Sweets From A Bitter Past
In Claudia Roden’s inspiring historical and culinary work of genius, The Book of Jewish Food, she describes a visit to El Molino, Spain’s gastronomic research centre in Granada, she asked what the influences on Spanish cooking were and was told ‘Arab and Jewish’. When she inquired what the Jewish heritage was, the answer was: “The Marranos had a special way of doing suckling pig and a few pork dishes.” Marrano means pork. In Spain in 1391, thousands of Jews were tortured and burned at the stake or forced into exile, thousands more converted to Christianity under duress and in fear. In a world where you could be tried and executed by