Crispy, golden and delicious, Moroccan cigars are a traditional favorite of the Moroccan kitchen. Served as appetizers at celebrations or holiday meals, cigarim have become especially popular in Israel. They can be found on the menus of Mizrahi restaurants, freshly fried and ready for take out in the Shuk or in the freezer section of…
Every good food story starts with a grandmother: one of Leonardo Nourafchan’s earliest memories is standing on a chair, stirring a huge pot of polenta in the kitchen of his Italian grandmother. Nowadays, you’ll find Chef Lenny in his own industrial kitchen, overseeing a dozen busy cooks chopping and grilling for Lenny’s Casita and Lenny’s…
Every Friday afternoon, the entire student body of Vaucluse Primary School would walk up the hill to Christison Park, a huge green reserve high atop a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We would play cricket or softball or run around the grass, under the shadow of the splendid white Macquarie Lighthouse, Australia’s first and oldest…
Sharon’s Turn: I started reading Seventeen Magazine as a young girl in Sydney, Australia. I was fascinated by the glimpse into American culture, American products, American marketing, American celebrity and American fashion. I learned that it was chic to wear pearls with a basic white t-shirt and to pair grey clothing with a pop of…
Little 7 year old me arrived in Los Angeles from Casablanca one week before Halloween. My uncle took me to get a costume and off we went trick or treating at the home of Elvis Presley. Lucille Ball handed me a Hershey’s Chocolate bar and I was convinced: America is paradise. Little did I know…
My best friend’s wedding was a joyous celebration. Friends and family were thrilled that two such amazing people had found each other. The bride was beautiful in her stunning white lace gown and the groom was handsome in his bow tie and tuxedo, the bridesmaids wore lavender, matched by the pretty pinks and purples of…
White beans cooked in a tomato broth and served over rice are the quintessential Sephardic comfort food. And they are the perfect food to cook for these crisp, cool, short Autumn days. Domesticated in the New World, white beans soon became beloved staples in the Old World cuisines of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the…
Someone once said that rice is the food equivalent of khaki pants—it goes with anything. Anthropologists are divided over whether the popular Asian rice we consume today originated in China or India. Archaeologists working in East and Southeast Asia argue that the cultivation of rice began along the Yangtze River and spread from there to…
If you lived in New York in the ’80s, you experienced a city on steroids. From the hit Broadway shows “Les Miserables,” “Dreamgirls” and “Phantom of the Opera” to some really cool and quirky off-Broadway productions; from blockbuster art exhibitions featuring the works of Van Gogh, Rembrandt and the Impressionists at the Metropolitan Museum of…
When Rebekah Sheff left for her freshman year at Chapman College, she took with her a special recipe book. Her Moroccan Spice Girl mom, Rachel, printed “Rebekah’s College Cookbook,” featuring all of her favorite recipes. Rebekah often baked while at home. Now that she’s away at college, she’s been cooking her way through the book. …
In an era when most marriages were arranged by parents, my grandparents were a romantic match. He was dashingly handsome; she was beautiful with dark, curly hair and ruby-red lips. He was from the bustling city of Baghdad, the son of a doctor; she was from the tiny village of Azair, the daughter of the…
Couscous, those small steamed balls of crushed semolina flour, is the staple food of the Maghreb. A food that originated among the Berbers of northern Algeria and Morocco, it had become a staple dish among Maghrebi cooks by the 12th century. A recipe for couscous from Marrakech is found in the Andalusian Muslim cookbook “Kitab…
A crisp bite of Moroccan galette with a steaming cup of fresh mint tea: This is the definition of a simple pleasure, a pick me up, an exercise in mindfulness, a meditative ritual. A staple of the North African kitchen, “tortitas” as the Spanish Moroccans affectionately call them, are thin, airy, crunchy cookies. A Moroccan host…
“I dream about your Asian noodle salad. Will you please share the recipe?” wrote Maayan, my cousin Rafi’s wife. I have lots of first cousins. Some live in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Modi’in, like Rafi and Maayan; some in Sydney and Melbourne; and others in New York. Whenever any of them pass through Los…
The cliché is that the secret ingredient of good food is love. For us, there is one essential ingredient that takes food to epicurean heights: the humble onion. Sautéed, caramelized or even raw, the addition of onions uniquely enhances the flavor of any dish. Every roast, every chicken, every stew, every soup starts with onion….
It was a cold, gray, windy day in Fog City (San Francisco). We had just disembarked from the Alcatraz Island ferry, when our Australian friend shot off like a rocket. My aunt Rebecca and I looked at each other in confusion and a bit of panic. It was the prehistoric era — before cellphones —…
Majestically perched at the northwest tip of Africa, Morocco is blessed with more than 1,000 miles of sparkling coastline and an expansive desert interior. Its proximity to the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Iberian Peninsula put it at the crossroads of ancient civilizations. The Berbers, Phoenicians, the Carthaginian state, the Romans, Muslims, Spanish,…
Christopher Columbus set sail in August 1492, three days after the deadline set by the Alhambra Decree for the expulsion or forced conversion of the Jews in Spain. This has fueled persistent, but unproven, rumors that Columbus was a Jew. However, there was one Jew who was instrumental among the crew: Luis de Torres, a…
I was born in Casablanca, Morocco. Fearing rising anti-Semitism, my family moved to Los Angeles in 1973. I was 8 years old and I didn’t know any English; we spoke Spanish and French at home. I started school at Beverly Vista and graduated from Beverly Hills High School. My closest friends were a mini United…
Narrow streets choked with cars. Loud honking and thumping, exotic music. Littered sidewalks teeming with people of every age and ethnicity. Shady money-changing operations, Yemenite bakeries, tiny makolets with owners and friends sitting on cheap plastic chairs, barbershops with posters of Wella hair models on the walls, and little hole-in-the-wall stalls selling gold chains. And…
The bright azure and gentle waves of the Mediterranean beckon from beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows but there is a more tempting challenge from where a visitor stands: to navigate the breakfast buffet of the Sheraton Tel Aviv. The gastronomic extravaganza is endless. Freshly baked loaves of bread with butter and preserves, flaky sweet pastries and…
