“I Thought I’d Never Taste This Again” Cuisine of Sephardic Morocco Has anyone ever heard of "café de masa", the melt-in-your-mouth “coffee beans” made of dough? Has the aroma of "orissa", a spicy-hot wheat-based stew that simmers for 24 hours even once filled your kitchen? Be transported to a foreign world through the flavors of cumin, turmeric and saffron. You will also enjoy the rich sweetness of almond paste in the "hojaldres", the tartness of bitter oranges of the "ranja", and crispy texture of the "fijuelas". You will discover the "marronchinos", the "lechiado", the "pastel" and "pastel de hoja", the "dafina" and many more exotic and delicious recipes. Mercedes Castiel brings them all to you with the sincerity and candor of a first time cookbook author. For this book to come to fruition, she first had to research these unique recipes and recreate them with painstaking patience and determination. When her mother recently passed away she felt a great sense of loss, but she also sadly realized that the wonderful flavors and aromas that had delighted her and her siblings since childhood would no longer be part of their daily fare. Even more distressing, they would disappear forever if someone did not preserve them. Their preservation thus became her mission and this task was made even more difficult because Mercedes had to experiment with multiple measurements, as her dear Mamá never wrote detailed recipes: “a little bit of this, and enough of that should do”. Mercedes’ dedicated search - she is a medical doctor during the day (and nights) - brings us this delightful cookbook full of fabulous recipes that survived for hundreds of years since the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain by Queen Isabel of Castile (no relation to the author) in 1492. The result is a wonderful book that will arouse your senses, delight your palate and soothe your soul. And don’t forget the almond dates, the "palebes" and the "cocos". Que vos aproveche! Enjoy!