Leading up to celebrations, the kitchens of Stella Hanan Cohen’s childhood community in Rhodesia were filled with “a cacophony of Spanish, and Turkish, and Greek,” says Stella. Romantic ballads called romansos were sung in Ladino, and women spoke longingly of their childhoods on the Greek island of Rhodes, where their community lived for over 400 years following the Inquisition.
Together, the women worked in assembly lines to create elaborate sweets like marzipan, almond and sesame brittle, orange sponge cake, and shortbread cookies filled with dates and walnuts. Each baker had her own specialty, never sharing her culinary secret with the other women. “My late sister and I would giggle,” says Stella, the author of “Stella's Sephardic Table: Jewish Family Recipes from the Mediterranean Island of Rhodes.” “They would never hand over their recipe... they would mix everything in with their backs towards everyone so they wouldn’t see their secret extra bit of mastic or how many drops of orange blossom water.”
I’m thrilled to have been featured by the Jewish Food Society and hope you will enjoy this article and recipes of our treasured Rhodesli sweet treats. #jewishfoodsociety
Article and recipes continued https://www.jewishfoodsociety.org/.../these-medieval...