The Food of Spain

Claudia Roden talks about discoveries she made while researching her new book The Food of Spain. Until the mid 20th century 80 percent of the population in Spain lived and worked on the land which was owned, for the most part, by the Church and nobility, and the cooking reflects the old lives of the very poor peasantry, the clergy and the aristocracy. "In this country of extraordinary geographic diversity with a patchwork history, the gastronomy is also amazingly suffused by legacies from the past, especially the Muslim and Jewish past, which is a sensitive subject that arouses passions."

Claudia Roden was born and brought up in Cairo. Starting as a painter she was drawn to the subject of food partly through a desire to evoke her lost heritage.

With her bestselling classic, A Book of Middle Eastern Food , first published in 1968, Claudia Roden revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East. She continued to write about food with a special interest in the social and historical background of cooking. After the BBC television series, Mediterranean Cookery and the accompanying book came The Food of Italy and then The Book of Jewish Food.

Claudia Roden won the Glenfiddich Trophy. The Book of Jewish Food was awarded the 1998 Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Book Prize for Non-Fiction, as well as the Glenfiddich Food Book of the Year and the André Simon Memorial Fund Food Book.

Her latest book before the Food of Spain was the award-winning Arabesque: Sumptuous Food from Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon.

In association with Gefiltefest