This classic Greek salad from Shaily Lipa is a celebration of peak-season vegetables and bold, briny flavors. With no lettuce in sight, the salad’s ripe tomatoes, crisp cucumbers, and sweet bell pepper shine during summer. 

These Greek leek fritters have been a favorite in cookbook author Shaily Lipa's family for generations. Her grandmother and great-grandmother brought the recipe from Thessaloniki with them to Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. 

These brown eggs known as huevos haminados are often served on Sephardi Shabbat breakfast tables. They can be cooked overnight with hamin (cholent) or made with coffee grounds and onion skins, which deliver the signature brown stain.

On Friday afternoons when Ron Levy-Arie was little, his family would gather for lunch at his grandmother Hilda’s home in Tel Aviv. She used her best plates and silverware for the meal and served Bulgarian dishes like these stuffed peppers. 

This flaky savory pastry is named after the Ladino word for rag, but don’t allow that to turn you off. Serve it with a salad for a light meal or as part of an appetizer spread.

As Michal Shamir is quick to explain: “This is not the traditional Bulgarian kyopolou. The traditional salad is usually made with peppers, raw onions, and garlic.” Her grandmother, known in the family as Savta Sara, has her own variation on the recipe.

We first featured this recipe for spinach fritters from a Bulgarian family in 2018 and it has remained a favorite of our team since then.

The last thing Amir Nathan’s grandmother did before boarding a boat leaving Turkey was bake a tray of bourekas. Assuming she was trying to smuggle valuables in them, the customs officers tore them apart, but found nothing. The family boarded with the broken pieces. 

In Lisa Capelouto’s family, savory Sephardic stuffed pastries called pastelikos are a key part of their desayuno (Shabbat breakfast) spread, but they also make excellent appetizers. This recipe from her mother Vivienne is filled with a mixture of eggplant, parsley, and tomatoes.

In Ladino, roska means round. These round challah-like rolls, or roskas, are flavored with orange blossom water and are a favorite of the Capeluoto family, who lived on Rhodes island in Greece for generations.

An integral part of Sephardic desayuno or breakfast, boyos are Judeo-Spanish flaky pastries. Traditionally, they are served alongside long cooked eggs known as huevos haminados.

When Nathalie Ross was growing up, her mother’s older sisters Tante Rosy and Tante Becca would make boyos — flaky, hand-rolled Sephardic pastries — with handrajo, an eggplant and tomato filling.

Levana Lowenstein makes these Sephardi pastries called borekitas for Shabbat breakfast alongside long cooked brown eggs, yogurt, and rice pudding. When filled with cheese, they are also a perfect treat for Shavuot.

Shaped like empanadas, these bourekas nod to their Spanish roots. Food stylist Victoria Granoff’s family was part of the Jewish community exiled from the Iberian Peninsula that settled in the Ottoman Empire. 

For Shaily Lipa, spanakopita is woven into memories of family and tradition. Every Shabbat morning, her grandmother would host a Greek-style breakfast on the balcony with the green-filled dish.

Ron Levy-Arie’s family calls this cheesy souffle-like dish from his Bulgarian grandmother “dunce pie” because it is so easy, anyone can make it.

Layered matzah pies called minas are a staple of many Sephardi Passover tables. This one from Alexandra Zohn’s family is vegetarian and includes a layer of potatoes, which makes it even heartier.

This recipe is a favorite of Miriam Glaser’s mother Rachel. “I think it’s one of the ways she is closer to her mother, by making these foods. She’s taken on the role of the matriarch of the family,” Miriam explains.

After picking up chicken for Shabbat on Thursdays, Orly Peli-Bronshtein’s grandmother Marika would use the extra pieces to make Bulgarian chicken with tomatoes and rice. Orly likes to top it with tomato confit. 

The slow-cooked Greek dish kapama is typically made with meat or poultry, but this recipe from Alison Negrin’s family is vegan. It’s best made during the summer when tomatoes and eggplant are at their peak. 

Cookbook author Stella Hanan Cohen believes this recipe is virtually unchanged from the time her community lived in Spain. Sometimes, she adds cumin to it, giving it a flavor Rhodeslis cooks adopted in Rhodes.

This recipe comes from Annette Fromm's family who are Romaniote Jews — though Annette prefers the term Greek-speaking Jews — who arrived in Greece over 2000 years ago. This dish, she says, is unique to the community and Annette describes it as similar to moussaka, but without meat. 

The hallmark of weekend lunches in Yvet Leon’s house in Athens are huevos haminados, or overnight eggs, along with smoky eggplant and feta pie and this zucchini and feta souffle.  

Etty Leon’s family in Athens isn’t religious, but her grandmother Yvet is determined to pass down recipes that have long been part of Sephardi tradition like this eggplant and feta pie. 

This "festive" hamin is a labor of love with steak stuffed with rice and sewn shut, white beans, bread dumplings called kuklas, and eggs you can sneak out of the pot in the morning for breakfast.

After leaving Izmir, Turkey for Yehud, Israel in 1949, Levana Lowenstein’s family continued to make all of their Turkish and Sephardi dishes. Levana didn’t help out in the kitchen, but she realized she could close her eyes and picture how the dishes like these stuffed tomatoes were made. 

On Fridays in Levana Lowenstein’s home, there’s always a pot of avikas, a simple stew of beef, white kidney beans, onion, and tomato paste, simmering away on the stove. Often, her grandchildren come over after school for a bowl of it. 

Many of food stylist Victor Granoff’s oldest family recipes are Sephardi and trace back to Spain and Portugal more than 500 years ago. Others, like these beef keftes, likely joined the family repertoire in the Ottoman Empire. 

White bean salad is a beloved staple in Balkan kitchens, and this tangy one comes from Shaily Lipa’s Greek grandmother Levana, who made it every Shabbat for the vibrant Greek breakfasts she served on her balcony. 

This cornmeal porridge is one of the staple foods of Romania. Henry Glucroft’s grandmother Coca would serve it with guvetch, a vegetable stew. “That seemed like the menu of the day, which somehow was the menu of everyday,” Henry says. 

Guvetch is often made by stewing vegetables with or without meat, but in this version from Henry Glucroft’s grandmother Coca, the vegetables are roasted until tender and browned.  

One day, without offering up many details, Stella Hanan Cohen’s grandson Nico asked his mother to purchase the ingredients for their family’s stuffed grape leaves. Only 13 years old, he made them entirely on his own. “He’s got this yearning,” for his family’s recipes and history, Stella says. 

Annette Fromm’s grandmother Esther was from Ioannina in Northern Greece. “She was always in the kitchen and there were always pots of stuff cooking with tomatoes, onions, and garlic,” like this okra recipe.

When Emily Velelli’s family threw her a 100th birthday party, they sent guests home with small bags of these classic Greek butter cookies with the recipe attached, to make sure it wouldn’t disappear.

This ruby-hued rose petal jam comes from Anat Berstein's mother Becky who makes it for Yom Kippur break fast. It's served on a spoon along with wishes for a sweet year ahead.

In Maya Oren and her aunt Anat Bernstein’s family, this apple jam is served as part of their Yom Kippur break fast spread. The recipe is made with just three ingredients.

The recipe for these iconic Sephardi cookies has traveled with Debby Kaplan Pearlman’s family from Greece where they lived before World War II, to what was Belgian Congo (present day Democratic Republic of the Congo), and to the U.S. Serve them with coffee. 

Filled with walnuts and sugar, these crescent-shaped Sephardi pastries get an added boost of sugar from a syrup made with honey.