they don't. Now they want invention. They want people's interpretation. They want a twist. They want... they can't ever do a recipe as it is, without a twist. Because they think people don't value it. But for me the real recipe was such a precious thing. And I kept this throughout my career. That it was important for me to get the traditional. And it's my role. This is what I'm doing. Others can invent and I can love what they do. And they're great, but my role, if I do go and discover recipes, in Italy, in Spain, in wherever I go in Morocco, I want to not betray the tradition.
Claudia Roden - Modern Italy and old props (51/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: After I arranged the first photo shoot of a lawyer in Verona, I was so embarrassed because the family put themselves out so much to prepare a fantastic feast for the photographer. And I just felt it wasn't right to keep on asking people that I met, 'Can you do a feast?', or else do some cooking for a photographer. Because it just felt... yes, I was putting people out quite a lot. And so, I decided we had to restaurants to do all the photo shoots. And that would work very well because they would get some promotion. And so, they were cooking anyway. And they were going to cook their things anyway, what they wanted to do. But then I was embarrassed then. For a different reason. Because the photographer would arrive with this big van, full of props. Because he wanted to have a broken marble tabletop. Old plates, all of them cracked. And old knives, old forks, which he had collected. And he would take them out and he would put them there. And it was a time when Italy was very, very modern. And very, very concerned with design. The architecture, they were top in design. And so, they took it as a real afront to have their name put with those photographs of a place that looked ancient. But I had to... because I would sometimes see the beginning, and sometimes even before they came, I started saying, 'You will be maybe shocked that he brings his own props'. Because, you know, he is the greatest photographer in the world, I would tell them. He's so great. But he knows what people in Britain, and in America – because the photographs are going to go in America as well – really appreciate. And how they see Italy. And they see Italy in a kind of other way, and so, this is how we went along. And it worked.
Claudia Roden - Discovering French cuisine and wine (7/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: But in Paris also... My older brother had come to live in Paris for a year to do medicine for one year. And he was living in a little hotel. In those days they were full of students, the hotels. They had a toilet outside on the landing. They couldn't shower, they would have to go to a bath house. But now they are boutique hotels. But then I used to stay... for one year I used to stay and hang around the Latin Quarter where he was, every weekend. And I used to sleep... I would get a room where I could sleep only at night. Because it was rented during the day for couples. And I had to quickly get all my things out and my toothbrush and all that, in the morning.Yes, for me Paris life... but also the food. The food for me, it was discovering another kind of food from what I had known in Egypt. Perhaps I should tell you a bit about what I had known in Egypt. Why? Whether, even though we had a cook, that we did know how to cook. Because we entertained a lot. And when we entertained, some aunts would come and bring their cooks as well. And while the cooks were preparing, prepping really, peeling, cutting up, sometimes deep frying, hollowing vegetables, some, the aunts, and my mother, and myself, I would always be around the table. Would do the little delicacies. Like the stuffed vine leaves. And the phyllo triangles, stuffed with cheese. And so, I used to do a little... I was made to roll a little snake and make it into a little coil. So, it became like a tiny bracelet. And then I would dip it in sesame seeds and then it was baked. And another thing I always did was ground almonds rolls. Where it was just ground almonds and sugar and rosewater. And I would roll it into a ball. And then put a pistachio on top. So, these were... I had this idea that cooking and food was pleasurable, very early on.But in Paris, then the discovery of French cuisine and at school we did get three course meal. It could be very simple. Like, the first course would be 'radis beurre', radishes and butter with some salt. And then, or else salami. It could be an easy thing. Or it could be boiled egg with mayonnaise. Or it could be a celeriac, grated celeriac. But also, really proper home cooking meal. And we always had wine. And even the children who were there, who were five, got wine. So, it was sort of also a discovery of wine. And at boarding school we were, all of us, from Vietnam, from Morocco, from Tunisia, from all around our group tables, and we had fun. Like mixing all the food together to make a disgusting, throwing food. But it was a fun time.
Claudia Roden - Every dish has a meaning (21/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: All the women... because it was only women who cooked. And so, I asked women – they were my mother's age – and they were telling me it was their grandmother's recipe, so you can imagine how old. But they are still going. When I went to Lebanon, I found that's how they cook. Because people did not want to try anything new. They wanted to cook. Not only us, or people in Egypt, but at that time, in every country in the world, people cooked like mothers did. And so, recipes were passed down in families, from mother to daughter. Not even to daughter-in-law, in Egypt, if they cooked.But I also spoke to men. To ask them, 'What was your favourite dish?' And they had a lot to say. Because they were the ones that women had to please. And they knew how things had to be and all that. Also, they wanted to tell me other things. And for instance, one of my uncles who stayed on in Egypt until the '60s – he stayed on for not quite ten years, before he joined all his children in Canada. Because he wanted to keep doing the business that had been nationalised and run by army officers. He wanted it to work. And it was a wholesale, a big business. He couldn't leave. And when his wife died, he left. But he came to England, and he saw that I was taking notes. And he brought out a little paper, or rather a writing pad. But he didn't write. He always said, 'I didn't need to read or write, I just had somebody else did it for me'. And he had proverbs. And he had stories. And so, I did ask men, 'Have you got a story of Goha?' Because I became interested in that whole world. Not just the food, but things around the food. Are there stories about food? Are there jokes about food? Are there poems about food? To me, meant that it wasn't just a dish on its own, has meaning. It has meaning because it means so much to people. Because people joke about it, because people have a story about it. But that is gradually that I became interested in that.
Claudia Roden - Lycée Hélene Boucher (6/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was in a lycée, but I was a boarder. And the boarders were... very few of them because it's not part of the French traditions to send their children to boarding school. And so, the other children were from the colonies, from Equatorial Africa, from North Africa, and there were pupils of the state. The pupils of the state were Jews whose parents had been killed during the war. And that was '52. So, it was only a few years after the war. And so, for me, that was my realisation of what had been happening. And so, the boarders were sent to... went to sleep in a villa in Bois de Vincennes. The school was Lycée Hélene Boucher. And it was in the Porte de Vincennes. And we lived in a villa, in a wood. And we took a coach every day to come to school and then we did our homework at school, and then we went back in the coach. And for me, the coach was singing. We had all these songs. And it was a very, very happy time. Because first of all, France was different from England. It had been through the war. The young people were very, very politicised. Because things had been terrible, and everybody was interested in politics, in life, in everything. In philosophy. And so, at school I had joined several clubs, or rather groups, that were doing literature. A Marxist club, I had joined. And poetries.But in the boarding school too, it was very intense, our friendships. There were quite a few people from Vietnam because Vietnam was at war with France. And these were children whose parents had collaborated with the French, or with working for the French. And their brothers were communists. They were... There was so much discussion. Whereas in Britain, we only talked about what dresses and their balls. Because they were all going to have balls, coming out balls. And it was just not my world. I just felt totally alien then.
Claudia Roden - The joy of travelling alone (38/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Travelling alone, I had had such a protected childhood, where I never went anywhere without somebody protecting me. And when I told my father that I was going back to Egypt, I had already gone once before. And I told him, 'Tell me where your office was'. It was in a marketplace, so that I can go. He said, 'You can't go anywhere. You were the girl, and we didn't take you in my office. You don't know to go anywhere'. And I just said, 'Well, if I have the address I'll just take a taxi'. You don't really need to know how to get there. The taxi will take you.But I still had been so protected, but I had this great feeling of joy to go off by myself. Where I wanted. And to just be where I wanted to be. And experience things. And so, I just went a l'aventure. I will go to one place; I don't know where I'll go next. I'll go next, whatever happens. Something will tell me where to go. And this is how I travelled.
Claudia Roden - Pauls charismatic father (24/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Paul's father also originated in Russia. And the family had come and stopped in Wales – I'm not sure which city, which port – thinking they had arrived in America. But then he came onto London, and he had been helping her with the work to begin with. And then, during the war, he became an Empresario for the forces. He worked with the military, and he was always with singers and musicians and entertainers, and comics, and he was, it seems, very charismatic. And that was... I don't know why he wasn't sent in the war. There might have been a reason. But this was his job and after the war, he then went back to help his wife's business, being a salesman, going around as well. But he died very young. When Paul was very young. I'm just not sure whether Paul was 16 or 14. But... so, it means Paul actually went to work early.
Claudia Roden - Loving other peoples company (31/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I've always liked to have people around the table. For me, it's the loveliest thing. In Egypt, and I found also later on, I travelled the Mediterranean, the idea that food is not just about exactly the pleasure of eating. It's also the pleasure of... not just the senses, but people now say, the soul. But for me, it was the company. The conviviality. The bonding, that is always around the table. But I did feel it early on, because of my upbringing. And I would always have a lot of people coming to test the recipes. To say, if they're good enough. Because I had to get them right, but they had to be really good. And sometimes, the people had cooked them for me, but when they didn't cook them for me, all these people who had given me recipes. They couldn't cook them for me. They were on their way from Switzerland, they were going to America. They just happened to be at dinner at my mother's. And so, I had to make it taste good. So, I felt that was my job as well. And so, yes, this thing of inviting people to dinner... I never wanted to do... Of course, afterwards I had to redo it, to measure. To get the measurements exactly. But I had to see when does it taste good. And people would tell me.
Claudia Roden - Kitchen is a very intimate place (42/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: My friends sent me onto their family in Fes, in different parts of Morocco. And so, I travelled on the trains and coaches and went to the other people. And that is how I felt was the most fantastic way to travel. And I found that it was difficult as a woman travelling alone, throughout the Mediterranean. In the Middle East more difficult. But you could get around it and I found right away that on a train, I was sitting on a train, because I was still not quite 50 on that year. Or maybe just. And there was an older man who came and sat next to me on the train. Being very, very nice, over nice. And I said, 'You know, I have six children'. And he immediately said, 'Oh', with utmost respectfully afterwards. And I just thought, that's how you do it. And it was fine.But as a woman, it was better in the sense that I was only researching ever home cooking. I wasn't doing restaurant food. And it was in homes, and women cooking, that my whole work was. And I think if it was a man, it would have been more difficult, to go around and hope that somebody will tell you, 'You can come and watch me cook'. But of course, to begin with, I had these people who were family. And I just felt, yes, it was fantastic to see the life of a country, not as a tourist, but the way people live it and be a part of it even for a few days. It's an experience. For me, it's much more interesting than going to the theatre. Because it's real life, and it's always fascinating. And people introduce you to the kitchen, when you're sitting in the kitchen, I always find that it's more intimate. You're sitting there, you talk more openly, they tell you their worries or their problems, you tell them yours. And yes, you can pour your heart out. But when I was ever received in a living room, people were very polite and very discreet.
Claudia Roden - Teaching cookery classes (36/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: When my marriage ended in 1974, I became a single mum of three children. And had to earn our living. And to support ourselves, I went around magazines and newspapers and said, 'Do you need somebody... do you want me to write about somewhere in the Middle East, or something that I already know'. And I did get jobs. And I also wrote a book on coffee, and I wrote a picnic book. Because I was asked to. Because I had written an article and my editor said, 'Can you do a book?' And so, I did. Yes, so, it was work. And... but I earned more by giving cookery classes. For two years, I gave cookery classes in my kitchen. I used to have about ten people at a time. And I moved things around. I had a moveable hob. And people had to cook while they were here. And it was for me a good experience. And I always had daughters of friends of mine and my own daughters helping as sous chefs. And so... and then I had written out menus. I gave recipes. But I told people, 'You have to keep tasting'. And you have to keep telling, knowing. I even very often gave them recipes without amount of flavouring. A teaspoon, or tablespoon. I said, 'You have to decide yourself'. And then at the end, we saw how much they each put. And they understood that you can't go wrong if you trust yourself. Because if it tastes right, it tastes right. It's good. It doesn't matter if it's a half, or one, or one and half. If it tastes right for you, you can be sure it's all right. And so, that was something to give confidence.And I remember, there was an American woman who was stroppy. It means she was always finding something to do. But also, she always wanted to find another way of doing things, which was interesting. And one thing we... I told them how to make kibbeh, fried kibbeh, which was to mould a paste, made it with cracked wheat and meat that has been pounded. Or else blended to a paste, into a shell. That was like a torpedo shape in Egypt, we said. And you filled it with a filling of fried onions and mincemeat and spicing, sometimes even raisins. And so, I taught them how to do that. I wouldn't bother now because nobody is going to do it. But they did it. And then this American girl, she just made it like you do a cigar. Not a cigar, a cigarette paper. You put the paper down, you put the filling and then you filled it up as you wanted.And so, my parents every day asked me, 'How did you get on? How did it go?' So, I brought the kibbeh that we fried, that this woman made. And I told my father, 'She didn't have to do all that thing, making like a pot, that is a long pot. With the finger'. In Egypt, because it was a Syrian thing. It's a matter of honour. The woman who did it... if you didn't do it, forget it. You are not worth anything. But then he just looked at it, and we tasted it, and it was good. He said, 'But she cheated. If she cheated, it's not worth it. You have to do it in the traditional way'.
Claudia Roden - Finding a publisher (32/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I decided I had to go and look for publishers. And I went to all the publishers, all the bookshops, and I looked for publishers' names who cooked. Who had published cookbooks. And I wrote the same letter to all of them. And my younger brother Zaki helped me to write the letter. And I told them, it's the food of this and that. And it's also about the way they lived and the way... I sort of embellished it. So, then I had to do the embellishment. And so, I embellished it, and actually, funnily enough, all of the publishers wanted the book. And one person phoned me. She was Polish. Her father had been Polish in the war, in the Polish army. And they were stationed in Turkey for a reason. So, she had been brought up in Turkey. And her mother was Turkish. But she was Christian. She was maybe an Armenian. I would have thought, but she was from Turkey before the war. And so, she was desperate to have the book. And the publisher was Nelson's. And she came right away, and she said, 'We're doing the book'. And she was a brilliant editor. And she was the one who said, 'You have to put a thermometer in your oven', to be sure that the oven temperature is correct. Because your oven might be... it wasn't this oven, it was an oven in the other house. And it was... so it has to be correct. And so, she put into me, 'You have to be correct. You really have to try. You have to re-try', and I really am grateful to her. She is called Helena Radecka. She very soon, as a young women got MS. And she couldn't work. But for a while, she was the great editor. She edited other great books, like Robert Carrier and others. And then she was very soon became... had to stay in bed and died. So, I'm sorry that she isn't here for me to thank her.
Claudia Roden - Suitcase full of fashion (8/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: As soon as I... not quite as soon as I arrived. I arrived with beautiful clothes. Because in Egypt we had dressmakers who would copy French fashion. Because one of my aunts, Aunt Regine, would go to the fashion shows and she would come back with... she would buy the patterns. She would come back to Egypt and our clothes were made. And we used to have silks, fantastic damask silks, with gold thread and I did come back with one. And you know, velvet skirts. And when I came to the boarding school, everybody was agog. What is coming out of my suitcase? Because my mother thought I am going to Paris. Nobody had anything like that. So, that was funny. But they stayed in my suitcase. I didn't wear them anywhere.
Claudia Roden - Collecting handwritten recipes (33/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I didn't know how to type, and I didn't have a typewriter. And I wrote everything by hand. And I wrote them in lined papers from Smiths. And I still do. It's still the same writing pads that I did then, that I do now. And I wrote, of course, longhand. But eventually, I had a wonderful, wonderful woman, a lady, an old lady, to type them. She typed my handwritten. But I should have said that I didn't leave... the Middle Eastern Book isn't all my family. Because I just became so interested that I wanted to discover what everybody in Morocco, in Turkey ate. Not just the Jews who left those countries and came to Egypt.And so, I had a period – but that was before I decided to do the book – I had a period when I would go, for instance, to an embassy, and... where can I find Iranians? And I would go to the embassy, and they said, 'Have you come here for a...' – in those days, it was all pretty open and all that – 'for a visa?' And I said, 'No, I've come to find people who could give me recipes'. And, oh, they were very, very curious. I would sit there, and I would ask people sitting there. And they would... actually told me, 'Come around to eat'. And I went. And I have their recipes in their handwriting. Because they read handwritten recipes. They gave them to me.
Claudia Roden - Visiting friends in Morocco (39/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: The first place I went to was in Morocco. And I did... what I have tried to do was always to have a contact first if I could. And I didn't always. But I did sometimes. And this time my contact were Moroccans that I had met in the square, where I used to live. By now, I had moved. Before I split up, a year before I split up, we moved to this new house where I'm still. But those friends had come and rented a house for summer holiday. And just as they were leaving, the children were always, always playing together. And I hadn't gone to say hello to the parents. And there were the parents and an aunt. And then just before they left, I went and asked the son, 'What does your mother cook?' That's what my entree was always: what do you cook? And he said, 'We cook cuisine juive, Jewish food'. 'Oh, you do?' And so, we had two days of chatting a lot, and so we became friends. We've even exchanged houses. They had a house in France. And we're still friends. And I just spoke to them, again two weeks ago. And I think you went to their house in Morocco, in Marrakesh. But I... they said, 'When you come, you come and stay with us'. And he was a doctor. And he had a clinic in the piazza Jemaa el-Fnaa, in the square. You know, where all the people come to, the fire eaters, the snake charmers, the story tellers. The dancers. They're all in that square in Marrakesh. He has a clinic there. He had because he died, actually, a few months ago. And he was Henri. And so I... he asked me, 'What do you want to see?' And he introduced me to magician who did white magic, who had a spice shop that also sold white magic things. Actually, it was secretly white magic. It was a spice shop. Because when I went to see him in the Medina, there were a large family with lots of children, and they were Jewish too. And I was there for three days. Not sleeping there, but I went three days to watch them cooking for Shabbat. And so, he told me, it was right in the middle of the Medina. You go through all the alleyways and snaking around.
Claudia Roden - Being influenced by John Berger (15/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Anthony Caro was one of my teachers who taught sculpture in the evenings. And he was very interesting. He lived in... near Golders Green and our flat was in Temple Fortune, near Golders Green. And so, I took the tube from Golders Green, where also other people who went to art school took the same tube. And he did. And it was really nice to sit next to him. And I remember sitting next to him and I was reading John Berger, in the 'New Statesman'. He always had articles. And I had been to a conference where he spoke. So, I was very much into John Berger. And I remember telling Anthony Caro, I wanted to discuss the articles. And he said he appreciated John Berger, but he said he has a jaundiced eye. So, jaundiced eye meant... yes, he had left wing, very left wing views. And it's true that he looked through... had a perspective. And looking back, he was very much... he appreciated social realism. So, I painted social realism.And as you can see, I painted social realism. I did this painting of Paris, of Immigrant North African. Sorry, I did this painting of North African immigrants in a café in Paris, with a bottle of wine and some bread. I was always looking for workers. Going to the market, Covent Garden, or the meat market to sketch workers, butchers, people who were cleaning the street even. To see how they... their movement. And so, I very much was influenced by John Berger. And at that time, there was a lot of people who were doing abstract art. And now I do appreciate abstract art. I appreciate so many things. But at the time I thought, you had to be social realist. And my dream was to do murals, like they did in Mexico. And to do political murals, to have an influence. I always felt that... yes, you have to have an ambition to change the world for the better.
Claudia Roden - Unwelcoming hunting lodge in Sardinia (52/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I had a letter from the 'Sunday Times', and it didn't always work. For instance when I was in Sardinia, I drove up to... I wanted to see the cooking of the mountains. And I went up to a hunting lodge, where people were hunting wild boar. And I went in, put my bags down, and quickly went to the kitchen. And I saw them cooking stew of wild boar in red wine. And I saw them making 'carta di musica', which is a very, very fine bread, almost paper-thin. Like a sheet of music. And also, they were making food for themselves, which was pasta with a cheese, cream cheese. And suddenly a woman came in, a real battle-axe, and she just shouted at me, 'Fuori, fuori!' 'Get out, get out'. And I brought out my letter. I'm here for the 'Sunday Times', writing about you. She didn't know how to read English. But she just kept telling me get out. And so, I did.And in the evening, I went out to dinner in the restaurant of this hunting lodge. And there was only me and a long table full of hunters who had come to hunt. And they were there and after they were served the first course, they started singing hunting songs. And I was there, far away from them, and one of them said, 'Would you like to join us?' And I said, 'Yes'. And I went and joined them. And then the woman suddenly came in and she said, 'Go back to your table'. I went back to my table. But I heard them singing. And then the next morning I thought I'd stay on, two days – I had booked for three days. And as I came down in the morning she said, 'Have your breakfast and pack your bags'. And then she said, 'Haven't you got a husband?' So, there was at that time this thing that women travelling alone were... what are they doing here. But for mostly, for me, to be researching food gave me a reason to be there. And a very plausible one.
Claudia Roden - Cooking medieval dishes (28/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: And when I got home, I also was testing recipes all the time in my time. When the children were small, I was testing recipes. And they had to eat what I cooked. What we tested. And when they were little they even helped to make, because for a whole long period, I was cooking medieval dishes to try them.My greatest enthrallment was that we had dishes in my family that were in medieval times in Damascus. Like there was a dish that somebody gave me that was in Lebanon and in Egypt. My aunt Regine, who came from Aleppo, she made a dish called treya. And they had a dish called treya. And it was chicken and pasta, and it had an apricot sauce. And I just thought, I can't believe it. It really means we are who we are. If we still eat that, we were there. We were Jews of Syria. And so, there was this incredible excitement. And really, my excitement was also great when Nigella Lawson, when she did her first television series, she put my Jewish Book, because it eventually went into my Jewish Book much later. And she said, 'This is the best book in the world'. And this recipe... she cooked this recipe treya of pasta with chicken and apricot sauce. And so, there it was. Something from the medieval times through a book of my time, in my time, came for many centuries just from mother to daughter. And then it came... and mother-in-law. And so, that was very, very exciting for me.But I was testing all the medieval recipes. And we had back then, a long medieval table that is now in my study. And that my husband had bought when he was buying... or getting clothes made in Portugal. He would go there with patterns, and they would make the clothes.
Claudia Roden - My mothers passion for cooking (18/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: My father, as I said, was a happy man. And he got on with it. He was happy to start again, and it was easy for him. Because he was likable. What he did, it worked for him. But my mother then found that cooking was for her what she did. She became a passionate cook. And then she adored my father. They were sort of arranged marriage. I mean sort of because he wanted to marry her, and she had never... before she knew who he was. He had just seen her. And he asked her hand in marriage to my grandfather. And my grandfather said yes. Because he knew him and liked him. And so... all she wanted was to make him happy. And all she wanted was to do Syrian dishes of his family. His childhood. And this is what she was cooking all the time.We weren't doing French cuisine here. We might have done it in Egypt. But she wanted to do all the Syrian dishes. And I was there taking notes. And I actually realised then, how important our recipes were. Because we had every Friday night people coming for dinner. They were refugees. They were cousins. Or they were friends who arrived from some country on their way to another. Everybody was unsettled then. Deciding where to leave, to live, they could be somewhere where cousins had already gone.There was this thing that you could be anywhere. And so, they came and we were... one of the things that people were asking each other, 'Have you got a recipe?' And saying, 'Do you remember the way you did your kibbeh?' 'Do you remember, can you give me the recipe?' Because nobody had a recipe. A single recipe cookbook. They didn't exist in Egypt. We had never seen a printed recipe of any kind, anywhere. And nobody had. When we came... also when we were here, we wrote to our Muslim friends, 'Can you send us a cookbook?' Any cookbook, in Arabic, or in anything. The only cookbook that came was a cookbook that the British Army had left behind. It was their catering corps. And my father started reading it, it was translated into Arabic, it was roly-poly a la custard. Macaroni cheese. It was all the English things that the army cooked for themselves. And so that was the only printed cookbook that we could find.
Claudia Roden - Testing different recipes (29/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was cooking all the time. And because I had to try so many recipes, so much. Because people never gave real measures. Even in my parents' time. They would say, 'You take how much it takes'. 'You use how much it takes'. And I would say, 'How much does it take?' They say, 'You know... you know when the smell, you know the onions when they begin to caramelise. Just by the smell. Even without looking, before you see. And you know how much, by the taste'. Of course. But also, I would with baking something or making a dough, you have to know exactly. They said, 'No, what you do, you start putting oil. Then you add water. Then you keep adding flour and mixing with your hand. And then it starts becoming together, becoming a dough. And then you start feeling the lobe of your ear. And when the dough feels like the lobe of your ear, that's how much it takes. And that's how it should be'.And so, I had to find out how to translate how much. So, I had to measure and all that. Actually, they were more correct in that the flour changes every year, depending on the field. Depending on the harvest. Depending on the climate at the time – the way it grew – that it absorbs a different amount of water. So, really you do still have to say, 'Add some more as much as it is, until it feels like a real dough'. So, I never tell them to feel the lobe of the ear. So, I was testing, and testing and I was testing so many dishes, that we couldn't eat. So, I would tell the neighbours. And I do have neighbours now who remember... Frances Wood who became a Chinese historian. She was 19 when we... when I moved there. And she became the babysitter for my children. And her parents, I told them, if you pay for the ingredients, you can have the whole dish, but give me a slice. Or a serving. Because I have to taste to see how good it is. So, I was really cooking. The children were playing. And so, it was an easy way.
Claudia Roden - Feeling welcome in Sicily (54/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Sicily was the first place that I went to officially. It was after having gone to the Gritti Palace, where I had just been invited personally. But when the 'Sunday Times' started booking me, they booked me into a grand hotel in Sicily. And they asked the Trade Centre to help me to do my research. And so, I arrived in Sicily, and they had also booked me a car at the airport. And somebody at the airport who dealt with the car came out and gave me the key. And she said, 'Here it is', and I had no idea how to drive the car. But I did manage, and I started driving on the motorway, into town. And then it was a mad rush because Sicilians are mad in the traffic.But somebody behind me thought I was extra mad or extra slow and didn't know where I was going. So, a van came ahead of me and just stopped in front of me, so I had to stop. And somebody came out, a man, and he said, 'What are doing?' And I said, 'I don't know, I don't even know my way. I had a map, but I don't even know how to drive this car'. And so, he said, 'Well, move over and I'll drive you. Where are you going?' So, he took me to the hotel. That was very nice. And then his friend with the van went on ahead. But when I got to the hotel, I had through a friend of my daughter's boyfriend, she had met somebody Sicilian on the beach in Sicily the year before. And he'd come to England. And he was her boyfriend. And he was waiting there, with his sister. And he said, because I had the car, 'We'll take you around'. And so, it was always a question of chance. What happened, where, who I met, because things that were planned didn't work. And I'll tell you why. Because they took me to their village, their town, which was called Corleone. Corleone, famously is a mafia town and city. And it was quite exciting. I went to the nursery where his sister was a teacher. And the children were all singing a welcome thing. They did a painting for me, which I had in my kitchen hanging up for, well, ever since. Until it fell in pieces. So, it was wonderful to go into places where I would never, ever have gone. And by chance.
Claudia Roden - Magic making in Morocco (41/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: And so, I asked the man, 'Can I write...' – he was very funny actually, he was always joking. But I asked him, 'What do you do for your magic making. And who for?' And he said, 'Well, all the women want to get rid of a rival in love. Or a possible second wife. This is their main thing. And what do the men, the men are afraid of losing their virility'. Because in Morocco, if you are the boss, you are the absolute boss. But if you lose your virility, then you give the key back to the house. To the wife. Well, I don't quite know. There was a lot of things that were to me quite a surprise... When I saw a man and a woman holding hands, men and women holding hands, walking by. And I said, 'That's different from Egypt'. In Egypt you're not allowed, they're so prudish. But somebody just said, 'Well, it is only a mother and her son'. It could only be a mother and son who were holding hands.And so, when I told the man, do you mind if I write a story about you, and he said, 'Yes. Absolutely no'. And I said, 'Is it because you're Jewish and you're worried?' And he said, 'No, it's because they don't know that I'm doing magic on the side. The tax people'. They thought he was only doing spices.
Claudia Roden - In search of cucina tipica in Italy (46/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Also, in Morocco and everywhere, but certainly in Italy, and everywhere in the Mediterranean, I was lucky to want to do regional foods and home cooking. But you could not find regional foods. You could not find local foods. Because the good restaurants in Italy everywhere, they all did French Cuisine. The same in Spain. The same in everywhere, in Egypt as well. And they hadn't yet discovered what to do for tourists, for tourism. And the tourists didn't know what to ask either. Except that when I was in Italy, they started having 'cucina tipica', means typical Italian in places. Because tourists began to ask, 'What do you eat here?' And when I was travelling, I was always looking for 'cucina tipica' and I would go from place and place.And I remember once phoning to Perugia to a restaurant there, saying... I think it was yes, saying, 'I want to come. I'm found in Italy when I said I'm writing for a newspaper', some people would be suspicious and say, 'I've already paid'. 'Paid who? We are going to pay you. We are going to pay you to cook. We are going to take photographs'. 'No, no, I've already paid'. There were a lot of people who wrote to magazines, or in Italy, who charged to write about them. And that was something in Italy, a lot of things were happening like that. But it happened a few times and I had to persuade them, 'No, we are paying you'.
Claudia Roden - Cooking in the Riad (40/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: So Henri, on the first day, said, 'I'll introduce you first to this man'. I forgot his name, but he didn't want me to tell his name. But the magic man didn't want me to tell his name. But he said, 'They really cook really well'. And he said, 'When patients come to me that I can't cure them, I send them to him'. And he gives them an amulet, he gives them something and it lasts one year. When they think it's faded. So, they come back to ask for another one, and they also come and see me. So, they lived in a Riad. But the Riad was lived in by many families. And they all had sort of their rooms on the top floor, on the first floor. They also had a kitchen with an oven. But they never used the oven. The oven had lace on it. Because they didn't want to use it. They were cooking always in the courtyard. And the other families were cooking in the courtyard as well. And I think they were the only Jews. And they were there and from Thursday, the mother and the daughters were cooking and cooking. And then it was quite incredible. Some of the dishes, I would think, oh God. Try to stop him, like they cook fish. And they cook fish for half an hour. I say, 'No, no, take this off'. 'No, that's how we do it'.But they also had their Sabbath dish in a pot. And it was a chicken that was stuffed with ground almonds, mixed with sugar and dates. And then it was really good. But then I could say, sugar, are you putting sugar in? 'Yes', he said, 'you can have it for pudding'. But that was actually a very ancient Moroccan Jewish Sabbath dish. And then we also went to the bakery with everyone. Holding the pots to the bread oven. We put them there to be collected on the Saturday. And it was incredible to see something from another age which was still going on.
Claudia Roden - Hospitality from strangers (17/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: Well, when my parents arrived, they arrived very soon after the Suez War. And they arrived with nothing. And the woman and her husband, who rented us a flat, were Jewish. And they came to us, and they said, 'Your parents can come, and they stay as long as they like and we don't want any money from them'. We were allowed, eventually, to stay. But for a long time, until I got married, I had no passport. I had just an identity card to say we were allowed to live here.
Claudia Roden - Cultural life in Paris (11/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: At the time, there was students everywhere, were making demonstrations all the time. And the demonstrations were after the exams. They were called Monômes. And they were against the police. We were going around singing 'salauds les flics salauds les flic salauds'. It means... I don't know what you would call 'salauds'. It's... I don't know. But it's an insult. And les flics are the police. The cops or something.But also, I did go to fête de l'Humanité. L'Humanité was the communist newspaper. And I used to go, and we would see Picasso. We would see all, so many people that we admired. Because those who went, weren't communist necessarily. There were big... big feasts with food and singers. There was Juliette Greco. There were the singers of the time. And yes, they had a big dove of peace as a banner on the banner. And I did enjoy that. But also, I did spend really most of my time in the Latin Quarter hanging around. And at the time, because I was in Paris three years. And the first year when my brother was there, he would go and work in a café. Because students were cold in their little rooms. There was no heating. So, they would go to cafés that were heated to work. And where he went, James Baldwin was there. So, we would meet James Baldwin. And I remember just talking to him and we were all around him, of course he was older. And there was this black man, who was an American black man. And we would ask, what are you writing? He was a writer. And he was saying, 'J'écris l'éloge de la folie'. I forgot 'l'éloge de la folie'... the English word for 'l'éloge de la folie'. Actually, he never wrote a book on 'l'éloge de la folie'. But it's only many years later that I knew this was James Baldwin.And, of course, we also used to come up upon Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir. And I did go to hear Simone de Beauvoir speak. And that was very fascinating. So, yes for me Paris was a very important time. Because it was the time of adolescence, or really growing up when you want to know who you are and what the world is.
Claudia Roden - Our food is our identity (19/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was working at Alitalia at their reservations. And speaking Italian. And people would come in and makes a reservation. And also, by phone, on the ground, in the basement, with all Sicilians. We were all laughing, and I was sketching them. But we were doing reservations. But in the evenings, I would see people. Refugees. And ask for recipes. And they were asking us for recipes.Everybody was saying, 'If you give me a recipe of that, it will be something I will remember you by. Because I might never, ever see you again'. And actually, we never saw them again. Most of them, nearly all of them. We do still see relatives who turn up, but it's mostly their grandchildren. Or their children, who suddenly phone up now and say, 'Can I come and see the family. I am here for a few days. And I've got your telephone number... your email address'.And so, for me it became my obsession to find recipes. So, I would spend hours asking people for recipes. And they wanted to give them. In Egypt, they wouldn't give any recipe. Because all the families wanted to be known for their best cuisine. And if they give you a recipe, it would have a mistake. So, you never made it as good as theirs. But now, we were all trying to rescue... rescue our culture. Something of our culture that we could still keep. Because everything else, the whole of our worlds, were gone, because who we were was gone. Jews of Egypt were gone. And with all our cosmopolitanism, our ways, there would not be this place again. And so, the food for me was one way, it represented who we were, our identity.
Claudia Roden - Realising people buy my cookbook (34/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I would go to a carpet warehouse. Where I would think I'd meet Iraqis. And yes, they were Iraqis. But they turned out to be Jews as well. But I would say... They would say, 'Do you want to buy a carpet?' 'No', I said, 'can I meet your wife, and could you give me a recipe? Could she give me a recipe?'I went to the Moroccan embassy. And so, I would go looking for students who came from different countries. And so, yes, I made it a hugely big enterprise. Because by the time it came out, it was 1968. And more or less I had started in 1956. Just collecting. But for me, it was a way of life. I didn't see it as my job. It was... I was having children; I was having people for dinner. And I had something interesting to actually do. To work on. So, for me it had... I never saw it as hard job to get to a publisher. So, by the time I got to a publisher, then I had them typed. And they were printed. And it became... nobody really noticed it at first, when it was in hardback. But it's when it was in paperback that it became known more. But slowly, quite slowly.But then I realised gradually that young people were buying it and using it. It was young people because they were travelling. They were travelling to Morocco. They were travelling backpacking, and they were at university. Also, they were not cooking what their mother cooked. Because in the past people cooked what their mother cooked. But their mother was no longer giving them... showing them how to cook. I think it was something to do with war time or whatever. But they wanted to cook foreign food. And that kind of food was cheap. Lentils and chickpeas, and rice, and bulgur. And I gradually realised that people were buying the book.And that Sainsbury's were the first to ask me what should they stock. And I said, what about stocking bulgur and couscous, and chickpeas, and a whole lot of things which they didn't get to stock. And then I realised Marks and Spencer... my mother went to tea at friends, they would have card games. And they would have lunch together, and one day she came, she said, 'They had all our things'. You know, phyllo, the same filling, and they said they bought them at Marks and Spencer. And I just thought, what?
Claudia Roden - Family life in London (25/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: When I met him, he had... just started his own business of importing children's clothes from Italy and I'm not sure where. And having them made in Portugal. And so, I travelled with him sometimes. I didn't travel to Italy with him, but he did his own business, which started as children's clothes. So, while I was with him, that is what he did.We married in 1959 and my first child, Simon, was born in 1960. And then Nadia came soon after and then Anna. And so, I had three children. And there were happy times. And we had... we were living in a square in Hampstead Way. In a big house where I could paint upstairs in an attic.It was corner house in the square, and the children could play outside. And they played and played outside with the other children. They never wanted to go anywhere else than the square. Because they had all their friends there. I couldn't take them swimming or dancing or anything. They just wanted to be there. And every day they would drag out tables, chairs, sheets and would build a whole city in that square, on the lawn. And then at night they'd have to bring them in again. But they were... they really enjoyed that time. That's what they remember as well with them. But for me it made it easy.
Claudia Roden - Looking for the regional Italian food (47/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: I was also very keen not to waste my time. Because it was a time as well, when Gault and Millau, the French food guides who had discovered 'nouvelle cuisine' in France, they started encouraging people in Italy to do 'nouvelle cuisine'. And they had said they would put only people in their guidebook for Italy, for French people in Italy, who do 'nuova cucina'. And so, there were some restaurants that were doing things like ravioli with smoked salmon and whisky. Inside the ravioli. Or there was risotto tricolore. It had to be red, white, and green, so rice and strawberries and kiwi. And I just thought, God, I'm not wasting my time every day, and how much food I can get into me. I don't want to waste. I didn't go for a whole year. I would go for two weeks and come back to England and write it up. But they waited until it was all done and then they had every week a series about a different region.So, I remember calling a restaurant in Perugia and saying, 'I'm phoning, but I want the real traditional cuisine'. And he said, 'Well, we are making 'nuova cucina''. And I was, 'Can you just make for me, only cuisine of Perugia?' And he said, 'I'm sorry, they do 'nouvelle cuisine' in France, you cook what you like. Why can't we? And why should we be stuck doing just the same?' And I said… actually he told me that after I'd been when I visited. And then I just said, 'Well, we don't want to go now, wherever we go and get the same risotto tricolore. The same liver with mango. I don't want that here. I want real Italian food because this is why we come. This is what we love about you'. But yes, there was one place that they had… on the phone I asked, because I had to go up a hill. I didn't have a car then, I also had a car, I knew how to drive then around. But once I took a train and a bus and I had a suitcase. I had to go up a hill. And then when I got there, I had told them, 'Do you do local cuisine?' And he said, 'Yes'. And then he said, 'Spaghetti in cartoccio'. Cartoccio is in a bag. In a wrapped up. And I wanted to know spaghetti in cartoccio. When I went there, it was spaghetti with curry, in cartoccio. And I just thought, no. But anyhow, these were rare occasions. Because there were many, many chefs everywhere, who were intent on keeping their traditions. And not letting them go.
Claudia Roden - Meeting people passionate about food (49/155) Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People 2023-10-06 | To listen to more of Claudia Roden’s stories, go to the playlist: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxE7ofp5PbJrqZf8sttxHqJClaudia Roden (b. 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including "A Book of Middle Eastern Food", "The New Book of Middle Eastern Food" and "The Book of Jewish Food". In this unique interview for Web of Stories, Claudia Roden is talking to her granddaughter Nelly Wolman about her life in food. [Listener: Nelly Wolman; date recorded: 2022]TRANSCRIPT: One woman who was there was a cooking teacher. And she was from Friuli, and she said, 'Why don't you come to Friuli, and I'll take you around'. So, I went to Friuli. We hired a car and we drove around, and she showed me a lot more places. There was for me this thing that I kept meeting people who told me, 'I'll take you'. So, she then, after a day of going around and doing things, she said, 'I'll phone...' – I forget his name, this man who has a foundry in Venice. And he is the President of an association called 'i passionati di cucina'. It means, people who are passionate about food. They are not chefs. They are passionate about food. And they are a club, with every region having its division. 'And go and meet him and he will give you all these phone numbers'. And so, she called him, and she said, 'I'll put her on the train, and will you pick her up in Venice'. So, I was on the train from Friuli, and I went back to Venice.And there was this man, and he has a foundry, and he took me back to his place. And he wanted to show me that he had invented, with his pieces of metal, how to make something, a kind of grill, to put a fish in. You put a fish in, and you cook the fish in that grill. And you turn it around and all that. And so, we were there in front of his fire, the fire was roaring. And he had this fish. He put it in, a big fish, in a stand and he put it by the fire. And we sat there, and he had peperonata that he had made, with peppers. And onions, and it was sweet and sour. And we took the fish, we ate the fish. And then he gave me the list and the phone numbers of a 'passionati di cucina' in Bologna, in Moderna, in different regions. And for me this could not have been better. Can you imagine. People who really love food. And then he said, 'Wait a minute, but I'll do some phoning'. And so, he phoned Verona. 'Can you look after her?' 'Yes.' So, I went to Verona.And then I went on, and he had phoned several people. And they weren't cooks, one was a lawyer, one was an architect, actually, who had redesigned and revitalised the architecture of an old, old city. We went around together and the person, the lawyer who was a 'passionate di cucina', had a fantastic house with a garden. And we went, and his wife had cooked already. Because they cooked all the time anyway. And I just thought, this is heaven.
