Generations On, These Recipes from Izmir’s Community Simmer in Israel

Shared by Levana Lowenstein and the Daniel family
Recipe Roots: Izmir, Turkey > Yehud, Israel > Neve Monosson, Israel  

Levana’s parents, Ana and Nissim, in Izmir in 1941.

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. They are the latest generation of many in Levana’s family to eat this Friday stew. It’s not only Levana’s family that serves this stew for a pre-Shabbat lunch. It’s a custom, she says, among families with roots in Izmir, a city along Turkey’s Aegean coast. 

Levana’s father Nissim Daniel worked in construction in Izmir’s port and as a dried fruit dealer. But, in 1949, before Levana was born, her parents and sister Esther, who is known as Etti, moved to Israel. When they arrived in Israel, a driver was supposed to take them to what is now Herzliya, 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv. Having heard of an enclave of Jews from their community, Levana’s mother Ana asked the driver to take the family there instead. They arrived in Yehud, a small city near the airport that was and still is a Turkish community. 

Here, Turkish recipes and traditions were preserved. “If we have 200 families in Yehud, all of them on Friday...eat the soup with beans, meat, and rice. This is our tradition,” Levana explains. In other ways, the community assimilated. In 1951, when Levana was born, she was given the Ladino name Luna, but the family changed it to Levana as David Ben Gurion encouraged immigrants to the early state to adopt Hebrew names. 

Ana, with her granddaughter Ariel Palitz in Israel in the 1970s.

Growing up in Yehud, Levana and Etti’s family lived around a patio with three other families. The women of each family would gather here to cook and gossip as they passed the time making recipes like bourekas boyos, a savory pastry filled with spinach and cheese or potatoes that’s served for Shabbat breakfast.

The foods of this community are unique and shared across households. The women from the patio also made tomates reinados, or “royal tomatoes” in Ladino, a recipe for tomatoes stuffed with ground meat. Another staple is sofrito, which in this community is a catch all term for a dish made with one meat and one vegetable like chicken and cauliflower or lamb with fried potatoes. 

Ana in her kitchen in Yehud in 1980.

Levana saw all of this cooking, but says: “I never came to the kitchen to help my mom.” Still, she absorbed the images of her mother and grandmother Anna cooking. When she married and had children of her own, she started to cook and developed an intense passion for the kitchen. While she never learned the Izmir recipes from the family matriarchs, she realized she could close her eyes and picture them in the kitchen, remembering how they prepared dishes. “I remember everything,” she says.

Levana in Israel in 2019.

She’s held on to that and passed it down. “My mother came from Izmir and she cooked like her mother cooked...like I cook,” Levana adds. She has made only small adjustments in the tradition, like saving the boyos style of bourekas for special occasions and holidays. During the rest of the year, she uses two riffs on a simpler dough to make cookies called biscocho and borekitas, small hand pies filled with eggplant or potato and cheese. She serves the borekitas for Shabbat breakfast alongside long cooked brown eggs, yogurt, and rice pudding. One of her granddaughters, Noa, who is 11-years-old, has learned to make the recipe as well, ensuring the dish is passed down to the next generation.

Neither Levana’s grandmother nor mother is still alive, but both have a presence in her kitchen. There’s a large photo of Levana’s grandmother in her kitchen. As if the picture were a person, Levana says: “I ask her questions once in a while.”

Avikas (White Bean and Beef Stew)

Makes: 4 to 6 servings
Total Time: 2 hours

Ingredients
3 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound chuck beef, chopped into 2 inch squares
1 yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
½ cup white kidney beans, soaked overnight and drained
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Preparation
1. Place a large pot over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

2. Season the meat with 1 teaspoon of salt. Once the oil is hot, place the pieces of meat into the pot and sear on all sides until deep golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side. 

3. Transfer the meat to a plate.

4. Add the chopped onions into the pot and saute, scraping the meat drippings on the bottom of the pot to incorporate. Saute the onions until golden, about 10 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook for about 2 minutes until caramelized. Add the meat back into the pot. Add the beans, pepper and the remaining 2 teaspoons of salt into the pot. Cover with water and stir. 

5. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce to a gentle simmer. Add a lid slightly ajar and continue cooking the stew for about 1 hour and 30 minutes until the mixture cooks down into a stew like consistency and the beans and meat are tender.

6. Serve hot with white rice.

Tomatoes Reinados (Tomatoes Stuffed with Beef)

Makes: 6 to 8 servings
Total Time: 1 hour and 15 minutes

Ingredients
10 tomatoes
1 pound ground beef
1 loaf white bread
1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper 
1 egg, beaten well
½ cup flour 
½ cup canola oil
1 cup water

Preparation
1. Cut about ¼ inch off the top of the tomatoes crosswise. Scoop out the seeds and meat from the tomatoes. 

2. Soak a loaf of bread in water for about 10 minutes and drain. 

3. In a mixing bowl, place the ground beef, bread, salt, and pepper. Mix until combined well. Stuff each tomato with about 1 tablespoon of the beef mixture, using your palms to flatten out the top of the filled tomatoes. 

4. Add ½ cup oil into a saucepan and set it over medium high heat. Add the beaten egg into a small bowl. Add the flour into another small bowl and set aside. 

5. Starting with one stuffed tomato, dip the top of the tomato into the flour, shake any excess flour off, and then dip the top of the tomato into the egg wash and place on a plate. Repeat with the remaining tomatoes.

6. Once the oil is hot, place the tomatoes into the pot with the top of the tomato down into the oil. Fry the tomatoes until their tops are golden brown. Transfer the fried tomatoes into another skillet. Place them into the pan with the fried side up. Add 1 cup of water into the pan or enough to cover ¾ of the tomatoes. Place the pan over medium high heat and bring the water to a boil and reduce the heat to low. Cover the pan and cook the tomatoes over a gently simmer until the meat is cooked, the tomatoes are tender and about ¼ of the water remains, about 45 minutes. 

7. Serve hot.

Borekitas

Makes: About 15 borekitas with eggplant filling + 15 borekitas with cheese filling
Total Time: 3 hours

Ingredients
For the eggplant filling:
1 cup canola oil
1 cup olive oil
1 eggplant, peeled and cut into 2 inch cubes
1 yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 tomato, peeled and quartered 
1 ½ ounces blue cheese, grated
1 tablespoon kosher salt

For the cheese filling:
1 large yukon gold potato
4 tablespoons ricotta
1 cup + 3 tablespoons grated kashkaval 
1 egg
1 tablespoon kosher salt

For the dough:
1 cup cold water
1 ¼ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon salt
5 ¾ cups all-purpose flour 
1 tablespoon baking powder

For the assembly:
1 egg, whisked
3  tablespoons sesame seeds
3 tablespoons grated kashkaval

Preparation
1. Make the eggplant filling: Heat the oil in a pot over medium high heat. Once the oil is hot, add the eggplants and onions. Fry until golden brown, about 30 to 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the tomatoes and cook for another 20 minutes. Place the mixture in a strainer set over a large bowl. Set aside for 1 hour to drain the mixture from excess oil. Discard the excess oil, add the blue cheese and salt into the mixture. Mix until combined well. Set aside.

2. Make the cheese filling: Place the potato into a small pot. Cover the potato with cold water and set over high heat. Bring the water to a boil, lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook until the potatoes are fork tender, about 40 minutes. Transfer the potato out of the pot with a slotted spoon and set it aside to cool for about 10 minutes. Peel the potato and place it into a mixing bowl. Using a fork, smash the potato well until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes. Add the ricotta, kashkaval, egg and salt. Mix well until combined. Set aside. 

3. Make the dough: Place the water, oil and salt into a food processor. Blend until the mixture becomes white, about 1 minutes. Add the baking powder and flour and blend until the mixture forms a dough, about 3 to 5 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

5. Turn the dough onto the counter. Roll it into a ball, cut it into 4 pieces of dough. Roll out each piece to a 12 inch long log. Starting with one log of dough, cut it into 7 pieces crosswise. Roll one piece of dough into a disk-like shape, about 2 inches in diameter, using the palms of your hands. Place the rolled dough onto the counter. Continue shaping the remaining 6 pieces of dough. Repeat with the remaining 3 logs of dough. Cover all the rolled out pieces of dough with a towel and set aside for 20 minutes. 

6. Shape and fill the borekitas: Take one piece of rolled out dough. Flatten out the piece of dough with your fingers until it is about ⅛ inch thick. Starting with the eggplant filling, place about ½ tablespoon of the mixture into the center of the dough. Take one edge of the dough and fold it over to seal the filling, forming a semicircle shape. Pinch the seams of the dough together. Using your index finger and thumbs, twist and pinch the seam of the dough to create a crimp like pattern across the round edge. Place the borekita upright onto the parchment paper, with the seam side up. Continue with the remaining 13 pieces of dough. Use the potato and cheese filling for the remaining 14 pieces of dough. For the potato and cheese filled borekitas place them on the parchment paper sideways so the seam side is on the side of the pastry. Brush all the borekitas with egg wash. Sprinkle the eggplant filled borekitas with sesame seeds. Sprinkle the potato and cheese filled borekitas with grated kashkaval.

7. Transfer the borekitas to the oven and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes until golden brown.

8. Serve hot with a side of boiled eggs and plain yogurt.

Biscochos

Makes: 10 to 15 servings
Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients
1 cup cold water
1 ¼ cups canola oil
1 teaspoon salt
¾ cup sugar
5 ¾ cups all-purpose flour 
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Sesame seeds (optional)

Preparation
1. Place water, canola, salt in a food processor. Blend until white, about 1 minutes. Add sugar and pulse until blended. Add flour, baking powder and cinnamon and blend until a dough forms, about 3 to 5 minutes.

2. Turn onto the counter and roll the dough into a log shape. Cut into 4 logs. Cut each log into about 9 pieces each. Roll into a disk and place it on the counter. Continue with the rest of the dough. Once they are all formed into disks, cover with a towel and let rest for 20 minutes. 

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

4. Take a disk and roll it, then bring the two edges together, forming a ring-like shape seal with your fingerprint. Continue with the rest of the dough. Brush with egg wash, sprinkle with sesame seeds (if using) and bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes.