Sephardic cooking

Sephardic Jewish cuisine, belonging to the Sephardic Jews—descendants of the Jewish population of the Iberian Peninsula until their expulsion in 1492—encompasses traditional dishes developed as they resettled in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, and the Mediterranean, including Jewish communities in Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and Syria, as well as the Sephardic community in the Land of Israel. It may also refer to the culinary traditions of the Western Sephardim, who settled in The Netherlands, England, and from these places elsewhere. The cuisine of Jerusalem, in particular, is considered predominantly Sephardic. Sephardic Jewish cuisine preserves medieval traditions while also incorporating dishes developed in the regions where Sephardic Jews resettled after the expulsion. Notable dishes include bourekas (savory pastries), eggplant-based dishes, medias (halved vegetables filled with meat or cheese and cooked in tomato sauce), stuffed vegetables, agristada (a sour sauce), tishpishti (a semolina and nuts cake), baklava, and cookies such as biscochos and qurbayel. Many of these dishes' names originate from Judaeo-Spanish, Turkish, and Greek, the main languages spoken by Sephardic Jews in the diaspora. As with other Jewish ethnic divisions composing the Jewish Diaspora, Sephardim cooked foods that were popular in their countries of residence, adapting them to Jewish religious dietary requirements, kashrut. Their choice of foods was also determined by economic factors, with many of the dishes based on inexpensive and readily available ingredients.