Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic [Hardcover]

Sheilah Kaufman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2002

These 120 kosher recipes celebrate the flavors of Israeli cuisine--a colorful and delicious mosaic composed of a variety of culinary traditions. Typical Sephardic ingredients include cinnamon, cloves, fenugreek, saffron, almond essence, rose and orange flower water, tahini paste, artichokes, fava beans, olives, fennel, couscous, semolina, and bulgur. Noted cookbook author Sheilah Kaufman guides home cooks through the Israeli kitchen with special sections on the origins and development of Israeli cuisine, kosher dining, Jewish holidays, and food terms.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

"Since Biblical times, Jews in Israel ate the foods of the land, many of which were mentioned in the Bible. After their expulsion from Spain, Jews came to the Holy Land and brought their cultural and dietary influences, as did other Jews from Greece, Italy, Morocco, Persia, Yemen, Ethiopia, and other countries...Today Israel has developed an authentic food culture, which offers a wealth of colorful, rich, and delicious choices, including foods that came from neighboring Arab cultures."

--from the author's introduction

About the Author

Sheilah Kaufman, a frequent guest on major television and radio programs, is a cooking instructor, food writer, and author of 24 cookbooks, including A Taste of Turkish Cuisine, Fearless, Fussless Cooking, and Simply Irresistible Kosher Cooking. She writes a food column for Washington Jewish Week and is a contributing writer to The Potomac Almanac and to Jewish Week. She and her husband reside in the Washington, D.C. area.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 261 pages
• Publisher: Hippocrene Books; illustrated edition edition (May 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0781809266
• ISBN-13: 978-0781809269
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #421,526 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #70 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Middle Eastern
  • #74 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Kosher

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Introducing Israeli/Sephardi foods into your kitchen, August 9, 2004

By 

Debbie Lampert at www.eluna.com (Raanana Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic (Hardcover)

If you've been cooking Mama's Eastern-European recipes long enough, and you want your meals to turn over a new, more Sephardic leaf, in step with Israeli-style cooking, Sheilah Kaufman's cookbook Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic is for you.

Start changing your cooking by changing your ingredients. Put aside the potatoes and the cabbage in favor of eggplant and artichokes. Forget the wheat and barley and go for rice and couscous. Leave the apples and pears on the shelf and choose the melons and apricots. Now that you have a lot of ingredients that you have no idea what to do with, reach for Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic .

To follow these authentic recipes you will have to stock up on some new-to-the-Polish-palate, spices. The section on Condiments and Spices will guide you right through the Middle Eastern spice market. I doubt that any of us will actually bother to make the spices when they are so readily availalbe in any Israeli market. But in this section you will learn what Zatar and Zhoug (and many other spices) are really made of.

In my eternal search for easy-to-make appetizers that taste good even when prepared several days before serving, this cookbook offers Leah Spiegel's recipe for Walnut Dip. Combine all the easy to find ingredients into a food processor, zumm, and store it in the frig. Alas! My kind of recipe.

Here are the recipes for the well known but Gd-know-what's-in -`em dishes like Mafrum. This exotic sounding Lybian dish turns out to be beef stew. What's special about Morroccan Cholent? In addition to all the unique spicing that Bubi never dreamed of, Moroccans make their Cholent with honey. Yes, honey.

We all know about the eggs that brown in the Cholent over night. Huevos Haminados is another Shabbat dish that Sephardi Yerushalmim and Turkish Jews make, that gives you the brown eggs but without the Cholent.

Your Polish taste buds may be adjusting to Sephardic and Middle Eastern foods slowly, but everybody loves those great Sephardic and Middle Eastern desserts. No matter where you are from, you will delight in those bite-size syrupy sweet and often crunchy specialties like Baklava. Kaufman offers a recipe for preparing Baklava by the sheet that you later cut into individual pieces. I was more intrigued by the recipe from Lybia for sweet roses called Debla, which is popular on Purim. These beautiful individual edible rose-shaped sweets are made of dough that is wound around into a rose-like shape and covered in sugar syrup. They look just like flowers covered in morning dew, and must be gorgeous in mishloach manot.

This cookbook has an excellent section on Sephardic Passover recipes. This Pesach, in addition to your traditional haroset you can prepare the Haroset from Turkey - also made with apples, nuts and wine, but with the addition of dates and raisins. Or you can make the Abravanel family haroset recipe originating in Portugal. In addition to the nuts and the wine, this recipe has - you won't believe it - orange juice and cherry jam. I liked the Passover recipe for sponge cake, which has a lot of eggs but no oil, so much for kitniyot issues.

The cookbook ends with a small section on Ashkenazi foods. I am not sure why this was necessary. From my point of view the book held its own with just the Sephardic recipes.

In addition to all the great recipes the cookbook has a section on the history of Sephardic Jews and an essay on the foods traditionally eaten on the Jewish holidays.

The books opens with a translation of the Bendigamos, the Grace After Meals according to the tradition of the Spanish Portuguese Jews. It would have been nice had the Ladino text appeared alongside the English translation.

Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic is a fine addition to your cookbook collection. You'll enjoy preparing these unique recipes and incorporating them into your standard repertoire.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Over a hundred kosher recipes celebrate Israeli cuisine, October 11, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic (Hardcover)

Over a hundred kosher recipes celebrate Israeli cuisine, using typical Sephardic/Mid East ingredients from cinnamon to orange flower water and adding spice to favorites such as Crescent Olive Puffs and Libyan Mafrum, a meat and potatoes spicy dish. No photos, but most of these delicious dishes simply don't need illustration.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better Than Your Mother's Chicken Noodle Soup!, September 13, 2008

By 

Paul Hosse (Louisville, KY. USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sephardic Israeli Cuisine: A Mediterranean Mosaic (Hardcover)

Slightly exotic while at the same time being good for you. Easy to prepare with simple to understand directions. And most of all, delicious! What more could you ask? Take it from a mensch who likes to eat; this is a terrific cookbook with some wonderful recipes and excellent ideas!