Forbidden food: The Jews of Spain

Ruth Alexander meets three people who gave up well-paid, high-flying careers to start all over again in the world of food. Nisha Katona left a career as a child protection barrister behind to start Mowgli, a chain of Indian restaurants in the UK, physically building her first res ...  Show more

Shattering the myth of its aristocratic origins and exploring some of the boldest creations; Ruth Alexander finds out about the history, culture and family ties wrapped up in the sandwich. Josh Veasey, co-owner of Rack in North West England talks about his menu’s hits and misses ...  Show more

July 31, 1492. In cities, towns and villages across late medieval Spain, whole districts have emptied out. Houses abandoned, stores closed, and synagogues—which until recently had been alive with singing and prayer—now sit quiet. Exactly four months earlier, the King and Queen of ...  Show more

Between 1598 and 1785, the Papal or Roman Inquisition in Modena, Northern Italy, put 393 Jews on trial. Regarded as infidels, Jews were accused of, among other things, blasphemy, employing a Christian servant, owning prohibited books, and having sex with Christians. But the tr ...

For centuries Spain had been an outlier in Europe due to its religious diversity; Christians, Jews, and Muslims all existed reasonably peacefully across the Iberian peninsula. Under Isabelle of Castile that all changed. She began the Spanish Inquisition and brought to the fore a ...  Show more

Daniel Newman is the chair of Arabic Studies at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures in the University of Durham. His main areas of interest include Arab food history and Arabic geographical and travel literature. He is the founder of eatlikeasultan.com, a website dedicate ...  Show more