Tag #127669 - Interview #97523 (Suzi Sarhon)

I learned how to cook from my mother and my friends.  There are certain very traditional Sephardic dishes that I like making very much.  The one I like best is “tomatoes filled with cheese”.  I used to cook those and they would like it at home.  Then we would make tomatoes again, this time filled with meat and cooked with a lot of sugar.  Also we have “almodrote de berendjena” [baked aubergines].  You take the aubergines, boil and peel and then squeeze them.  Then you add white cheese, “kasher” cheese [Turkish name for kosher yellow cheese, popular among both, Jews and non-Jews], a little bread, a little flour and an egg.  You mix all this and put it in an oven dish and bake it.   Then we have “bulemas”.  You take the “fila” dough, put cheese in long strips of the fila, then roll the strips into rose shaped “bulemas”.  You put them all on an oven tray, put grated cheese and egg yolk on them and then bake them.  Then there are the “bumuelos” for Pesah.  To make bumuelos, we soaked 3-4 matzot, then squeeze the water out.  We add one egg for each matza and a little salt.  We mix all this and then fry little balls of it in the special bumuelo pan.  They can be eaten with powdered sugar afterwards.