Claudia Roden
Claudia Roden (née Douek; born 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 "Arabesque—Sumptuous Food from Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon". Early life. Roden was born in 1936 in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, the daughter of Cesar Elie Douek and his wife Nelly Sassoon. Her parents were from prominent Syrian-Jewish merchant families who migrated from Aleppo in the previous century; she grew up in  Zamalek, Cairo, with two brothers, the surgeon Ellis Douek, and Zaki Douek. She was Egypt's national backstroke swimming champion at the age of 15. In 1953, she went to a boarding school in Paris, and then to London to study at Saint Martin's School of Art. She did not return to Egypt for a quarter of a century, well after her family and most of Cairo's Jewish community had been expelled; many of her books reflect her longing for the close communal culture that was lost, especially as expressed in the culinary arts and social occasions associated  with them. Career. Besides her numerous cookery volumes, Roden has also worked as a food writer and a cooking show presenter for the BBC. She is co-chair with Paul Levy of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. She is an Honorary Fellow of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. Food writers and chefs such as Melissa Clark and Yotam Ottolenghi have credited her with playing a large role in introducing the food of Egypt in particular and the Middle East in general to Britain and the United States. Paul Levy classes her  with such other food writers as Elizabeth David, Julia Child, Jane Grigson, and Sri Owen who, from the 1950s on, "deepened the conversation around food to address questions of culture, context, history and identity." Her many cookbooks, Clark writes, have "produced a genre of works that is at once literary and deeply researched while still being, at heart, practical manuals on how to make delicious meals." Roden was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to food culture. Personal life. In 1959, she married Paul Roden, a clothes importer , and they separated after 15 years. They had three children. She has lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb since the early 1970s. Activities and awards. Roden is a Patron of London-based HIV charity The Food Chain. In 1999 Roden was honoured with a Prince Claus Award from the Prince Claus Fund, an international culture and development organisation based in Amsterdam. In 1997, Roden was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in the Sephardic and Ashkenazic Culture and Customs category for "The Book of Jewish Food"