Sephardi - by Hélène Jawhara Piñer

About the Book

In this extraordinary cookbook, chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer combines rich culinary history and Jewish heritage to serve up over fifty culturally significant recipes.

Book Synopsis

In this extraordinary cookbook, chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer combines rich culinary history and Jewish heritage to serve up over fifty culturally significant recipes.

Steeped in the history of the Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spain) and their diaspora, these recipes are expertly collected from such diverse sources as medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, medical treatises, poems, and literature. Original sources ranging from the thirteenth century onwards and written in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian, and Hebrew, are here presented in English translation, bearing witness to the culinary diversity of the Sephardim, who brought their cuisine with them and kept it alive wherever they went. Jawhara-Piñer provides enlightening commentary for each recipe, revealing underlying societal issues from anti-Semitism to social order. In addition, the author provides several of her own recipes inspired by her research and academic studies.

Each creation and bite of the dishes herein are guaranteed to transport the reader to the most deeply moving and intriguing aspects of Jewish history. Jawhara-Piñer reminds us that eating is a way to commemorate the past.

Review Quotes

"A feast for the senses as well as the memory."
-Alex Galbinski, Jewish News: Food & Travel
"The recipes in Sephardi reflect the lush and multifaceted culinary traditions of the Iberian Peninsula, influenced by Celtic, Iberian, Roman-Mediterranean, Germanic and North African flavors and techniques. Many of the recipes are the first recorded versions of dishes that are still made today -- peot (challah), adefina (Sabbath stew), puchero (chicken soup) and even matzo -- albeit with some modernized techniques."
--Julie Giuffrida, Los Angeles Times

"An engaging cookbook that tells a fascinating and moving story."
--Claudia Roden, author of The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
"Sephardi is truly the only cookbook of its kind. Héeacute;lèegrave;ne is cooking enticing and delicious cuisine of Sephardic Jewry while telling the story of migration and rich history that is part of my family's ancestry. Mazel Bueno to Sephardi!"-- Michael Solomonov, Chef and Owner, Zahav; James Beard Award Winner

"A vibrant scholar and a very talented cook, Hélène Jawhara Piñntilde;er has written a brilliant book that is as appealing as it is enlightening. From showing us that Swiss chard was mentioned in the Talmud to revealing that Jewish dishes were featured in prominent Muslim cookbooks, she makes every page one worth reading--and every recipe one you'll want to make. Her research expands our idea of edible Sephardic culture, charting its geography and anthropology to places as far-flung as Brazil and Mexico, in the process serving up important context for an impressively rich culinary heritage. Sephardi reminds us that there's always lots to learn about even the most time-honored traditions, and it's a work that encourages us all to dig deeper into our own individual histories, no matter where in the world they originate."
--Adeena Sussman, author of Sababa: Fresh Sunny Flavors From My Israeli Kitchen
"The gorgeously illustrated book, accompanied by uncomplicated instructions, offers dishes with spices and herbs, some similar to those in Middle Eastern cooking. Several of the author's personal recipes are drawn from historical sources adapted from her academic research."--San Francisco Book Review

"Sephardi: Cooking the History strikes an elusive balance between being a 'can't put it down' history book and 'must immediately get into my kitchen' cookbook."-- Leah Koenig, author of The Jewish Cookbook

"Can you tell if someone's Jew-ish from how they pre-pare their food? Can you tell a Sephar-di from an Ashke-nazi by what they are eat-ing? Had major Jew-ish thinkers, like Mai-monides, have any-thing to say about food, apart from dis-cussing kashrut? Hélène Jawhara Piñer has spent years research-ing such ques-tions and now offers read-ers a tasty Sephar-di buf-fet -- some fifty recipes of the Jews of Spain and their dias-po-ra, from the thir-teenth cen-tu-ry onwards -- as a frame-work for her answers."

--Jewish Book Council

"Hélène Jawhara Piñer's Sephardi: Cooking the History is a critical new work of Jewish culinary history. The book sheds a much-needed light on the foods of Jews from the Iberian peninsula while elucidating the community's rich culinary legacy. The role that ingredients, dishes, and cooking practices played

About the Author

Hélène Jawhara Piñer holds a doctoral degree in Medieval History and the History of Food. In 2018, she was awarded the Broome & Allen Fellowship of the American Sephardi Federation (asf), dedicated to recognizing outstanding academic accomplishments and services to the Sephardic community, as well as encouraging continued excellence in the field of Sephardi studies. As a research associate of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance(CESR) and of the Cooking of Recipes of the Middle Ages (CoReMa) research program in Tours, Dr. Jawhara-Piñer's main research interest is the medieval culinary history of Spain through inter- and multiculturalism, with a special focus on the Jewish culinary heritage in Arabic.

Her recipes have appeared in Sephardi World Weekly, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, and S&P Central's Newsletter. She attended The Great Big Jewish Food Fest (May 2020) as a presenter for an historical-cooking demonstration. With the collaboration of the ASF, she gives live historical cooking classes for the show "Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara Piñer," available on Chaiflix.