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Category Archives: Holidays (fiestas judias)
Q&A: Sodra, a Micro-regional Passover Dish Sub-par Excellence (but not without its dignity)
Sodra is broken-up matza soaked in chicken broth, with eggs and lemon added to the mix in typical Sephardic fashion, maybe dressed with some cheese or a little garlic. It’s an obscure dish, even among Sephardim, included in a couple of Sephardic cookbooks but ignored by most, and not without reason. Don’t be offended, sodra lovers; read on.
Because it’s a traditional dish I see a reason to honor it as a piece of Sephardic heritage, but to be blunt, sodra is just mush. Pablum. Pap. A holiday dish made by people who were either desperately poor, or desperately lacking in culinary skill and imagination, which is the far less likely of the two possibilities.
While there’s no shame in poverty, I see no reason to glorify it or its byproducts, either. Poverty stinks. Going hungry seriously stinks. And certain habits are better left behind when they’ve outlived their necessity. Like prison food. Or Ramen noodles. Continue reading
Filed under History, Holidays (fiestas judias), Your Questions Answered
Perfect fried potatoes. Really. (Hanukah fish & chips, part 2)
Ours wasn’t much of a potato household. We were – are – Ottoman Sephardim, into lots of rice and a little bit of pasta, and potatoes were a New World discovery that took hold more in northern Europe than in the northern Mediterranean. As far as we were concerned, potatoes were mostly good for filling ojaldres and not much else. My mother’s potato repertoire was limited to baked, mashed, or the very rare purchase of demon frozen French fries, which she insisted on baking because it was ‘healthier.’ Although why she would then fry up a huge platter of breaded fish and think nothing of it is beyond me.
As a potato-challenged people, our forays into latke territory (our Ashkenazi-centric religious school made me feel I wasn’t Jewish if I didn’t eat latkes) were always tentative Continue reading
Filed under Holidays (fiestas judias), Recipes
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
Filed under History, Holidays (fiestas judias), Recipes
SEPHARDIC FOOD 