Claudia Roden

Claudia Roden was born in Cairo of a Jewish family. The publication of Claudia Roden's first book on Middle Eastern Food in 1968 revolutionised Western attitudes to the cuisines of the Middle East and she has gone on to write about the food of the Mediterranean, of Italy, and also Jewish food.

In all Claudia has published ten books including the award winning classic The Book of Jewish Food which in 2010 was judged by the Observer Food Monthly professional panel as the third best cookery book ever published. Claudia has won no fewer than six Glenfiddich awards for her writing.

Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon (Michael Joseph, 2005) won the Andre Simon Award for the Best Cook Book of the Year as well as the Glenfiddich Food Book Award.

She presented the BBC TV series Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Cookery , which involved seven countries. Her book The Food of Italy - Region by Region is based on the column she wrote for The Sunday Times Magazine and has been most influential on Britain where many fashionable Italian restaurants use her recipes.

Claudia has also been awarded the most prestigious gastronomic award in Italy, The Premio Orio Vergani, The Versailles Award for achievement in France and the International Prince Claus Award for Culture.

Her latest book The Food of Spain will be published by Michael Joseph in March 2012.

Praise for Claudia Roden:

'Claudia Roden is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a bisuit baker. She is, rather, memorialist, historian, ethnogrpaher, anthropologist, essayist, poet ... ' - Simon Schama

'Roden's great gift is to conjure up not just a cuisine but the culture from which it springs' - Nigella Lawson

'Claudia Roden's writing has the fascination of her conversation. Her books are treasure-houses of information and mines of literary pleasures' - Observer