A Rosh Hashana Dish Keeps the Memory of Home
The New York Times
Legumbres para rosana, a dish of Spanish Moroccan origin, is a delicious reminder of a family’s journey.
Over the years, Marina Pinto Kaufman has become the keeper of Spanish Moroccan food traditions for her cousins, children and friends, inviting them to her home in New York City, and now, Martha’s Vineyard, for the Jewish holidays, especially Rosh Hashana and Passover. And her legumbres para rosana, a colorful mostly vegetable dish, is often on the table.
Ms. Kaufman, 84, told me that, after the Inquisition, her ancestors settled in Tétouan, then part of Spanish Morocco, bringing with them customs from Spain.
“In Morocco, recipes were very important to the status of a cook and her family,” she said. “Often home cooks guarded their recipes so much that they would purposely forget to share ingredients.”
Born in Casablanca in 1940, Ms. Kaufman, the daughter of a tea and sugar merchant, moved to Tangier as a child, and later to Geneva, shortly after Tangier lost its international zone status in 1956 and reintegrated into an independent Morocco. After visiting New York as a tourist in 1960, she returned in 1966 as an interpreter at the United Nations where, on a blind date, she met her future husband Stephen, a litigator.
Ms. Kaufman started cooking when she married, calling her mother when she needed a family recipe. She devoured books by Paula Wolfert and Claudia Roden, even finding a photo of her grandmother, Myriam Abensur, in Ms. Roden’s “Book of Jewish Food.”
Her legumbres para rosana, made with traditional harvest foods, dates back hundreds of years to Spain, where it was one of the dishes served at a Rosh Hashana Seder, a tradition mentioned in the Talmud: “Every man should make it a habit on New Year’s of eating pumpkin, fenugreek, leek, beet and dates.” The harvest foods are served raw or cooked, and vary by country with observant Sephardic Jews saying blessings over each at the new year. Ms. Kaufman, a more secular Jew, continues the custom only with her cooking, tampering slightly with tradition to make it easier for the home cook.
