I just discovered, through DNA testing, that my ancestors lived in Girona. They left when the Alhambra Decree was issued. Do you have any recipes of Jewish specialties from Girona? Thank you. Ronit
Sure, Ronit! It may well be you know one or two already, as Catalonia’s medieval Jewish recipes were its first culinary exports.
If you’re familiar with spinach with pine nuts and raisins, you probably think of it as an Italian or Italian Jewish dish. You’d be right. But there, too, in its endless regional variations (adding lemon and garlic in Rome, chive and anchovy in Genoa, sweet onion and vinegar in Venice, etc.), the basic recipe is attributed to the arrival of Sephardim at the time of the expulsion from Spain.
This classic dish is still eaten all over Catalonia, and you’ll be just as likely to find it made with chard (not a ‘Jewish vegetable’) as with spinach (a ‘Jewish vegetable’). Dressed simply with salt, pepper, raisins, pine nuts and olive oil, today’s typical traditional Catalan recipe is far tamer than European food was in the spice-crazy Middle Ages. In that era spices were wildly expensive and people who could afford them made a big show of using them. Recipes were (more…)
