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Konafa a la Creme with Claudia Roden

Season 1 Episode 4

April 25, 2023

The Kitchen Radio podcast brings listeners to the table of communities from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia for intergenerational stories of community life and ritual practices from guests who are part of a rising renaissance of creative food projects exploring their oft-overlooked Jewish history and heritage.

Keep listening with hosts Regine Basha (Founder of Tuning Baghdad) and Nathalie Basha (The Travel Muse), each episode will feature a specific dish and a conversation to introduce the still little-known Jewish culture of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and re-seed Jewish life into a cultural space where their contribution was forgotten, rendered invisible or white-washed. Episodes will feature: Tannaz Sassooni, Sephardic Spice Girls, and Rafram Chaddad!

Find out more here and listen now to the full season of the Kitchen Radio podcast on Apple PodcastsSpotify Podcasts, Goodpods, YouTube or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Follow along with the Kitchen Radio Companion Cookbook, a guide for cultural education and conversation. Cook along with each guest by following the featured recipes, learn more about where these dishes originate from by digging into each region’s cultural history, gain some fluency in the kitchen with the Kitchen Radio Dictionary, and find out where you can read more to continue your culinary journey! Fill out the form to download: 

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Claudia Roden

Cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist

Claudia Roden CBE (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.

Besides her numerous cookery volumes, Roden has also worked as a food writer and a cooking show presenter for the BBC.

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.”