Appetizers and Salads

Sephardic cooks call many dishes salads that are simply cooked vegetables served at room temperature and treated to a tart dressing—dishes that are more commonly thought of as antipasti, meze, and tapas. Some of the other so-called salads would be described in contemporary terms as dips or spreads. A few are leafy salads, and a few others are prepared with uncooked vegetables.

What I have found to be the most unusual aspects of these dishes are the vinaigrettes. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France, the ratio of oil to vinegar for a vinaigrette is generally three to one. In many of the Sephardic Turkish and Greek recipes, however, the ratio is often the reverse. In other words, the Sephardic palate is a tart one.