This Pesach, rather than waxing philosophical about what narrow places I’ve been hiding out in lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about food. Specifically, why is it that when it comes to Jewish food, Sephardic cuisine beats Ashkenazi cuisine almost every time.
Don’t get me wrong. I am 100 percent Ashkenazi. Before I became a vegetarian, I was raised on a steady diet of my grandmother’s kreplach, chopped liver, and stuffed cabbage. I still love a good matzah ball, and that goes for gefilte fish as well (my vegetarianism includes fish).

But introducing Egyptian charoset to our seder many years ago was one of those light bulb moments – as in – there’s a whole other world out there of Jewish food, that is totally different than the old stand-bys we know.
This year, neither my aunt nor cousin-in-law Rebecca – motherhood will do that to you - had the time to make Egyptian charoset. I missed it not only because we had no pyramid and diorama gracing our table. I missed it because while the old apples, walnuts and wine version was perfectly adequate, it did not have that same wow.
In looking for good Sephardic recipes, I do not violate the Ashkenazi ban on rice and beans. There are enough good recipes out there that one doesn’t have to.
I tried two new recipes this year; one for seder and one for mid-week, and both were all-out wows. The first was an Almond Cake with Orange Syrup, that hails from Spain. I found the recipe in Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York, a favorite of mine, because of all the commentary she includes alongside the recipes. While the book includes recipes from Jewish communities around the world, Roden is Egyptian herself, which guarantees that a good number of them will be Sephardic.
I made two such cakes for my two seders, and as Roden mentioned, it was actually better the second day, after the syrup had sufficient time to be properly absorbed by the cake. It was head and shoulders better than the usual Pesadik sponge cake.
Then, today, back home, I made a Leek and Cheese Matzah Pie. My friend Eric, who is Sephardic, told me about the recipe, and I just happened to have the cookbook it was in: Joyce Goldstein’s “Sephardic Flavors: Jewish Cooking of the Mediterranean.” I was lucky enough to get this book for free when I interviewed Goldstein for j. weekly, where I worked at the time; she is a well-known San Francisco chef, one of the first women to open a celebrated restaurant in the city.
Goldstein suggested a variation with spinach added to the filling, which I did, and I also substituted fennel for half of the leeks. I also used whole-wheat matzoh to make it healthier, which is a good idea since there is quite a bit of ricotta and gruyere. I made two of these today, one for a client I’ve been cooking for for months now, and one for me and my husband, to eat over the next few days.
I took the pie to my client, and there was a message waiting for me before I got home, raving how delicious it was. I still haven’t tried it yet.
A lot has been written about the Ashkenazi diet; especially when it comes to health. Surely incorporating more Sephardic ways of cooking (olive oil rather than schmaltz) is not only a good way to broaden our food horizons, but be healthier as well. For anyone looking to expand their Jewish repertoire, I highly recommend these two books.