“We’ve been finding that so many people out there … besides our own interest, have been creating food blogs and reviving their Arab Jewish history through food,” Regine told the Jewish Journal. “We thought the best thing to do is just start interviewing people who are doing this as well.”
Kitchen Radio was released by Reboot Studios on April 3. In each episode, hosts Regine (Founder of Tuning Baghdad) and Nathalie Basha (The Travel Muse) feature a dish and a conversation to introduce the still little-known Jewish culture of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Tannaz Sassooni making the Persian rice and poultry dish Gondi Kashi kicked off the season. Jewish Journal columnists The Sephardic Spice Girls, as well as cookbook author Claudia Roden and artist Rafram Chaddad also appear on Kitchen Radio’s first season. New episodes will be released every Tuesday in April.
“When we speak about Jewishness and Jewish food, at least here in the U.S., we automatically go to Ashkenazi Jewish,” Nathalie told the Journal. “When we would tell people that we are Iraqi Jewish, most people would say, ‘What does that even mean? How can you be both?’ So we thought that would be a really interesting way to start this conversation.”
Food has been an integral part of the hosts’ upbringing. Regine and Nathalie remember the open houses “Aunt Daisy,” a family friend from the Iraqi Jewish community, would host every Saturday.
“Basically, it would just be a smorgasbord of food,” Nathalie said. “Anybody who wanted to come from 10 a.m. until whenever would just come.” There would be tea flowing, cheese, fruits and platters of Iraqi delicacies, along with the sharing of stories and history.
“It was such a positive, happy moment in both of our childhoods and even going into early adulthood,” she said. “When it stopped, we were like, ‘Who’s going to do this? Who’s going to keep this tradition?’”
Regine and Nathalie are thrilled to share the little known foods they grew up with and the history behind them. “Getting this information out there is like inviting everybody else into this really colorful, beautiful world of Arabic Jewish food,” Nathalie said.
Nathalie’s favorite dish is a dessert called Konafa, which is featured in episode four with Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/Mizrahi descent.
“It’s a kind of ubiquitous Middle Eastern dessert,” Nathalie said. “Everyone, meaning every country, tries to claim that they were the originators of Konafa.”
Made with white cheeses — depending on your family’s region or country, the cheese mix changes —- sandwiched between pressed down vermicelli-like noodles, drenched in butter and cooked until it’s “really crispy, and the cheese inside gets very, very melty,” Nathalie said.
When the dish comes out of the oven, you spoon a simple syrup, usually enhanced with rose water or orange blossom, all over it. “I can’t even describe how good it smells,” Nathalie said. “But it hits all the notes that you want in a dessert: it’s crunchy, it’s salty, it’s sweet, it’s chewy.”
Just like that dessert, Regine and Nathalie hope their podcast enhances all of the senses, while giving listeners a delicious taste of history.
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