Full Description
2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Best Jewish Food Culture Book; 2022 National Jewish Book Award FinalistA fascinating study that will appeal to both culinarians and readers interested in the intersecting histories of food, Sephardic Jewish culture, and the Mediterranean world of Iberia and northern Africa.
In the absence of any Jewish cookbook from the pre-1492 era, it requires arduous research and a creative but disciplined imagination to reconstruct Sephardic tastes from the past and their survival and transmission in communities around the Mediterranean in the early modern period, followed by the even more extensive diaspora in the New World. In this intricate and absorbing study, Hélène Jawhara Piñer presents readers with the dishes, ingredients, techniques, and aesthetic principles that make up a sophisticated and attractive cuisine, one that has had a mostly unremarked influence on modern Spanish and Portuguese recipes.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Paul Freedman
Introduction
Part One. The Jews' Place in the Construction of an Andalusian Cuisine (Twelfth to Fourteenth Centuries)
1. A Unique "Witness" to Complex Realities
2. The Jewish Stamp in the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ
3. Jewish and Muslims Food Consumption and Cooking Practices in the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ
4. Eggplant: The Jewishness Marker
Part Two. The Legacy of the Multicultural Cuisine of Al-Andalus (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century): The Evolution and Perception of Jewish Food
5. The Counterpoint of Christian-Dominated Cookbooks
6. Iberian Literary Works: Witnesses to Food Discrimination against Jews
7. Trends and Evidence: Food as an Identity Marker
8. The Trials of the Inquisition: Written Witnesses of an Oral Transmission of Jewish Skills
Part Three. Sephardic Jewish Culinary Heritage: Between Rebirth and the Desire to Recognize a Past Legacy
9. Common Dishes in Spanish Sephardic cuisine
10. Dishes and Diaspora: From the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ to the Sephardic Culinary Heritage of the Mediterranean Basin
11. Recipes and Photos of Jewish Dishes from the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ
12. Recipes and Photos of Iberian Medieval Dishes in the Sephardic Culinary Heritage of the Mediterranean Basin
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
