Esther Cohen

Oral history

Beet soup in a new country

Esther Cohen’s kubbeh came out of the pot the color of a pomegranate split open. In Baghdad the beets were cheap in winter. In Tel Aviv she planted them in a tin behind the building because the market ones were pale. She had heard of the sour kubbeh of Aleppo — lemon, mint — and she respected it the way you respect a cousin. Our soup is red, she said. Theirs is yellow. The dumplings are the same idea: bulgur, a little meat, closed with a wet thumb. She would not say which city invented it. She said only: in our house it was Friday, and it was red.

Recorded by Archive demonstration