2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Best Jewish Food Culture Book; 2022 National Jewish Book Award Finalist
A 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.
Cuprins
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
Despre autor
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 (Co Re Ma) 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.