I am Linda Capeloto Sendowski and I am an American Sephardic Jew. Both of my parents were born in the U.S., their parents came from the Greek island of Rhodes and the Turquoise Coast of Turkey.
Being a Sephardic Jew means that my ancestors in Spain were forced to leave or become converts to catholicism when Queen Isabella signed the infamous and draconian declaration of the Inquisition in 1492. Sephardim (plural) scattered all over the globe, some as members of the crew of Christopher Columbus (it is rumored), some to Amsterdam or Portugal, but many of them settled in the Ottoman Empire. Because the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire appreciated the learning and the skills that the Jews possessed, he invited them with open arms to live and prosper in his empire. Eventually our family came to the United States around 1909.
My husband of more than 30 years is an Ashkenazi Jew, born in the U.S., whose parents came to the United States from Poland and Czechoslovakia after surviving the Holocaust. Our home is a mix, a happy union of cultures. We accept and appreciate Jewish tradition from all over the globe.
In my kosher kitchen I cook both Sephardic and Ashkenazi dishes. I started this web site and blog to achieve three goals. First I want to widen awareness of what can be created in kosher cooking. Recipes can be revised from all over the world to fit into the requirements of kosher cooking. There is an ever expanding availability of kosher ingredients and better distribution. Second, I am on a mission to create and codify oral recipes from the Sephardic community and archive them for history since so much of history and tradition is wrapped up in cuisine. Third, I find the medium of the internet makes it possible to demystify how to cook. Visual aids make all of the difference in being able to show how to make a dish step by step. The ultimate reason to write a blog is to cook and share and I hope to encourage others.
I hope you’ll visit this site often to see what new information I’m sharing. And you can sign up at my blog The Boreka Diary to be alerted by email or RSS feed when I publish a new post there.
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