Sabor Judío

• Author: Ilan Stavans and Margaret E. Boyle
• Genre: Travel/Food
• Publication Date: October 8, 2024
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

Thank you to NetGalley and The University of North Carolina Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sabor Judio celebrates the delicious fusion of two culinary traditions, Jewish and Mexican. Written with joy and verve, Ilan Stavans and Margaret Boyle’s lavishly illustrated cookbook demonstrates how cooking and eating connect the Jewish-Mexicans across places and generations. Featuring one hundred deeply personal recipes enjoyed by Mexican Jews around the world, the book is organized by meal—desayuno (breakfast), almuerzo (lunch), and cena (dinner)—and also includes dishes made for Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Hanukkah, Shavuot, and other holidays.  Sabor Judio isn’t only a cookbook; it is also a vibrant history of Jewish immigration to Mexico from 1492 to the present. It explains how flavors and dishes evolved in Mexican and Jewish kitchens and how they fused into a distinct cuisine, mainly by the labor of Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, and converso women. This cookbook is the product of two award-winning, internationally known Jewish Mexican writers and foodies who spent a decade gathering recipes and personal narratives from Jewish Mexican households. The result is a dynamic and delicious array of recipes and experiences, infusing important cultural heritage into this essential culinary record.

As the High Holy Days approach, I’ve been thinking more about Jewish cooking, since I’m about to be doing a LOT of it. There are so many different Jewish culinary traditions, and in recent years, I’ve been slowly incorporating different spins on the traditional foods that I’m used to eating. This book seemed like the perfect one for me, and there are so many recipes that I’ve bookmarked in the story to back that up.

This isn’t simply a cookbook with recipes and photos, there are little sections where the authors provide information about Mexican Jews, and those were some of my favorite parts of the book. I learned about the diaspora community in Mexico City, the various ways in which the melting pot culture there influenced Mexican Jews and their cooking, and how certain traditions were maintained yet updated according to where they made their home and what was available to them. But the common theme in the story of nearly every single Jewish family is that persecution caused them to flee to new places.

Mexican Jews came from all over the world—and continue to do so, hailing from the Ottoman Empire, Spain and Portugal, the SWANA region, and from central and eastern Europe, all melding together to create one of the coolest fusion cuisines that I have seen. These authors have collected such a wide range of recipes, featuring local ingredients (which can be found easily outside of Mexico) and familiar favorites. 

The recipes are relatively simple to follow. Most of them have shorter ingredient lists and aren’t overly complex, although there is a molé recipes, and I already expected that one to be more involved. Seeing staple holiday foods, such as gefilte fish, gribenes, and matzo ball soup paired with pico de Gallo, jalapeños, and tamarind had my mouth watering. The photos are stunning, and made me want to try things I don’t normally eat simply because they looked so pretty and tasty. 

Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was how each recipe came with a little blurb about where it derived from and how it was meaningful to the authors. There are holiday menus, and an explanation of how each Jewish holiday is celebrated in Mexico. This is a wonderful cookbook, and I can’t wait to try out some of these desayunos, almuerzos, cenas, and sobremesas. I loved never having to flip past a recipe because it included ingredients that aren’t kosher or combines meat and dairy, which isn’t kosher either. Plus, the desserts and drinks sound pretty amazing as well. This is a book not to miss is you like Jewish cuisine, Mexican cuisine, fusion food, and cookbooks with simple recipes for home cooks.

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