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by Hélène Jawhara Piñer (Author), Paul Freedman (Foreword by)
2023 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Best Jewish Food Culture Book; 2022 National Jewish Book Award FinalistA 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.
Author Biography
Hélène Jawhara Piñer holds a doctoral degree in Medieval History and the History of Food. She has lectured at Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Casa de Velásquez in Madrid, and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia). Dr. Jawhara Piñer's main research interest is the medieval culinary history of Spain through inter- and multiculturalism, with a special focus on Jewish culinary heritage. She is the author of the historical cookbook Sephardi: Cooking the History (Academic Studies Press) which was praised by the Los Angeles Times, El País, and the Jewish Book Council and is a winner of the 2021 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. Piñer spearheads the culinary live show "Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara Piñer," promoted the ASF & The Center for Jewish History. Her new historical cookbook is forthcoming in Winter 2023.
