Our Guest

Linda Dangoor is a designer, painter and ceramicist, and the author of two cookbooks. Flavours of Babylon (first published 2011) celebrates the recipes of her Baghdadi Jewish heritage. Her second book, From the Tigris to the Thames (Green Bean Books, 2025), is part memoir, part cookbook, tracing her journey from Baghdad through Beirut, London, Ibiza and Paris. Praised by Yotam Ottolenghi, Claudia Roden, Giles Coren and Nigella Lawson - and Eylan (!). Linda studied painting and graphic design at the Central School in London and is a member of the Society of Designer Craftsmen.

Website: lindadangoor.com  |  Recipes: lindadangoorcooks.com  |  Instagram: @lindadangoorcreativeliving

 

Key Topics

•       Food as identity: Why Linda argues food belongs to the place it comes from, not just the community that cooks it, and why she resists the label 'Jewish food'

•       Fear and concealment: What it meant to be Jewish in mid-century Baghdad, the word Israel banned at Passover, and the cost of decades of keeping Jewish identity quiet

•       Nostalgia versus memory: The distinction Linda draws between looking back with longing and simply saying how it was

 

Your Guide

Short definitions and terms referenced in this episode:

 

•       Babylonian Jews: A Jewish community from Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) who trace their origins to the exile of Judahite captives to Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Distinct from Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities, though often grouped under the broader Mizrahi label

•       T'beet: A traditional Iraqi Jewish Shabbat overnight dish. Recipe here

•       'Our identity is at once plural and partial': A phrase from Salman Rushdie's 1982 essay Imaginary Homelands, published in the London Review of Books. 

 

Want to learn more?

Explore past episodes that also reflect on displacement, Baghdadi Jewish heritage, and food as identity:

•       S2E5: Endangered, Not Erased with Samantha Ellis: Iraqi Jewish refugee heritage and the author of Chopping Onions on My Heart

•       S2E9: I Tick a Lot of Boxes with Shelley Silas: Baghdadi Jewish and Indian identity, playwright

•       S1E6: Other Within the Other with Carol Isaacs: Iraqi Jewish heritage and The Wolf of Baghdad

 

References and Resources

•       From the Tigris to the Thames by Linda Dangoor (Green Bean Books, 2025)

•       Flavours of Babylon by Linda Dangoor (Green Bean Books)

•       Linda Dangoor's recipes at lindadangoorcooks.com

•       Imaginary Homelands by Salman Rushdie, London Review of Books, 7 October 1982

•       Nigella Lawson's Cookbook Corner review of From the Tigris to the Thames

Find us elsewhere, here!

Show credits

Host / Producer: Eylan Ezekiel

Post-production: Communicating for Impact

Artwork: Emily Theodore

Music: Aleksafor utransndr Karabanov

Sound effects: Serge Quadrado

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