Sephardic Passover traditions

It's great to be Sephardic at Passover!

We have rice in a million forms. Persian cooks are masters at rice, even if it is only chelo, plain parboiled and then steamed rice with crunchy tahdiq, or mixed with various vegetables, nuts and fruits. My first Pesach in Tehran was a strange one, with all that rice. After a few days, I was converted from my Ashkenazi upbringing and my mantra was, "When in Persia, do as the Persian Jews."

However, it was rather frustrating to attempt to make my childhood Ashkenazi Passover treats in my mother-in-law's kitchen, which was minus measuring cups, spoons or proper baking tins. Trying to make carrot ingberlach on the rainiest day of the year (it never sets in humid weather) was especially challenging. Once our belongings arrived a few months later, I had everything needed to start turning out cakes and goodies for the holidays.

During our eight years in Tehran, I frequently baked like crazy to provide Passover cakes to the extended family, because cake was eaten in the morning instead of matza. I made apple cakes, brownies, mocha cakes and almond cakes. Persian Jews rarely did Passover baking except for rudimentary flat cakes ("sawdust-like" was the predominant texture and flavor), and the treats we bought were "poufak" -- meringues in pink, tan and white.

Perhaps the most amazing dish of the holiday was the Persian version of charoset, called halek, incorporating myriad varieties of nuts, fruits (fresh and dried), cinnamon, pepper, wine … literally the entire koshered kitchen sink! The insipid Ashkenazi version of simple walnuts, cinnamon, apple and wine never appeared in my kitchen after that first year.

This delicious paste is eaten throughout the holiday on matza sandwiches for the kids (it beats the soggy tuna-on-matzoh or cream-cheese-on-matzoh that I remember taking to school). Halek can also be made into Pesach baklava; it is used as a filling between layers of wine-soaked matzoh and baked. Yummy!

The New York Times has a great story on Sephardic treats - three great parve ones from the Spanish kitchen. The pictures are mouth-watering as are the simple-to-follow recipes.

The story, by cookbook author Joan Nathan, is about Ana Benarroch de Bensadón of Madrid, whose family moved from Tangiers, Morocco in 1963. De Bensadón discusses the great interest in Jewish food, as well as her popular book of Sephardic dessert recipes called Dulce lo vivas: La Repostería Sefardí (May Your Life Be Sweet: The Sephardic Pastry Kitchen).

"She shifted into Spanish, French and Haketía (sometimes spelled Haquetía), a Sephardic dialect, as she searched for words to describe sweets like hojuelas (fijuelas) en almíbar, a flowerlike fritter dipped in honey, and tortitas cribadas, a savory lacelike cracker that I tasted recently at the home of one of Mrs. Bensadón’s friends in Tangiers.
These are recipes of home and of exile with deep roots in Jewish, Spanish and North African culture, some hundreds of years old and some contemporary."

The article touches on culinary history and the Conversos of Spain who used kitchen tricks to make favorites usable with meat meals, such as making an orange-almond flan with orange juice instead of cream or milk.

And for answers by Nathan to Passover food questions, click here.