Product Description

When Iberian Jews were converted to Catholicism under duress during the Inquisition, many struggled to retain their Jewish identity in private while projecting Christian conformity in the public sphere. To root out these heretics, the courts of the Inquisition published checklists of koshering practices and "grilled" the servants, neighbors, and even the children of those suspected of practicing their religion at home. From these testimonies and other primary sources, Gitlitz & Davidson have drawn a fascinating, award-winning picture of this precarious sense of Jewish identity and have re-created these recipes, which combine Christian & Islamic traditions in cooking lamb, beef, fish, eggplant, chickpeas, and greens and use seasonings such as saffron, mace, ginger, and cinnamon. The recipes, and the accompanying stories of the people who created them, promise to delight the adventurous palate and give insights into the foundations of modern Sephardic cuisine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #546903 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A husband-and-wife team of University of Rhode Island professors presents a cookbook of medieval recipes that is, more significantly, a document of religious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition. Sixteen pages of endnotes and a six-page bibliography attest to its authority. Thousands of Iberian Jews were forced to convert to Christianity in the late 15th century, and while many assimilated, others clung to earlier customs?including dietary edicts. Gitlitz and Davidson report trial testimonies in which crypto-Jews?those who secretly struggled to maintain their Jewish identity and customs?were betrayed by what they ate, what they wouldn't eat and how their food was prepared. Recipes reconstructed for today's kitchens include dishes such as Isabel Gonzalez's Eggplant and Onion Stew and Blanca Ramierez's Meatball Stew. Another revealing dish is Radishes and Stuffed Crop, skin from chicken necks stuffed with radishes and herbs. Many meals reflect a fondness for the sweetness of honey and the savory blend of herbs and spices. They range from Mayor Gonzalez's Cold White Lamb Casserole, made with rose water, cinnamon and almond milk, to five different matzas, including one with mashed chestnuts. Gitlitz and Davidson offer an erudite look into both culinary and Jewish history.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
The "secret Jews" are the Iberian Jews who were forcibly converted to Catholicism under the Spanish Inquisition but still maintained Jewish religious practices in the privacy of their homes. Since this was strictly forbidden, the courts devoted a lot of time to ferreting out the "secret Jews," using the testimony of neighbors, servants, and family members. The authors, specialists in Spanish history and culture, have written a meticulously researched scholarly work focusing on this aspect of the Inquisition, using a variety of primary sources but relying mostly on the testimony of those questioned and often sentenced to imprisonment or worse. From these sources, they have re-created dozens of medieval recipes. While their efforts to discover and preserve this aspect of Jewish heritage are laudable, perhaps the idea of a cookbook was misguided. A recipe headnote that concludes "Maria went to the stake on November 20, 1486" is unlikely to make many readers feel like making Maria Sanchez's Greens. For religious/cultural history collections and some specialized cookery collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Customer Reviews

I Lost my Appetite
Sorry, I was looking for cool kosher Spanish recipes. The title "A Drizzle of Honey" sounded good but....

In front of each recipe is a story about someone who was tortured or burned at the stake or persecuted. Some of the descriptions are quite graphic, for example, a woman was tortured by putting a thin cloth over her mouth and the pouring a jug of water in which gave her the sensation of drowning. At the last moment, they pulled the cloth out, and she told them anything they wanted. She begged only to die, but they did it to her again. Following is her recipe for heaven-knows-what -- I'm not hungry anymore.

In another vignette, a daughter turns her mother in to be burned at the stake, by reporting that her mother threw a crucifix down the latrine. Another recipe follows.

It *was* a fascinating study of the Inquisition, but as a cookbook, it's terrible. Don't let the pretty picture on the cover fool you.

For now, I'll stick with my 1,000 Jewish Recipes book, which contains some healthy Sephardic recipes.

cookbook, absorbing history of Jewish Inquisition victims
My review of this book would have to paraphrase that of "distinctive crypto jewish cusine"--this is the history of my grandmother's kitchen. There had been many indications that my family had had jewish origins, and this book reinforces that belief on every page. I used to think of my grandmother as the "swiss chard queen"; here I learned that it's a primary crypto jewish food, the injestion of which could have led one to be a victim of the inqisition for "judaizing." Not only is it a cookbook, as has been noted elsewhere, but a poignant, close-up history of those unfortunate souls persecuted by the spanish simply because they were jews. The recipes are all do-able and just like grandma used to make.

Highly readable history and cookbook that really works
In a book that is equal parts history and cookbook, authors Gitlitz and Davidson explore the world of the Crypto-Jews or Conversos - Jews who converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition but who continued to practice their religion in secret. Inquisitors were tireless in their efforts to uncover these clandestine Jews, and one of their means was to identify characteristically Jewish traditions in food preparation and eating. Their records provide part of the basis for this fascinating look at how the sweep of world history intersected with the mundane details of ordinary lives. The introduction includes a discussion of characteristic ingredients and techniques, and each recipe is accompanied by the story of the person who was implicated by the simple act of preparing a meal. Most of the recipes are too exotic for my family's taste, but the ones I tried worked well. If you like to encounter history through taste and smell and the experience of re-creating your ancestors' dinners - or just want to imagine what those meals were like - then you will relish this book.