Book: Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India

Marks, whose earlier cookbooks have featured such cuisines as Guatemalan, Burmese, and Indonesian, has ranged far and wide for this hefty collection, marking the 500th anniversary of the Jews’ expulsion from Spain, that is held together by its focus on Sephardic Jewish and other related Jewish communities. With bits of sketchy capsule history introducing each place of settlement, Marks presents recipes from the community of 6000 Jews in Greece, the 50 or fewer (down from 6000 just decades ago) in Calcutta, the 38,000 from Libya (now completely transplanted to Israel), and several others. Some of the recipes, such as the “Jewish eggs” cooked in their shells for hours, he found in Jewish communities in Calcutta, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, and Morocco; others, such as the walnut sauces of Georgia in the Caucasus, the injeera bread of Ethiopia, and the Moroccan bestila (“pigeon” pie made here with chicken), are characteristic of the country of settlement but, as in other Marks collections, are considerably adapted here for American convenience. An interesting collection of dishes, many of them new to Americans, from a cuisine family that is becoming increasingly popular with American Jews raised on more stolid Eastern European fare. (Photographs.) — Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.