Salonika: A Family Cookbook by Esin Eden & Nicholas Stavroulakis is part memoir and mostly recipes from the Eden family who had lived in Salonika for many generations.
This title is only available to purchase directly from the publisher. If you wish to order a copy, please email Ida Mordoh at Talos Press: [email protected]
This title is priced at €19 plus €6.30 so the price we have provided in pound sterling is approximate.
Reviewed by Constantine Fraser in Slightly Foxed Issue 54.
Speaking Volumes
CONSTANTINE FRASER
When a people disappears, they say the last thing to be forgotten is its food. You might not teach your children your mother tongue, but the chances are you’ll still cook them your mother’s recipes.
Thessaloniki today seems a thoroughly Greek place – all Byzantine churches and pork skewers. But at the turn of the twentieth century the Ottoman port then called Salonika was a very different city. Half its inhabitants were Sephardic Jews, who had arrived in the area after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. They still named their synagogues after their lost Iberian homeland – Aragon, Catalan – and they spoke Ladino, a Hebrew-inflected dialect of medieval Spanish. The rest of the townsfolk were a mix of Turkish-speaking Muslims and Greek and Bulgarian Christians who lived in different districts and worked in different trades. So long as all obeyed the Sultan’s laws and paid his taxes, the empire’s authorities did not care whether their subjects shared Ottoman values or were culturally integrated. Salonika was multicultural avant la lettre . . .
Speaking Volumes
When a people disappears, they say the last thing to be forgotten is its food. You might not teach your children your mother tongue, but the chances are you’ll still cook them your mother’s...
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