The taste of home. How Iraqi Jewish food ignites the senses

‘The food of the Iraqi Jews tells our story. M’hasha is about community. The project of coring vegetables, stuffing them with herbed rice, and stewing them in tangy tamarind is made quick by many hands. 

Tebit is a distinctly Jewish dish. Traditionally made to feed dozens of family members on the Sabbath, the spiced chicken and rice are placed in the oven on Friday night and cooked overnight on low through Saturday.’ 

'My grandmother’s kitchen was on the Upper East Side, but it tasted of Iraq.’ Have you read the stunning article Cooking and Sharing Iraqi Jewish Food Helps Me Imagine a Place I Never Knew by Lucy Simon? 

'As Ama brushed butter onto sheets of phyllo dough, she’d share stories of her girlhood in Baghdad. “We’d swim in the Tigris with water buffalo,” she’d say with delight at my amazement, each layer of pastry unfurling more memories. 

“To escape the summer heat, we’d sleep on the flat rooftops in the cool night air.” She’d yell to my grandfather in the living room in Arabic, give my dad instructions in French, and speak politely to my measured Methodist mother in English, but to me, she spoke loving words that needed no translation; she’d call me ayuni (my eyes) and qalbi (my heart). 

I’ll never know my Ama’s verdant, cosmopolitan Baghdad, in the region my ancestors called home for 2,500 years. But in her kitchen, I could taste it.’