FrumJewishBooks.com
Pesach 2015
Cookbooks, Memoirs
From the back cover:
THE WELL-SPICED LIFE BY
BARBARA BENSOUSSAN
As a young woman, acclaimed author
Barbara Bensoussan always thought she’d
marry a nice Jewish boy from New York,
just like her mother. But her life took a
distinctly different turn when she entered
the Orthodox world and her nice Jewish
boy turned out to hail from Casablanca!
Suddenly she found herself the Sephardic
version of the bride-who-knew-nothing!
The Well-Spiced Life is a food memoir –
part recipes, part essays.
Barbara Bensoussan is a contributing editor
at Mishpacha Magazine. She also writes for
Jewish Action and has been published in
Hamodia, Chabad.org and other media
outlets.
So you’ve probably seen her articles
somewhere along the line. She’s one of my
favorite feature writers out there – smart,
articulate and always interesting.
I collect cookbooks, so this one is definitely
on my list to add to my bookshelf!
You can hear her talking about her life and
her new book in this interview on Chazak
Radio.
Now she had a husband who thought the
chicken soup she adored was little more
than flavored water, and who’d grown up
eating the head of a lamb—teeth
showing—on Rosh Hashanah. As the years
passed and her family grew, she did her
best to absorb the culture and cuisine of
the Sephardic world— some of which, she
laments, is still clinging to her waistline.
The literary result of Barbara’s foray into
the Sephardic world is The Well-Spiced
Life, an authentic food memoir that
combines the best of pleasure reading with
excellent recipes. Packed with delightful
anecdotes, culinary tips culled from years
spent cooking for a “mixed”
(Ashkenazic/Sephardic) family, loads of
exotic recipes, and an abundance of comic
relief (a necessary ingredient in every
culinary undertaking!), it’s a book that
belongs on the shelf of every respectable
balabusta, Sephardic and Ashkenazic alike.
As they say in Casablanca: bon appetit!
Published by Israel Bookshop Publications
(2014). Purchase now from Amazon.
Barbara Bensoussan is also the author of the
teen novel A New Song.
FrumJewishBooks.com vol 1 Pesach 5775 -2015
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