ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: According to the Edict of Expulsion, what was one gastronomical reason given to justify expelling the Jews from Spain in 1492?

Sara Gardner is a Fulbright Scholar who has lived in Madrid for the past year, researching the culinary heritage and cultural identity of the Sephardic Jews in Spain before 1492. Her work is focused on medieval Sephardic cuisine, in order to understand Sephardic daily life and cultural identity in pre-expulsion Spain.

In addition, she writes about the Sephardic history of Spanish dishes on her blog, Boka Dulse, and has taught a cooking class for the Reform Jewish Community of Madrid, which explored the Jewish diaspora through the diverse global Jewish kitchens, covering everything from Ashkenazi to Ethiopian food traditions, learning about each community’s history and making their representative dishes. She also recently taught a class about Sephardic culinary heritage from before expulsion to the diaspora for The Gefilteria, a New York-based organization (and subject of a recent English Corner program).

Sara spoke with us about her research and some interesting discoveries she has made about the gastronomical relationship between the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities in Medieval Spain.