Vegetables and Grains

Vegetables are the cornerstone of the Sephardic kitchen. Traditionally, they were served at almost every meal except breakfast, and even then they sometimes appeared in savory pastries. Most vegetables were cooked slowly in oil, with water added little by little, until they were very tender, a technique producing a result that probably is too soft for the contemporary palate. In Spain, a sofrito is a mixture of sautéed onions and tomato, but in the Sephardic kitchen the same term is used for this classic method of cooking vegetables. In Italy, the term is soffrito, or in dialect sofegae, meaning “suffocated.” Some vegetable dishes are sweet and sour, with additions of vinegar and lemon for the sour component and honey, sugar, or fruits for the sweet.