On Rosh Hashanah, Sephardic Jews hold a seder in which they eat symbolic foods and say blessings over them made up of puns on each food’s name. One of these is leeks.
Leeks Offer a New Year’s Wish for Friendship

On Rosh Hashanah, Sephardic Jews hold a seder in which they eat symbolic foods and say blessings over them made up of puns on each food’s name. One of these is leeks.
A traditional Sephardic Jewish dish, these leek patties are typical of the Balkans and Turkey. They are eaten year round, but customarily served on Passover, when leeks are in season, and on Rosh Hashanah. Leeks (prasa in Turkish) are one of the ceremonial foods that are part of the traditional Yehi Ratzon seder on Rosh…
A rich buttery coffeecake served with ice cream is a great alternative to cheesecake for Shavuot. This one, called aranygaluska, comes from Hungary and resembles popular monkey bread or pull-apart bread.
Hungarian immigrants introduced aranygaluska, a traditional Hungarian coffeecake whose name means “golden dumpling,” to the US in the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth century. This coffeecake is the predecessor of what we identify today as monkey or pull-apart bread, which first appeared in the 1972 Betty Croker Cookbook and was later popularized by First Lady Nancy Reagan,…
Even after becoming pescatarian, there’s one dish that still stirs up Leah’s memories: Yemenite chicken soup, especially the Passover version. But it turns out the flavors hold their own even without the meat.
This is a traditional Yemenite soup that was a daily item on the menu when I was growing up. For the seder meal, the cook would remove the meat from the pot and add broken-up matzah—enough to sop up the turmeric-infused broth. Then, hilba, a fenugreek relish spiced with chili paste, was added. It all…
Hilba (or hilbeh) is the Yemeni Arabic word for fenugreek as well as for the traditional spicy relish Yemenite Jews make from fenugreek seeds to add to soup and some dairy dishes or use as a dip with pita or lahouh, a spongy, fermented Yemenite pancake. Yemenite soup with hilba is comforting and delicious, as…
It is said that women in Yemen didn’t experience postpartum depression. Why? Because they spent the 40 days after giving birth being taken care of by other women and fed rich galoub.
This traditional Yemenite fried pita goes by various names, depending on which of the 1,000 Jewish settlements in Yemen one came from. My mother called it galoub or gourse interchangeably, but others call it zalabia or dourdour. The simple fried pita is torn into bite-sized pieces, drenched with warm ghee or samna (clarified butter) and…
Recipe contributed by Gil Hovav. In his memoir, Candies from Heaven, Israeli food writer and personality Gil Hovav offers several family recipes from his childhood in 1960s Jerusalem, one of which is his grandmother’s spicy fish recipe. “There was no Friday night meal without a pot of spicy fish in red sauce, and lots of…