Category Archives: History

February 20, 2012 · 4:03 pm

Q & A: Medieval Catalan Jewish Food (more familiar than you might imagine)

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 as with spinach. 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 Continue reading →

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December 12, 2011 · 5:42 pm

Some overly pedantic instructions for frying fish (Hanukah fish & chips, part 1)

Anyone who’s read anything about Sephardic food must surely know by now that fish and chips made their way to England via the Portuguese Jews (who, by the way, were largely of Spanish descent).

Fish is an abundant staple throughout Iberia, and just as likely to be fried as not. In a place and time when it mattered, it was the Sephardim who fried their fish exclusively in olive oil, so it was indeed exotic and novel to the English, until then accustomed only to cooking with animal fats, to be introduced to this element of the Mediterranean diet – and in the sixteenth century, no less! The crisp batter is the real seducer, of course, but for me the English version is always a let-down, something they’ve not gotten the hang of despite four centuries of practice. With one exception – one! – I’ve never had fried fish in England that wasn’t Continue reading →

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May 16, 2011 · 9:23 pm

Me and my big ideas

Recently a reader questioned my theory about the origin of  ensaimada, a traditional pastry from Mallorca made with lard that I believe began life as challa, or perhaps as rosca  (see my post about the book ‘Dulce lo vivas’).  Okay, challenged more than questioned it.  She called my idea far fetched.  Hmm.  Well, I love a good challenge, and especially where Sephardic vs. Christian or secular Spanish gastronomic traditions are concerned it can be challenging to determine which is the chicken and which is the egg.  But there is a method to my madness, which I explained in my reply.   For others who may also wonder how I draw certain conclusions (and who don’t make a habit of reading blog comments), I’ve repeated the conversation here. Continue reading →

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November 26, 2010 · 10:13 am

Sephardic food is simply exotic

Years ago my brother-in-law, who is a tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired WASP from Ohio, told my sister, who is a tall, brown-eyed, olive-skinned Jew from New York, that when he first laid eyes on her he was struck by her exotic looks.  “Exotic!!?” she cried, “Where I come from, Meg Ryan is exotic.”   Exoticism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and has everything to do with your frame of reference. Continue reading →

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