Jewish Food Trivia Quiz

Mahia is a Moroccan Jewish spirit distilled from figs and flavored with anise. Many Moroccan Jews had their own homemade mahia.

Sabich is made of thinly-sliced fried eggplant, hard-boiled egg, and techina. It was typically eaten in Iraq as a Shabbat morning breakfast food.

Kubbeh Hamusta is served in a slightly sour soup. Kubbeh Nayeh is a raw meat dish. Nablusia is fried and Bil Siniya (meaning “on a tray”) is a baked kubbeh. Kubbeh Za’atar adds the popular Middle Eastern spice blend to a fried kubbeh.

Kubanah is one of the classic Yemenite Jewish baked goods, served typically on Shabbat.

One of the best books off of the Jewish Food Bookshelf, Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food is a classic that mixes recipes and essays about Jewish foods from communities around the world.

Since the Ruben combined corned beef and Swiss cheese, it mixes a dairy product with meat, forbidden by the traditional laws of kashrut. Still, it was invented in Jewish delis in the United States. Although French Dip is sometimes served with Swiss Cheese as well, the original version did not contain that ingredient.

Kugel started as a basic dough ball cooked inside of a Shabbat stew, and only later emerged from the pot and splintered into various types of starchy foods.

Although tadigh is made with rice, many non-Ashkenazi Jews eat rice on Passover. Megina is a Sephardic matzo-and-meat pie. Couscous, however, is made of semolina flour, and is thus considered chametz — leavened grain — which is not permissible for those who follow the traditional Passover food rules.

Shabbat stews are the topic of the book I am writing. Skhina is Moroccan, Osavo is Bukharan, Khalebibi is Persian, and T’bit is Iraqi. Mamaliga is a Romanian porridge made of cornmeal, that is similar to polenta.

Kreplach are traditionally eaten for the pre-Yom Kippur meal, on Purim, and on Hoshana Rabbah (the seventh day of the Sukkot holiday).