Many, many years ago my Grandmother showed me how she made her Mandel Bread. (Mandel Bread is similar to the Italian Bicotti but way better.) She even wrote down the recipe for me. I never really made it on my own. Aunt Maddy now makes it (she makes it sooo yummy). She was going to show me how she makes it, but I was thumbing through my recipe box and I came across this recipe card written in my Grandma's handwriting.
So I decided to reach back into the corners of my brain and try to remember how she did it.
I remember her making these long skinny loaves.
And then baking them until they were set.
I made these ones too close, but they worked out any way.
Then she cut them at an angle about 5/8 inch apart. (5/8, can you tell that I am a seamstress?)
Here is Esther enjoying the end pieces.
Then she would lay them back out onto the tray and put them back into the oven to toast.
She would take them out, turn them over and put them back in to toast on the other side.
(This is the five generation picture I have hanging in my kitchen)
Thank you grandma for handing down the recipe for Mandel Bread. I have made it three times now and I feel that something is just missing if I don't have any in the house. I love the food of my childhood including the Sephardic cuisine of Mandel Bread, Barekas, spinaka, Fideo, lamb and bean soup, Boyos, stuffed cabbage, etc.
Here is a little history
Sephardic Jewish Food and Cooking
Sepharad is the Hebrew word for the Iberian peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal. Jewish cooking would need to adapt to these circumstances.Jews lived in Spain long before the Visigoth (Germanic) tribes invaded in 412, however after the Moorish invasion of Spain in 700, there was a large influx of Jews immigrating to Spain. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Spanish Judaism flourished under Muslim rule, producing poets, scholars, and courtiers - what is known as "the golden age of Jewry." By the mid-thirteenth century, however, the Christians controlled all of the Peninsula except for a small area from Granada to the Mediterranean. In March, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella decreed the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Many Jews converted or left while others went to Portugal, where Judaism could still be practiced freely. But Portugal expelled its Jews in 1497, and the tiny kingdom of Navarre followed suit in 1498. Judaism could be practiced openly nowhere in the Peninsula. Driven from home, the Sephardim established their own congregations in such places as Morocco, Italy, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, the Land of Israel, and elsewhere.
With plenty of herbs and sometimes generous use of spices, Sephardic Jewish cooking is aromatic. They use a lot of lemon, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, cumin with turmeric and more. Sephardic Jews are known for their love of cooking vegetables, from salads to vegetables stuffed with fragrant meat and rice, and pies or Burekas which often have feta cheese, spinach, or potato fillings. Sephardic Jews from Morocco and other North African countries enjoy cumin, ginger, and saffron & chilies. Jewish cooks from the eastern end of the Mediterranean have adapted their food and cooking as well and make heavy use of cinnamon in their cooking, so much that they use it as a savory accent for meat dishes The kebabs, pilafs and dolmades (stuffed vegetables) of Turkish Jewish cooking are still some of the most recognizable Sephardic dishes. Fruits, vegetables, spices, and grains were plentiful in the Mediterranean climate, and thus plant foods figured heavily into Sephardic Jewish cooking.
