In 1985 I arrived in London and moved into a tiny basement apartment and watched my world expand. For someone who grew up in the middle of the country, it felt like I could experience every culture, eat every type of food, and find every ingredient I had ever craved in this vast city.
I only had two saucepans, but bought Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food – originally published in 1968 – at the bookstore around the corner and found a writer and a kitchen that I’ve loved ever since. Roden’s descriptions of Egypt, where she was born, have seduced me. It was always warm, there was a feeling of lightness, and the food – even the tea – was carefully served in decorated glasses with small silver spoons.
The first clearing dish I cooked was lentils with paprika, onions, cayenne pepper, cumin and coriander. I had never managed to make common ingredients taste so good. It was the spice – the sweaty smell of cumin, the spiciness of cayenne, the floral citrus notes of coriander – and the mouth-filling fullness of the olive oil that transforms plain old legumes.
Over 35 years later, I’m still cooking this dish, Claudia Roden just published another book, Med, and we all love Middle Eastern food. Baba Ganoush, hummus and muhammara are sold in buckets in supermarkets, and pomegranate molasses and pickled lemons – ingredients I used to buy through London – are commonplace.
Pomegranate seeds are ubiquitous (yes, they find their way into dishes where they have no business – pomegranate, that’s what I call it).
How did it happen? The increase in vegetables is a factor. When the first Ottolenghi restaurant opened in London in 2002, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi decided to present it. Partly practical – vegetable dishes could be displayed longer without looking tired and did not have to be kept hot like meat dishes. The second reason was aesthetic – they were colorful, full of different shapes, visually desirable.
