A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews
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List Price:
$21.95
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$14.93
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Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Editorial Reviews:
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When Iberian Jews were converted to Catholicism under duress during the Inquisition, many struggled to retain their Jewish identity in private while projecting Christian conformity in the public sphere. To root out these heretics, the courts of the Inquisition published checklists of koshering practices and "grilled" the servants, neighbors, and even the children of those suspected of practicing their religion at home. From these testimonies and other primary sources, Gitlitz & Davidson have drawn a fascinating, award-winning picture of this precarious sense of Jewish identity and have re-created these recipes, which combine Christian & Islamic traditions in cooking lamb, beef, fish, eggplant, chickpeas, and greens and use seasonings such as saffron, mace, ginger, and cinnamon. The recipes, and the accompanying stories of the people who created them, promise to delight the adventurous palate and give insights into the foundations of modern Sephardic cuisine.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Food and History in an odd mix
Comment: Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006
For a friend, I bought 'A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews'. When it arrived, I sat down and read it -- recipes of Inquisition Spain, as closely as the authors can reconstruct them. Good food, wonderful insight into Spanish and South American kosher cooking -- but the history! It was the history of those accused by the Inquisition that caught our attention. Now my friend has the gift copy and I am ordering a second copy for myself. A whole terrifying historical era in a cookbook.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good Food, Bad History
Comment: I was excited when I first heard about this book, but when I got a copy, I was quite disappointed.
First the good... the recipes produce tasty dishes.
But they are not the recipes of Spain's Jews, secret or public.
These are recipes invented by the authors with a minimum of supporting evidence, or, in fact, most of the time, none at all.
They are based for the most part on the testimony of people who turned in Conversos for being "secrect Jews". The mere mention of, oh, say, chick peas and honey, has led the authors to invent a recipe that includes these ingredients.
If you are truly interested in the history the food eaten by Spain's Jews, you will not learn much. If you want some nice Spainish-style recipes eaten by Jews, you'll probably do better skipping the sad tales of betrayal and torture and buying a modern Sephardic cookbook.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A drizzle of honey
Comment: A fascinating look into the lives of Secret Jews during the Inquisition. A collegue had recommended it for its historical insights, and I found the anecdotes about the fates of the recipe authors tragic but a great insight into a time of flux and intolerance. Good recipes, too!
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is Gastronomy for the strong of heart
Comment: I was very delighted to read this insightful gastronomic reference. Although, it is more than a recipe book, it is also a telling account on what it took to go through the Inquisitional process. Hence, a Drizzle of Honey, is much more than one bargains for. I have also made the Adafina that is included in the book, and it was quite good. The Inquisition was not necessarily aimed at mainstream "Jews" per se, but at Conversos, or "Jews"who were forcibly converted.
It is very interesting that in many respects the Jewish converts to Christianity were many times denounced on the slightest pretext of eating in the "Jewish" manner. It could be as forthright as not eating pork for "health" reasons, or as absurd as making stew with Swiss chard, both being indicators of a "relapsed" Jew, in other words a Christian heretic. To our postmodern sensibilities these gastronomic preferences are almost comical. But to many of my relatives in Spain living under those Medieval conditions it was absolutely terrifying. I've got to hand it to Mr. Gitlitz, his premise for this book is very well thought out. This book is probably not for the weak of heart or stomach, given that some references in his book are counterintuitive when it comes to appetite. But, for those who want to learn about our tragic past, and who want to see if some of the recipes are what our grandmothers cooked, I fully recommend it. My Mother always cooked with Swiss chard and used olive oil in her meals. In Spain this would have been a sure sign that we are Jewish. Oh well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Lost Cuisine, and New Art for This Chef
Comment: Recently I picked up a copy of the book, "A Drizzle of Honey: the Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews". It has a fascinating and well documented history as well some marvelous redactions of the most likely constructs of recipes. I recall learning briefly about the secret Sepahrdim in hebrew school. This book gives marvelous insight and helps recreate a delicious cuisine. I am fairly certain that either this passover or the next I am going to attempt a full Sephardic sedar for a change of pace and add some culinary excitement.
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