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Please share your tried and true recipes for Dafina/Chamin/Sephardic Cholent. I’ve been experimenting with this genre and enjoying it. For the uninitiated, it is a fabulous, aromatic and heavenly-scented shabbos experience.
Looking forward to the submissions…
Thanks in advance and have a GREAT SHABBOS!
what have you tried as ingredients for this? sounds intresting?
There is no set “Sephardic Cholent” or Hamin as each family and each Eda makes something different. Many times we don’t even eat a cholent type food on Shabbat day and we eat roast beef, rice, veggies…heated up or just (hot) mazza such as lahmagine, kibbeh, cigars and salads…You can Sepahrdify your cholent by adding lima beans and chick peas to it and lots of cumin-that mellows out very nicely and gives a nice flavor, in addtion to chilli powder. Add cayene pepper too for a spicy cholent. You can also make Hamin out of meat, potatoes and lots of fresh onions and garlic (we’re not that big on garlic and onion powders) with salt, pepper, cumin and cayenne pepper to make it hot. It’s similar to cholent but no beans. Some people make that meat and potatoe recipe with barley and no beans. My grandother adds rice into a bag and throws it in the hamin to get cooked. Basically, just play around with spices.
On a side note, I wouldn’t brown meat in oil since it has so much fat in it already, I don’t like to add oil to meat.
in our non-sefardi chulent to spice it up we use chayon, curry, chilly powder, lots of fresh garlic, ketchup, soy sauce-to get it brown!!!
ashreinu
it sure does, everyone goes nuts over it!!!
Anyone know the source for cholent (Ashkenaz or Sefard)?
ashreinu
skip the honey, & brown sugar-we have a community kiddish every week and everyone felt those ingredients did nothing but offset the spicy stuff we put in!!! enjoy!!!
ujm – the source is generally thought to be due to the need for hot food on Shabbos while not being able to maintain a cooking fire in the home easily. People would put their pots in the baker’s oven (which always stayed lit) and then go pick it up during the Seudah (this obviously did not happen in Brooklyn or Manhattan, though it could have happened in Queens). Since it was one pot per family, everything got stewed together. Presto – cholent was geborren.
squeak – I vaguely recall cholent (picking up on your point) coming about to ‘shtuch’ the Karaites, whom I believe say it is not permitted to eat hot food on Shabbos.
In fact I believe it was Rav Saadia Gaon that instituted hot cholent in Klal Yisroel to make a stand against the Karaites who would not eat hot foods on Shabbos.
ashreiru:to each his own then!!! enjoy yours then!!! shobbos is almost here again!! yay!!
i love hamin!!!! my moms is the best!!! and mazzah (DUH) lol
never heard of dafina
Joseph is correct. According to what I learned, the first Jews who made cholent did it specifically against the Karaites who took the written Torah literally, and would not accept the Oral Law. When they read that we should not burn fire on Shabbos in all our dwelling places, they took it to mean that there can be no light burning, nor any hot food. So they sat in the dark and ate cold food. Because we follow both the Torah she-bicsav and the Torah she-b’al peh, the rabbonim felt they had to show that the Talmud explains exactly HOW we may keep cooked food hot, and that we don’t sit in the dark, and that the Talmud must be accepted as our halacha along with the Chumash.
dafina is the moroccan “cholent”, just like hamin is the Syrian “cholent”.
squeak- where do you get your bottomless pit of vast wisdom?
I have a strong liking for Sephardic foods (except lachmadzin, my apologies to true Sephardim for the sacrilege). Dafina and hamin have been above cholent on my list since I discovered them. And please go easy on the self-esteem injections. I don’t think I want to be set up for the freefall.
smart move squeak- but too late. you already got too high not to start in the other direction. i’ll go it slow- but where it hurts 🙂
squeak: did u mean u dont like lehemagene?? cuz u totally spelt it wrong lol and u prob dont like it bc u prob tasted it at a simcha made by a caterer or u tasted it by someone who is NOT SYRIAN!!! bottom line-ONLY syrians can make it!!! otherwise it doesnt taste good!!
To the original question, on recipes for hamin,I can share my Iraqi one with you:
Basic Chicken and Rice
1 whole chicken
ap. 2 cups basmati rice
tomato paste
cinnamon
allspice
cumin
turmeric
First, take the chicken, brown it on all sides with just a bare teaspoon of oil and 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric. The skin of the chicken releases oil as it is seared. Once it is browned (or yellowed) on all sides, take 3 cups water, two tbsp. tomato paste, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. allspice, 1/2 tsp. cumin, and boil it in the pot with the chicken for about 25-30 minutes. Then, add the rice and lower the flame, cover. Hamin is ready when the rice is done.
If you presoak the rice, then reduce the amount of water.
Add salt and pepper as desired.
Shabbat Shalom!
No, it was homemade by Syrian. I’ve tried it a number of times, at a few different Syrian homes, once was store bought, and I never liked it. My favorite is kiba, fresh out of the oven. I can’t forget the first time I had it – I was hooked (though it never tasted the same since; our “firsts” are always special).
genius – squeak – kibbe is FRIED – it doesn’t come out of the oven :}
Yeah, yeah. You said the same thing about doughnuts (donuts) to humiliate my good friend chuck. It’s not going to work.
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/coffee-room-chanakah-party#post-18420
some people bake kibbe as well, but it doesn’t Not taste the same as a fried kibbe, Nothing like a hot, fresh, fried, Kibbe. It is absoulutely heavenly!!
Hahha brooklyn!! But yeah kibbehs the best!!!!!
why does everyone know this stuff? i only know cuz i was in sem with a syrian girl.
Dry??? Dono which kibbeh you’ve been eating!
Loove lehemagene too 🙂 my moms is deff the best! Crispy dough, delicous meat….yum
You are all forgetting about the Tehina, tastes even better.
Try lahmagine- you can’t not like it.
Meat mixture:
1 1/2 pounds chopped meat
1 can tomatoe paste
1 cup temirindi (sauce made from tamarind plant or prunes)
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 onion minced
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon cinamon
dash of salt
Mix meat mixture ingredients.
Put heaping tablespoon of meat mixture on (Mazor) dough circles or squares (you can make your own dough too but I’m too lazy to get the recipe now). Flatten the meat and bake on a greased pan for about 1/2 hour.
If I omitted any ingredients please post them. I’m doing this from memory.
“bottom line-ONLY syrians can make it!!! otherwise it doesnt taste good!!”
You’ve never tasted my mothers’…
BS”D
Dafina is the Moroccan and perhaps Tunisian variant; it has been 17 years since I have had it but at the Moroccan shul I used to daven at they would make the potatoes and wheat separately from the meat part of the stew. Spices included cumin and garlic and undoubtedly pepper. Eggs were cooked with one part or the other as well; they turned brown and picked up the spices – I’ve done this myself with cholent and it comes out very delicious!
I think that they also added dried apricots to the meat but that may have been something I had at a simcha in Montreal. Unfortunately, the kosher restaurants in Morocco are not glatt as the supply of glatt meat is very limited so I never tried any Moroccan Jewish food in Morocco.
Lahmacun (the real spelling, so there) is actually Turkish in origin; in Turkey it is sold like pizza in large, round pieces cooked in a stone oven. Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire and that is how it made its way to Syria. I’ve never tasted or even seen the Brooklyn or Deal Syrian version, nor have I seen it in EY.
Jewess, I’ve tried it, many many times. I never liked it. I’m not much of a fan of the ketchupy taste. Don’t be insulted, with the exception of that one dish I really like Sephardic food.
does anyone have a good kibbeh recipe?
My family is purely ashkenaz (except that my grandmother’s family was kicked out of Spain and made its way to Germany in 1492)…but we LOVE sephardic food. We eat morrocan carrot salad, matbucha, schug and chumus all the time…my mother makes them all and they are awesome!
I’ve also had tibit at my sephardic friend – its very similiar to the one posted by IR, which makes sense because her father is Iraqi.
SJSinNYC, you do have some Sephardi blood in you!! Alot of “Ashkenazim” are really from Spain. As jews, we moved around alot. I was at a class with R’Berel Wein a noted, jewish Historian, who said even his own family originated from Spain and ended up in germany,( I think that is the country he mentioned at that class I went to,which was 15-20 years ago)
mazal, while I agree with what you wrote, we all stem from the middle east…its just a degree of how long ago you left 🙂 Besides, if you met my grandparents you wouldnt think they are sephardic AT ALL – they have a lot of German tendencies LOL.
Here is a story: my mother got up at 5 to leave the house at 6 to pick up my grandparents to drive them to a bar mitzvah of my cousin that started at 8 am. They were around the corner, stuck at a red light..the clock read 7:59 and my grandfather said “I guess we are going to be late.” He was serious 🙂
kibbe is a little hard to make from scratch…most people that do make it from scratch make it in groups of 3 or more. It’s time consuming and if you don’t have a crew you will spend hours in the kitchen and yield only 25 kibbe, also it’s easier if you have the kibbe attachment for the kitchen aid.
He was serious, and he was correct.
Aromas of Aleppo by Poopa Dweck is a cook book of Jewish Syrian cusine. In there you will find a Kibbe recipe and all sorts of insights and customs of the Jews of Aleppo
Squeak, yes he was serious and correct – but I think they walked in the door at 8:01 or 8:02. Would anyone except a yekke really consider that late?
So are you saying only a yekke would be correct?
BS”D
Mazal, right you are – I have many distant relatives who are Moroccan and Turkish because my maternal ancestors went in 2 different directions after girush Sefarad. My direct ancestors went West; other members of the family went to Morocco and the Ottoman Empire.
I have met quite a number of these lost relatives; the giveaway is that the person or a close relative shares my first name together with the surname of the grandfather A”H whom I was named for. When I went to one of the kivrei tzadikim in rural Morocco, I found a beis almin full of matzevos bearing my mother’s maiden name.
We are from Malchus Beis Dovid and one of these long lost distant relatives (a bochur from E”Y of Turkish origin whose information I took while I was volunteering at a blood drive) informed me that there is an association of people bearing this surname and that indeed we are to be found throughout the Jewish world.
The Alter Rebbe (Baal HaTanya) was of Sefardi origin (as may well be the very name Schneour Zalman); on Sunday when I have time I could probably post quite a few distinguished “Ashkenazi” surnames which originate in the Spanish language and were brought from Spain.
Squeak, yes, only the yekke is right. How? Because a non-yekke simcha doesnt start when the invitation states – rather 30-60 minutes later.
You know, when someone looks at this thread and thinks of food and how it turned into a discussion of origins, it is all related in a way to a chulent/hammin. What is in a chulentt? Anything you want. It is one big mix if various types of food.
Itzik, looking forward to reading your post B’H. That sounds like it is going to be an intresting read.
sjs: u start 30, 60 minutes later then wat the invitation says?? ha thats funny! bc by us, the syrians, whatever the invitation says means 2 hours!!!! lol!!!
ames: your right it does sound funny!!! sorry, i can’t relate!!!
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