- Joshua de Sola Mendes
Sephardi: Cooking the History
A wonderful, new cookbook by chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer gives readers and food lovers and unprecedented glimpse into hundreds of years of Sephardi cuisine.
Reaching back all the way to the 13th century, Sephardi: Cooking the History provides some 50 recipes gleaned from her research into such sources as medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, medical treatises, poems, and literature -- written in a variety of languages, including Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian, and Hebrew. As she explains it, the recipes "bear witness to the culinary diversity of the Sephardim, who brought their cuisine with them and kept it alive wherever they went."
Jawhara-Piñer brings to the task her many years of research into the topic of Sephardi cuisine, including a doctoral degree in Medieval History and the History of Food and a Broome & Allen Fellowship with the American Sephardi Federation. Her recipes have appeared in Sephardi World Weekly, Tablet Magazine, and The Forward, and she gives frequent historical-cooking demonstrations.
