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
About the Author
Leah Hadad once worked as a lawyer, but her lifelong love for cooking and baking led her to start Tribes-a-Dozen and develop its signature product, Voilà! Hallah, a line of all-natural, kosher challah bread mixes. Her calling now is to revive the tradition of baking challah at home. Leah draws on her Yemenite-Israeli roots as she is mixin' traditions in her kitchen for family and friends in Washington, DC.
Mushroom Keftes de Prasa (Sephardic Leek Patties)
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 Heavenly “Golden Dumpling”
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.
Aranygaluska (Hungarian 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,…
A Bowl Full of Memories
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.
Yemenite Chicken Soup
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 (Fenugreek Relish)
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…
The Taste of Sisterhood
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.
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…
Mooma’s Spicy Fish
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…
