Tag #125475 - Interview #78561 (Sofi Eshua Danon-Moshe)

We had different sweet things for the different holidays. At Purim, for example, we used to eat a lot of sweet things and really sweet they were because that holiday symbolizes the physical salvation of the Jews whereas at Chanukkah we celebrated the spiritual salvation. You know that we had a tsarina [queen] whose name was Ester who saved the Jewish people. And you start drinking at Purim out of joy and you drink so much that in the end you can’t tell who the villain is and who the savior is; that’s how drunk you are. And out of joy you feast on sweets: this is the sweetness from the joy of the physical salvation in that historical moment. The best sweet thing at Purim is called ‘tishpishti.’ I think the name is of Arab origin. It’s two layers of dough with a stuffing of walnuts and orange peel in between. It’s baked and syrup is poured onto it. It rises like a Turkish baklava and it’s very delicious, it melts in the mouth because the ingredients are only oil, butter, flour and the stuffing of walnuts. It’s very sweet indeed.

My mother used to also prepare other sweets from biscuit dough and walnut stuffing inside called ‘ahashu.’ They are round and are also called ‘roskhas de ahashu.’ The stuffing is made of walnuts again with orange or lemon peel, some people used to put in vanilla but my mum avoided it. ‘Haman’ is the lord who wanted to exterminate the Jews and as we don’t want to meet any more Haman’s in our lifetime we prepare ‘orezha de haman’ – Haman’s ears and Haman’s hair. These are boiled, drained noodles sprayed with lemon and oil. It makes a very good appetizer for ‘rakia’ [9] and can be served with eggs, which we usually bake, and pickled gherkins.