A community campaign hosted by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Slow simmers and spice routes: a Sephardic Jewish cooking class

The idea is simple and quietly radical: a Jewish cooking class built around Sephardic cuisine, where participants learn to braise a North African lamb tagine one week and roll Syrian-style cheese-filled börek the next. Sephardic cookery carries centuries of migration across Iberia, the Ottoman world, North Africa and the Levant, blending olive oil, lemon, tahini, aromatic spices, and slow-cooked grains with the laws of kashrut and the rhythms of Shabbat. A class rooted in this tradition can do more than teach recipes — it can open a doorway into a lesser-known chapter of Jewish life that many Australians have only tasted in restaurants.

Australia is a particularly fertile ground for this kind of venture. Melbourne and Sydney each host Jewish communities exceeding 40,000 people, alongside substantial Lebanese, Turkish, Greek, Egyptian, and Iraqi diasporas whose Sephardic and Mizrahi culinary heritage often overlaps with broader Middle Eastern food culture. The country's multicultural food scene — celebrated through venues like Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market and Sydney's Paddy's Markets, and through neighbourhood hubs in suburbs such as St Kilda, Bondi, and Glen Eira — already exposes many Australians to ingredients like preserved lemons, freekeh, and rose harissa. A Sephardic cooking class can sit naturally within this landscape, drawing curious locals and community members alike.

What makes the idea especially timely is the hunger across Australian Jewish life for projects that strengthen identity in practical, everyday ways. Cooking has always been one of the most reliable vehicles for that kind of connection: a recipe handed down in a family, a holiday table that links generations, a shared pot of soup that draws strangers into conversation. A well-designed Sephardic class turns those small acts into a structured programme with measurable benefits for social cohesion, intergenerational learning, and cultural continuity.

Why Sephardic cuisine matters in Australian Jewish life

Sephardic cuisine is not a single cuisine but a family of related traditions, shaped by the wanderings of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492 and by Mizrahi communities whose roots reach further back into Babylon, Persia, and Yemen. The result is a vast repertoire: Moroccan harira soup ladled from clay pots, Turkish lokma drizzled in syrup, Tunisian bakalawa layered with pistachios, and Greek-style lamb kapama slow-cooked with tomatoes and bay leaves. Each dish carries a story of place and adaptation, and each one still finds a place on Shabbat and festival tables.

In Australia, Sephardic flavours have largely arrived through migration patterns different from the Ashkenazi influx of the post-war period. Sydney's substantial Lebanese and Egyptian communities and Melbourne's Greek and Turkish populations have brought familiar ingredients — pomegranate molasses, sumac, urfa biber, soft haloumi — that overlap with Sephardic Jewish pantries. A class built around Sephardic food can speak to multiple overlapping communities, not only to those who self-identify as Sephardic. It can also offer Ashkenazi Australian Jews a meaningful entry point into the wider Jewish culinary map, which has historically been underrepresented in local programming. Older community members who fled Egypt, Libya, or Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s — many settling in Sydney's eastern suburbs and Melbourne's Caulfield and Carnegie — carry recipes that have never been written down. A structured cooking class, paired with documentation, offers a gentle way to invite those stories into a shared archive before they are lost.

Designing the curriculum around Sephardic traditions

A strong curriculum begins with the holidays, because Sephardic food is, above all, calendar food. Rosh Hashanah calls for round loaves, sweet tzimmes with carrots and dates, and slow-braised apple-and-honey desserts. Passover tables across the Sephardic world feature charoset made with dates and sesame paste rather than the apples and walnuts familiar in Ashkenazi homes. Hanukkah brings sufganiyot and, in many households, keftes de prasa, leek fritters fried in oil to honour the miracle. A weekly class could rotate through these moments, anchoring each session in a festival or family occasion.

Each session should follow a recognisable rhythm: a short storytelling introduction, a demonstration of one or two core techniques (such as rolling thin yufka dough or building a chraime spice base), followed by hands-on cooking and a shared meal. Limiting enrolment to 10-12 participants per class keeps the kitchen workable and ensures that every student actually cooks. Recipes should be printed in a bilingual format — English alongside transliterated Ladino, Arabic, or Turkish — so that the language of the dish travels with the food. Classes scheduled around Shabbat preparation — late morning on Fridays or in the afternoons leading into the holidays — feel purposeful. Where possible, partnering with a local synagogue or community centre, such as those in Melbourne's Caulfield South or Sydney's Woollahra, gives the programme an institutional anchor.

Comparing the regional cuisines side by side helps both instructors and students see how the same broad tradition expresses itself differently. The table below sketches a starting point.

Region Signature dishes Key spices and staples Typical occasion
Morocco Harira, lamb tagine, sfouf Ginger, saffron, preserved lemon Friday night, Ramadan iftar, Mimouna
Turkey and Greece Börek, imam bayildi, halva Cinnamon, allspice, mahleb, olive oil Shabbat, Passover, family gatherings
Syria and Lebanon Kibbeh, mjudra, stuffed vegetables Baharat, sumac, pomegranate molasses Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah
Egypt and Libya Fattah, sambousak, rice with lentils Cumin, coriander, dukkah, tahini Weddings, break-fast

Sourcing ingredients in Melbourne, Sydney and beyond

One of the practical joys and challenges of running a Sephardic class in Australia is ingredient sourcing. Melbourne's Preston Market and Sydney's Auburn and Lakemba districts stock freekeh, burghul, sumac, tahini, pomegranate molasses, and a wide range of fresh herbs at competitive prices. Online retailers shipping nationwide have made rarer items — preserved lemons from Morocco, mahleb, and high-quality olive oil from Greek and Cretan producers — accessible even in cities like Adelaide and Perth, where physical Middle Eastern grocers are fewer.

Local Australian produce also deserves a place in the kitchen. Free-range lamb from Victoria's Western District, tomatoes from the Sunraysia region, citrus from the Riverina, and olive oils from groves in South Australia can be substituted for imported equivalents without compromising authenticity. A class can explicitly compare an Australian-grown za'atar herb with a Lebanese import, teaching students to taste the difference. Many Sephardic staples — including tahini, certain cheeses, and processed grains — are kosher by ingredients but require reliable hechsher supervision to be accepted in a strictly observant setting. A class hosted in partnership with a kosher-certified kitchen, or one that teaches students to read labels and identify reliable certifications from authorities such as the Sydney Beth Din or Kosher Australia, builds useful everyday literacy.

Where to shop for a well-stocked pantry in Australia:

Instructors, storytellers and community knowledge

No curriculum comes alive without the right teacher. Sephardic cooking is best transmitted by people who carry the food in their hands and the stories in their voices. In Melbourne and Sydney, there is a quiet pool of grandmothers, aunties, and community elders whose families left Cairo, Benghazi, Aleppo, or Izmir, and who already cook these dishes without thinking of them as exotic. A well-designed class recruits these cooks as lead instructors, paying them modest honoraria and recording their techniques and anecdotes for future use.

Where such elders are unavailable, younger community members who have studied their heritage — often returning from trips to Morocco, Istanbul, or Thessaloniki with renewed interest — can serve as assistant instructors. Pairing them with an experienced cook creates a natural mentorship dynamic. Some programmes invite guest chefs from local Sephardic restaurants; others collaborate with culinary schools such as William Angliss Institute in Melbourne or Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney for technical support. Storytelling should be treated as seriously as knife skills. Each dish has a context: the Sephardic custom of breaking the fast after Yom Kippur with a small triangular pastry, the North African tradition of serving seven vegetable sides on Rosh Hashanah, the Greek-Jewish custom of baking round kaloudes for Shabbat. A class that opens with five minutes of context and closes with a brief reflection over the meal turns cooking into a vehicle for transmission rather than a hobbyist exercise.

Pairing the class with a recipe bank and exchange

A cooking class reaches further when it feeds a larger project. Many communities now host online recipe banks where home cooks can upload family favourites, search by holiday or ingredient, and print a card to take to the kitchen. Linking the in-person class to a digital archive means that what is taught on Sunday is preserved on Tuesday, and that participants can continue cooking at home with confidence. Models for how to set up such a resource are emerging, and a helpful overview appears in a cooking exchange guide.

The exchange component matters as much as the archive. Once participants have learned a few dishes, the class can host periodic potluck evenings where everyone brings one Sephardic dish to share, ideally accompanied by a printed recipe card. Over time, the exchange becomes a rotating tasting menu and produces tested recipes that can be published in a printed booklet for fundraising. Digital infrastructure need not be elaborate: a private social media group or a modest section of an existing community website is enough to begin. The key is consistency, with every class adding at least one new recipe and every contribution attributed to its source. Over a year or two, the archive becomes a community asset capable of supporting outreach well beyond the original cooking class.

Legal and logistical realities for community kitchens in Australia

Running a community kitchen in Australia requires attention to food safety, insurance, and local council regulations. Food handlers in New South Wales and Victoria are expected to comply with Food Safety Standards set out in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, and most councils require community kitchens to register as a food business if they serve food on a regular basis. A cooking class that charges a fee generally falls under this definition, and the host organisation should ensure that at least one supervisor holds a current Food Safety Supervisor certificate. Public liability cover is essential when members of the public are handling knives and hot ovens, and many Australian synagogues already hold policies that can be extended to include a cooking programme.

Accessibility matters as well. Australian community programmes are expected to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and, where relevant, the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act or the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act. A cooking class can meet these obligations by ensuring the kitchen is wheelchair-accessible, by offering stool seating for participants who cannot stand for long periods, and by providing written recipe cards in large print. None of these accommodations is costly, and together they widen the pool of participants and demonstrate that the programme is genuinely open to all.

Core compliance steps before the first class:

Funding models and volunteer networks

A programme of this kind can run on a modest budget, but it does need a budget. Typical costs include kitchen hire or reimbursement to a host synagogue, ingredients for 10-12 participants per class, a modest honorarium for the lead instructor, insurance, and printing. A fee of A$30-45 per participant covers ingredients and a small contribution toward the instructor's time, while a parallel subsidised place can be reserved for a community member who would otherwise be unable to attend.

Beyond participant fees, small grants from bodies such as the Victorian Multicultural Commission, the NSW Department of Communities and Justice, or local council community grants can cover startup costs. Larger philanthropic support — from Australian Jewish foundations or from foundations focused on cultural heritage and food security — can fund a paid coordinator role if the programme grows. Volunteers are the quiet engine. A core team of three to five people — a programme lead, an instructor, a kitchen assistant, and a documentation volunteer — can keep a weekly class running without burnout. Rotating duties and clearly defining roles prevents the workload from falling on a single committed organiser, which is the most common reason community cooking programmes quietly disappear after a year.

If an idea like this speaks to you, the most useful next step is to bring it into a structured conversation with neighbours, friends, and local Jewish institutions. Start by sketching a six-week pilot, identifying a host kitchen, and asking one or two experienced Sephardic cooks whether they would consider co-teaching. Submit a short version of the plan through the community campaign at thenextbigjewishidea.com so that others across the country can vote, refine, and join the effort. A cooking class may look like a small thing, but a table set with slow-cooked lamb, fresh bread, and a circle of people who have learned to make it together is one of the oldest and most reliable forms of Jewish community-building Australia has ever known.