A Ladino recipe book grows in Albuquerque
On a winter afternoon in Albuquerque, the Nissim family kitchen fills with the scent of olive oil, garlic, cinnamon, and warm pastry. A tray of borekas cools beside a bowl of chopped vegetables, while handwritten recipe cards rest under a wooden spoon to keep them from blowing away in the dry New Mexico air.
The dishes are Sephardic, but the family’s cooking story crosses several borders. Their Ladino recipes carry memories of Jewish communities in the eastern Mediterranean, family gatherings in the United States, and the practical creativity required to recreate old-world food with ingredients found in a modern Albuquerque market.
For the Nissims, preserving these recipes is less about making every dish exactly as an ancestor once prepared it. It is about keeping a chain of knowledge intact: how dough should feel, when onions are ready, which holiday calls for a particular sweet, and why a meal tastes different when it is shared across generations.
A kitchen shaped by migration
The family’s recipe collection reflects the movement of Sephardic Jews after the expulsion from Spain. Over centuries, Jewish communities settled across the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Each community adapted familiar foods to local ingredients, giving Ladino cuisine a remarkable range of flavors and techniques.
In the Nissim household, a single recipe may have several names and several versions. Burekas might be filled with potato, cheese, or spinach. Bulemas may be shaped into spirals or coils. A dish of eggs cooked slowly with tomatoes can change depending on who is preparing it and what is available in the pantry.
That flexibility is part of the tradition. Family cooks rarely measured everything with standardized cups and spoons. They learned through sight, smell, touch, and repetition. A grandmother’s instruction to add “enough flour” can be frustrating to a new cook, but it also preserves a sensory vocabulary that printed recipes often leave out.
Recipes as a family archive
The Nissims began collecting their recipes after realizing that many of them existed only in conversation. One relative kept a notebook, another relied on index cards, and a third stored recipes in email drafts. When the family gathered for holidays, they compared versions and tried to determine which details belonged in a shared archive.
The process revealed that recipes preserve more than ingredients. A dish can recall a particular apartment, a crowded holiday table, or a relative who always arrived late and helped wash the dishes. The instructions become a record of family relationships as much as a guide to cooking.
Ladino itself adds another layer of memory. The language developed from medieval Spanish and absorbed words from Hebrew, Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and other languages. Even when family members do not speak Ladino fluently, a recipe title or familiar phrase can connect them to Sephardic history and to relatives whose voices are no longer present.
From Ottoman flavors to New Mexico shelves
Preserving Sephardic food in Albuquerque requires both loyalty and adaptation. The family looks for ingredients such as tahini, feta, quince, eggplant, dried fruits, and fragrant spices, but it also pays attention to what grows and sells locally. New Mexico chiles may appear alongside paprika, and local honey can replace a sweetener used in an older version of a dessert.
The substitutions do not erase the tradition. They show how Jewish cooking has always developed through movement and exchange. A recipe carried from one country to another changes when it encounters a new climate, a new marketplace, or a new cook.
| Family dish | Common ingredients | How the Nissims preserve it |
|---|---|---|
| Borekas | Pastry, potato, cheese, or spinach | Keep the folding method and serve them at gatherings |
| Bulemas | Dough, greens, cheese, and olive oil | Record shaping instructions through photographs |
| Huevos haminados | Eggs, onion skins, coffee grounds, and slow cooking | Prepare them for holiday meals and teach the timing |
| Tishpishti | Semolina, nuts, syrup, and citrus | Compare family measurements before baking |
| Bimuelos | Yeast dough, oil, and syrup or honey | Make them during festive seasons and share the story behind them |
The family’s archive includes notes about substitutions, too. “Use the local greens when the original variety is unavailable” may appear beside a recipe. Such comments make the collection useful for future cooks while acknowledging that authenticity is not a single fixed point.
Children learn by doing
The youngest members of the family do not begin with a lecture about Sephardic history. They begin by washing herbs, brushing pastry with oil, or arranging filled dough on a baking sheet. Through these small tasks, they learn that cooking is participation rather than performance.
Older children help record temperatures, photograph finished dishes, and interview relatives about their memories. They may be more comfortable using a phone than a fountain pen, but digital tools give them a meaningful role in protecting the family archive. A voice recording can preserve the rhythm of an elder’s explanation in a way that a typed recipe cannot.
Holiday cooking creates especially strong opportunities for this kind of learning. Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Hanukkah, and family celebrations each bring their own foods and customs. Preparing those dishes together turns the kitchen into an informal classroom where history, language, ritual, and family storytelling meet.
Food connects a dispersed community
The Nissims have found that sharing their Ladino cooking opens conversations with other Jewish families in New Mexico. Some recognize a spice blend or pastry from their own Sephardic background. Others bring memories from Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Persian, Moroccan, or Latin American Jewish kitchens.
These exchanges reveal both common ground and meaningful difference. A family may use a different name for the same pastry, prepare a holiday dish with another filling, or follow a custom shaped by a different region. Comparing recipes becomes a way to explore the diversity within Jewish life rather than treating one tradition as universal.
Food also offers an inviting point of connection beyond the Jewish community. Friends and neighbors who join a cooking demonstration may first come for the borekas and stay to hear about Ladino, migration, and the history of Sephardic Jews. In Albuquerque, where many cultures meet, a shared meal can create space for learning without demanding prior knowledge.
Writing down what hands remember
The family’s next task is to make its archive durable. That means typing handwritten recipes, scanning photographs, labeling family names, and noting where each version came from. It also means documenting the things that are difficult to quantify: the texture of a properly kneaded dough, the sound of oil at the right temperature, and the visual signs that a syrup has thickened enough.
The Nissims are careful to preserve disagreement rather than remove it. If two relatives prepare the same dish differently, both versions remain in the collection. The variations show how traditions live. A family recipe is not always a single authoritative formula; it can be a conversation among generations.
They also understand that preservation must leave room for new chapters. A grandchild may create a vegetarian filling, use a gluten-free dough, or add a New Mexico chile to a familiar dish. The result may surprise an older relative, yet it can still belong to the family’s evolving culinary story.
Small ways to keep a recipe tradition alive
Families do not need a formal cookbook project or professional archival equipment to begin preserving their food heritage. A few consistent habits can protect recipes that might otherwise disappear.
- Ask an older relative to cook a familiar dish while someone records the conversation
- Write down sensory instructions, substitutions, holiday connections, and the story behind each recipe
- Photograph handwritten cards, finished dishes, and the people who prepare them
- Invite children and teenagers to measure, shape, label, and organize the family collection
- Share a recipe with a congregation, community group, or cultural gathering in New Mexico
The Nissims’ work demonstrates that preservation is an active practice. It happens when someone pauses to ask why a dish is prepared a certain way, when a child learns to recognize the feel of dough, and when a family chooses to tell the story attached to a plate of food.
A Ladino recipe survives because people continue to cook it, adapt it, and pass it along. In an Albuquerque kitchen, an old Sephardic dish can carry the past into the present while making room for the flavors of New Mexico. Readers with Ladino, Sephardic, or other Jewish family recipes can help extend that living archive by sharing their food stories with New Mexico Jewish Link and bringing them to the next community table.