First, at the request of several of our beloved commenters, a Mom update: “We were eating English muffins, but then the power came back. Arlene and I went down to Publix, but they were out of roasted chicken. Can you imagine? Well, they’ll have more this afternoon, that’s what they told me. And it’s sunny and beautiful here, I don’t know what all this fuss is about. No, I haven’t seen any alligators coming out of the pond, I don’t know why you keep asking me about that.”

OK, now to the Jewsday. In this week’s Torah stories, Moses is still rattling on, but we’re getting close to the part where, mercifully, he dies. So instead of the Torah crap, I want to talk a bit about culture and food. I’ve made no secret about my utter contempt for those who fret about “cultural appropriation.” I had always attributed my attitude to being American, and having been raised in an immigrant household where assimilation was considered a virtue. But perhaps it runs deeper in my DNA than that. Maybe that’s why yesterday I was delighted to see my next-door neighbor (an immigrant from Honduras) working with an immigrant from Bulgaria to crush and destem a few hundred pounds of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes from California to make a Bordeaux-style wine…

Anyway, here’s how all of this line of thought started: I wanted to post a recipe for one of my favorite Jewish dishes, shakshuka, which is part of the Holy Trinity of Israeli cuisine (I covered falafel, another of the trio, a few weeks ago). In researching the variations of this wonderful dish, I stumbled upon a trove of controversy, which led me to research some of my family background as well. So, let me start there, and no more Publix roast chicken references in this post.

Note the family resemblance, though I still have both my eyes.

The (((world))) is often thought of as comprising two sorts of us, Ashkenazim (generally, descendants of people who hailed from Europe, with “ashkenaz” associated with an area in the Holy Roman Empire ) and Sephardim (generally descendants of people who came from Spain, “sephard” in Hebrew). But as with everything else, it’s not that simple. Although we all originated from the Middle East, our exit paths when we were expelled by colonizers took multiple directions and timing. So despite the fact that Jews who escaped to (for example) Morocco never saw the Iberian shores, they are lumped in as Sephardim.

My own family went eastward and north, eventually settling in Trebizond, a Turkish port on the Black Sea, planted on the trade route between the Middle East (especially Persia) and Europe. Because of the influences of Persians, Turks, Arabs, Italians, and actual Caucasians, the mixing of language, culture, and cuisine was extreme. For some reason, people of that era and place weren’t terribly woke, so no-one seemed offended by the mingling of ideas, literature, food, and music. No-one whined that something was “stolen” from their heritage. Because of these circumstances, my family was Sephardic even though they never got within a thousand miles of Spain.

As if this weren’t enough to rev my family’s appreciation of cultural intermingling, in the mid-19th century, most of the Jews of that area were expelled by the always-tolerant Muslims. My family escaped by skirting along the Black Sea and ended up in a Jewish refuge in Ukraine or Russia or Poland, depending on the month, called Kupel (or variously Kupil, Kipl, or Kippel). Things have to be pretty bad when Czarist Russia is an improvement. But not much of one. Frankly, even the local Jews, who were Ashkenazim, looked down on us, and renamed us with a Yiddish term that roughly translates as “Your shit’s all retarded and you talk like a fag,” likely because we weren’t Yiddish speakers and they figured we wouldn’t know better. Anyway, shortly after my family arriving in Kupel, my great grandfather was born. Forty years later, my grandfather was also born there, and at that point, the family had enough of the Czars and the asshole Ashkenazim who tagged them with a funny name, so they packed up my grandpa and did the Ellis Island thing in 1900. I’m not sure what possessed them to hie south and end up in Baltimore, but let’s just say we didn’t have a great track record of picking places to live. So that is how I became one of the rare Sephardim to have ended up in the US of A. (Trivia: one other escapee from Kupel was a fellow named Chomsky, whose son you may have heard of…)

What is not well-appreciated by Americans is the predominance of the Sephardim (especially the so-called Mizrahi) in Israel, mostly because the vast majority of American Jews are Ashkenazi. What most Americans think of as stereotypical Jewish food (knishes, bagels, brisket, chicken noodle soup, kreplach, cholent, kishke…) are adaptations of Eastern European peasant food, and hence remarkably dreary. Despite the leftist sneers about European colonialists in Israel (ignoring that the Ashkenazim were also Middle Eastern in origin, they just went right instead of left), the majority of the Israeli population was Sephardi until just a few years ago. Israeli Hebrew is Sephardic, not Ashkenazi. And so is Israeli food, thankfully- Sephardic food is vibrant, flavorful, and spicy, reflecting the tastes of the region whence it was influenced. Real Jewish food, with flavors and ingredients from our homeland, not the crappy pseudo-Polish stuffed cabbage shit that those fucking Ashkenazis call food.

OK, all that past us, let’s return to shakshuka, a great Sephardic dish which is basically eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce. Like so many great Jewish foods, there’s no lack of controversy about its origins. The name is claimed to derive from the Hebrew term for “shaken up,” but is also claimed to be Arabic for “mixed together.” And as with falafel, politics intrudes, and there’s no shortage of controversy. The Moroccans say that they invented it and that the Jews stole it. The Tunisians claim that they invented it and that the Jews stole it. The Turks say they invented it (“menemen”) and that everyone stole it. And almost the same dish is found in Italy (“uova in purgatorio”), so I’ll say that (((we))) invented it and the dirty wops stole it.

Of course, two of the main ingredients, tomatoes and peppers, originate from the New World, so any claims to antiquity are automatic bullshit. Shakshuka is inherently appropriation, and that’s a great thing, but it does tangle up the origins. Without going into the details of the research I did, it appears most likely that it was originated by Mizrahi Jews in Tunisia, who brought it to Israel after they fled Muslim persecution in the late 1940s. As with many dishes from the region, the Sephardic Israelis adopted it with gusto. And also as with many dishes from the region, everybody has a different version, and everyone claims theirs is the Real Deal. Of course, everyone is wrong- MINE is the one and true correct way to do things. And I’ve done a few different versions recently just to convince myself that mine really is the best. And it is. I have eschewed the commonly-used onions to let the flavors focus on the tomatoes and peppers. And no way I’m going to tart this up with eggplant, olives, crumbled cheese, or other horrors to which I have seen this dish subjected. The flavors here should be direct, strong, and focused, not a mish-mash.

Fair warning: don’t even think about using shitty grocery store tomatoes, use late summer fresh-from-the-farmstand tomatoes. If you absolutely can’t find those, you could substitute Muir Glen whole peeled fire-roasted tomatoes, poured into a bowl and broken up with your fingers. Avoid the pre-diced canned tomatoes or you’ll get a shitty texture.

Old Man With Candy’s Only True Shakshuka

4-5 cloves of garlic, minimum (more is better) thinly sliced (not chopped)

more olive oil than you think is healthy

1 red bell or red ancient pepper, diced (I also will add some hot chiles like fresh arbol, but admittedly, I have an asbestos anus)

1 tsp freshly ground cumin

2 tbsp paprika

1/2 tsp smoked paprika or pimenton

2-3 tbs harissa

4-5 fresh ripe tomatoes, diced

salt and pepper

6 eggs

1 tbs chopped parsley

Heat the olive oil on low. When it’s up to temp, stir in the sliced garlic- the oil should be hot enough to see some mild bubbles but not to sizzle the garlic too quickly. We’re trying to extract and mellow the garlic, not really fry it (if you’ve made aglio e olio properly, that’s the idea). Let the garlic cook for 10 minutes or so, giving it a stir now and then, until it’s soft and aromatic and oh-so-slightly golden. Then increase the heat to medium, add the cumin, paprika, and pimenton, and cook for a minute or so. Then add the harissa, cook for half a minute, and add the diced bell pepper. Cook while stirring until the pepper has softened a bit, then dump in the tomatoes. Salt generously, increase the heat to medium-high, and stir. Continue stirring from time to time to prevent burning and cook until the tomatoes are falling apart and the sauce has thickened a bit. Check for salt and seasoning- feel free to add some hot chile powder at this point if the harissa didn’t raise the heat level to where you want it.

Reduce the heat to a simmer, then using a large spoon, make a dent in the top of the sauce and crack in an egg. Repeat for the other five eggs, then cover the pan and cook until the whites are set, the top of the yolks has filmed over, but the yolks are still runny. Remove the pan from the stove, sprinkle the chopped parsley on top, then serve from the pan, sopping things up with nice crusty bread.

My great grandpa Itzhak would approve.

Americans.