Discover Jewish Kosher Food & its Emirati Fusion

Elli Kriel’s Kosher Kitchen is the first of its kind in the UAE, creating a seamless blend of traditional Jewish Kosher cuisine and Emirati food, pairing ingredients like rosewater, cardamom and saffron with tahini cakes and baklavas.

Recalling the nutty flavour of pistachio and walnuts, and the buttery sweetness of phyllo pastry in her grandmother’s baklavas, a smile crosses Elli Kriel’s face. “I come from a family of amazing cooks, but my grandmother was my biggest influence. I still recreate the distinct flavours of her creamy rice puddings, toasted tahini cakes and baklavas,” shares Elli, an Orthodox Jew, as we sit down for a chat at the Hilton Hotel, in Dubai, where she runs Kosher Kitchen, the first of its kind in the UAE (United Arab Emirates). Kosher diet, followed by Jews worldwide, is based on Jewish religious laws. With the recent signing of the Abraham Accord between USA, Israel and Gulf Nations, there has been an uptick in Jewish travellers and an increased interest in kosher food, in the UAE.

Growing up in South Africa, Elli, a Sephardi Jew, who traces hers ancestry to the Mediterranean, north Africa and the Middle East, relished her grandmother’s recipes. Her dishes brought together flavours from all these regions. Sephardi cuisine has a strong emphasis on fresh salads, stuffed vegetables, olive oil, lemon juice, herbs, nuts and chickpeas. “She is the one who introduced me to hummus and tahini. She would bathe me with rose water and tell me about saffron. Those are the flavours I grew up with. When I came to Dubai, I found many of these flavours intermingling,” says Elli.

In 2013, Elli and her husband Ross Kriel moved to Dubai with their three children. Living in the Emirates led Elli to discover firsthand, the innate similarities between Jewish food and Emirati cuisine, distinct with its liberal usage of fragrant spices, dried nuts, dates, grains, meat and dairy. “Following a kosher diet meant I could not eat Emirati food and this led me to make my own recipes at home. Soon I found out that several dishes from Emirati cuisine are prepared with ingredients that are used in our recipes as well; only the way of cooking them varied,” she explains. Elli experimented, to create a fusion of traditional Emirati recipes and Jewish kosher food. She calls it Kosherati.

In crafting Kosherati, Elli did what Jews have been doing for centuries – creating dishes inspired by the cultures they live in. “Jewish population is very diverse; we are all over the world, so we have French Jews, English Jews, Canadian Jews, American Jews and many others. Everyone brings their own traditions and it is reflected in their kosher recipes as well,” she explains. “Being in the Middle East, I did a spin-off on recipes influenced by the place I am living in.”

One such fusion dish that she created is Aseeda Boreka — Aseeda is a traditional Emirati dense pumpkin pudding made with roasted flour, and Borekas are Sephardi Kosher savoury pastries with various fillings. Elli included rosewater, cardamom and saffron, as in the Emirati aseedas, to the filling in her pumpkin boreka mix, that would otherwise only hold walnuts and sultanas. In yet another inspired twist, Elli worked with Balaleet, an Emirati breakfast dish of omelette on sweetened vermicelli noodles. She baked it like a Yerushalmi Kugel. “My Kosherati version, called Balaleet kugel, is made with sweetened vermicelli, flavoured with cardamom, saffron, then mixed with beaten eggs, baked and served hot or cold, as wedges,” describes Elli.

Elli’s Kosherati desserts include a Kataifi Cheesecake, also well-known as Kunafe pastry in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean regions; a variation of Rugelach, an eastern European Jewish pastry, made with dates instead of the usual chocolate filling; and Chebab Blintzes — stuffed pancakes with orange blossom water and saffron-infused cream cheese. Several Kosherati recipes are listed on Elli’s blog. With growing interest in these fusion recipes, she is now in the process of compiling them into a book in partnership with Emirati food blogger, May Al Badi.

Elli, a former professor of sociology, began her culinary journey when she came to the UAE seven years ago with a young family. While shopping for kosher products in the supermarkets of Dubai, she learnt to experiment with the native tastes of her childhood with locally available produce and recipes. Elli’s Kosher Kitchen really took off in 2018, when during an inter-faith conference in the UAE, she was asked to cater kosher food to the Jewish delegates. “The requests for kosher food from my kitchen became quite frequent after that, and in February 2019, I decided to officially launch Elli’s Kosher Kitchen,” she says. It also helped that the Jewish population in the UAE has been steadily growing – with two synagogues now in Dubai, and another in the capital, Abu Dhabi.

So, what exactly is kosher food? “Quite simply put, it is based on guidelines detailed in the Torah, the Hebrew scriptures. A core kosher rule is not to mix milk and meat products. So, we install two separate kitchens, like I have done in my own home, to prepare milk and meat products separately, including two sets of cooking and serving utensils. That means no yoghurt in meat dishes, not even cheesecake after eating steak,” explains Elli. Kosher diet also requires the ritual slaughter of animals, and prohibition of eating birds of prey. Fish must have fins and scales (so that excludes sharks, shellfish, mussels, oysters and crustaceans), and only mammals with split hooves who chew their cud (no pork and camel) can be consumed. As insects are not eaten, vegetables are carefully cleaned and checked, and typically only stems of broccoli and asparagus are eaten.

Interestingly, kosher food is gaining popularity among non-Jews as well. In the UAE, for instance, Elli has seen a growing increase in demand for her food from non-Jews, including the local Emirati Muslims. In the US, where only 2 per cent of the population is Jewish, a recent study by Quartz revealed than 40 per cent of packaged food and beverages were labelled as kosher. This could be because kosher food is considered cleaner, with less possibility of potential allergens such as shellfish.

“Most people ask for the babka, a layered chocolate bread twisted and sliced, which is eaten with tea. Also very popular are my briskets, humus, tahini and matza bread” smiles Elli.

Besides perfecting her Sephardi recipes and blending Emirati ones, Elli also has vast knowledge of Ashkenazi Jewish food from her husband’s side of the family. Ashkenazi Jews are from Eastern Europe, and their cuisine consists primarily of potatoes, bread, pastries, honey and meat. “A typical Ashkenazi speciality is the Matzah Ball Soup, a chicken soup made with dumplings of Matzah flour (a flat unleavened wafer-like bread), eaten during Passover,” explains Elli. Other Ashkenazi dishes include challah, a braided bread; cholent, a stew cooked overnight; blintzes, stuffed pancakes; gefilteh, ground, deboned fish dish; latkas, or potato pancakes, and Tzimmes, a sweet stew made of carrots and dried fruits.

At home, Elli loves to eat a shakshuka for breakfast, with hummus, olives and tahini, accompanied with a fresh salad of cucumbers and tomatoes. “This is a classic Israeli breakfast. I love to follow it by a lunch of falafel wraps and a seabass cooked in the Greek-Mediterranean style with lemon, herbs and garlic, paired with a salad for dinner. This is all comfort food for me,” says Elli. “My children’s favourite recipes are spinach feta borek (savoury puff pastries with spinach and feta fillings) and stuffed peppers, filled with rice and pine nuts, made just the way my grandmother would make them for me.” Kosher or Kosherati, Jewish cuisine is truly a confluence of many cultures, and tucking into it is like biting into a slice of history from all over the world.

Tessy Koshy is an independent journalist based in Dubai. She writes art, culture and human interest stories.

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