Category Archives: Your Questions Answered

April 1, 2009 · 9:56 pm

Kolva

My Nona used to make me a sweet whole wheat dish that she called Colva when I lost my baby teeth. Do you have a recipe for this? I think it’s cooked wheat seed and honey?            Alyse Elias Matsil

Kolva and assoureh are two kinds of  wheat puddings eaten in Greece, Turkey, Armenia and Syria.  To my knowledge, neither is specifically Sephardic.  They are delicious, made with different combinations of dried fruits, nuts and honey –  a far, far cry from that box of Wheatena.   The following recipe for kolva comes from a 1922 comparative study of nutrition among world populations, Foods of the Foreign-Born In Relation To Health by Bertha M. Wood.  No short-cuts here – it calls for soaking & boiling whole wheat for 12 hours – and it’s about as basic as it gets.  Which may be just right.  I haven’t made kolva and I’ve got questions of my own, but I offer it for you to try or to compare to your own recipe for kolva, if you’ve got one.

This kind of recipe can easily be halved.

  • 1 pound wheat
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup seedless raisins
  • 1/2 cup chopped almonds
  • 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1 cup mixed fancy candy (Note: I’m not sure what was meant by “fancy candy” in 1922.  I suspect it may refer to glazed fruit – candied citron, etc. – if someone else knows better, let us know!)

Soak the wheat in water for ten or twelve hours.  Rinse well, and boil it in fresh water.  Remove the wheat from the fire before it cracks.  Strain, and then spread it overnight on white muslin.  Roast the flour in a pan by itself until light brown.  Allow to cool.  Add the sugar, almonds and walnuts.  Add this mixture to the boiled wheat, and mix in also the spiced fancy candy.  Serve cold.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who’s familiar with kolva.

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March 17, 2009 · 12:36 am

Survival of the Fittest / La Ley de Supervivencia (Q & A)

Queridos lectores, he recibido el siguiente mensaje en castellano y por eso yo queria presentar mi respuesta – este articulo –  en castellano antes que en ingles, pero ningun de mis traductores estan disponibles y escribo muy, muy despacio (y mal) en castellano.  Por eso, os presento todo en ingles y apenas posible la traduccion (y con accentos!) — JA

Hola Janet,  es un placer haber encontrado tu Blog, estoy estudiando cocina en París, y realmente me gustaría aprender y conocer mas sobre la cocina Sefardí y como, no solo ha sobrevivido durante siglos, sino que hoy día es una realidad.
Una cosa muy graciosa es que, en mi casa estamos bien familiarizado con el cuajao, pero en este caso es de pescado, mi Abuela Petra todavía lo cocina.
mil gracias y felicitaciones por tu trabajo
Nerwin

Hi, Janet. 

It’s a pleasure to have found your blog.  I’m studying cooking in Paris, and I really would like to learn and know more about Sephardic cooking and how it has not only survived for centuries, but today is a reality.   A funny thing is that in my house we’re very familiar with cuajado, but in this case it’s made with fish; my Grandmother Petra still makes it. 

A thousand thanks and congratulations on your work.

 

Nerwin

 Dear Nerwin, 

Many thanks for your kind words and for asking such a good question.  I thought the best way to answer you would be with a brief lesson in Sephardic history (which makes for a long blog entry). 

 

Really there is no mystery at all as to how Sephardic cuisine has survived over the centuries – especially if you’re Sephardic.  To begin to understand, you need to know Continue reading →

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February 1, 2009 · 11:20 pm

Candied Baby Eggplant / Berenjenitas en Dulce

Dear Janet,
In Morrocco, 50s and 60s, I used to eat a Sefardi dessert I never found in any kosher or Sefardi cookery book… small aubergines or berenjenas en dulce. Maybe with honey or syrup.  La Senora Amalia was keeping this recipe for her family… So delicious!  Thank you — Mary, UK

Cooked sweets – purees, compotes, marmalades, pastes, hard candies and whole preserves – are a very important component of Sephardic culinary traditions and social customs.  Whole fresh and dried fruits, citrus peel, flower petals, seeds, nuts and even vegetables are transformed into sweets of various forms, textures, colors and flavors, to be served, with tea or coffee and perhaps a little pomp, when company comes.   My own grandparents and great grandparents, from Rhodes & Adalia, favored sweets made from quince, almonds, apricots, prunes, figs, tangerine peels, rose petals, apples, dates and sesame.  There are also recipes for lemons, grapefruit, pears, sour cherries, grapes, tomatoes, pumpkin and, in Moroccan tradition, eggplant (in case you’re wondering, eggplant is actually a fruit).  The list goes on.

Here is one of two candied eggplant recipes from “Dulce lo vivas,” a beautiful collection of Moroccan Sephardic desserts by Ana Bensadon that I will write about this month.  The book is only available in Spanish; the translation below is mine.   The departures here from Ottoman-style fruit preserves are the very lengthy cooking time and the combination of spices.   Traditional Ottoman fruit preserves call for milder flavorings – at most only one of the spices used here, plus rose or orange flower water or, as my dad would say, a little lemon juice.

recipe

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January 13, 2009 · 8:30 pm

Dondurma: Turkish orchid ice cream / Helado turco de orquideas (Q & A)

 

My mother used to refer to an ice cream she called Dondurma. Are you familiar with this?  Have you ever made it.  Once, when I was a small child my mother took me somewhere in Brooklyn to eat some and it was divine.  My mother was from Monastir, now known as Bitol.  Our food were greatly influenced by the Turkish.   — healthgal

Well, healthgal, this is a good example of a food that isn’t Sephardic per se but which, as a Turkish delicacy, was – is – consumed by Sephardim along with everyone else in that part of the world.  Your mother’s city was within the Ottoman Empire, thus the Turkish influence on her food.  Manastir, today called Bitola, is a city in southern Macedonia that lies roughly mid-way between Puglia (the southeastern spur of Italy) and Salonika.

Dondurma (don-DŌŌR-mä), is simply the Turkish word for ice cream, although the similarity pretty much ends there.  Elastic, dense and slow to melt, dondurma is made from a mixture of milk, mastic resin and salep.  Mastic is an ancient Mediterranean evergreen in the pistachio family and salep is a flour made from Turkish wild orchid tubers of the same name.  Salep Dondurma – orchid ice cream – is only about 300 years old; the conventional wisdom is that it was invented in a part of southeastern Turkey where all three key ingredients were plentiful.  Dondurma is made by beating the ingredients into a smooth, elastic mass using a long metal rod.  Fresh dondurma is draped on large hooks and dense enough to eat with a knife and fork.  It is eaten cold, but not frozen.  Unlike other ice creams, if allowed to freeze it turns rock hard and brittle.  Today, it is impossible to make dondurma outside of Turkey; mass production has so seriously depeleted Turkey’s supply of wild orchids that there’s a government ban on their exportation.

While investigating dondurma it struck me that the texture, if not the temperature, might be reminiscent of Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy, a favorite candy of my childhood.  Lo and behold,  the Bonomo Candy Company was founded in Coney Island in 1897 by one Albert J. Bonomo (Benhamou, I presume), a Sephardic immigrant from Turkey.  Apparently, the Bonomos of Brooklyn loved dondurma as much as your mother did, or at the very least understood its appeal; it was Albert’s son, Victor, who invented “Turkish Taffy” in the 1940’s.  How do you like that.

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