By Laurel Corona

SAN DIEGO—In her newly revised and reissued A Biblical Feast,  local author Kitty Morse shares the results of her research into  the diet of the ancient Hebrews and early Christians.   “To travel through the rural regions of my native Morocco,”she says in her preface, “is akin to  being transported back to biblical times.” Women still carry water from wells in amphorae, children watch over flocks of animals, and donkeys carry produce to weekly markets, just as in the time of the Patriarchs.

Using her expertise as the author of a number of cookbooks  (Cooking at the Casbah: Recipes from My Moroccan Kitchen, The Vegetarian Table: North Africa, and The Scent of Orange Blossoms:  Sephardic Cuisine from Morocco), Morse turns her attention here to a discussion of ingredients mentioned  in the Bible, or known to have existed in the region. Pointing out that the Bible contains no complete recipe  (Ezekiel  4 is the closest, listing ingredients for a bread that includes a very special ingredient readers might want to check out for themselves), Morse creatively intuits from the dictates of Mosaic law, as well as archaeological finds of utensils and pottery, what dishes people of the Tanakh and the early Christian era might have eaten.

The daughter of a Sephardic Jewish mother and an Anglican father, Morse shows her Christian upbringing in the preface, which discusses Jesus of Nazareth as Christ and uses the King James Bible for quotations from the Tanakh.  Though this might be off-putting to some Jewish readers, Morse goes out of her way, as many Christian writers do not, to point out that his life was lived in the context of a rich Jewish culture, and he was a participant in the continuation of ancient traditions carried down from the people of the Tanakh.  The foods she describes are not his foods, but every Jew’s.

Each recipe is accompanied by a biblical verse, almost all from the Tanakh, as well as interesting facts about the ingredients. Watermelons were cultivated in Egypt for millenia, for example, and charred fava beans dating to 4900 BCE have been found near Nazareth.   But the best part of the book is the recipes (many accompanied by beautiful photographs), which are all simple enough for even the most challenged chef.


Try, for example, squash with capers and mint, introduced by a verse from Jonah describing the gourd that God created to provide shade over his head.  Morse gives the botanical name for the most likely species of gourd (she suggests zucchini for the recipe), and explains that the caper bush was actually called hyssop at the time.  The salad takes only a few minutes to make, using only staple or easily purchased ingredients.  Jonah would have been exceeding glad for the gourd indeed!

There are recipes for Ezekiel’s bread (minus the secret ingredient), Abigail’s fig cakes she gave in offering to David after her husband Nabal’s lack of hospitality, and David’s  cheeses brought to the battle against the Philistines.  Perhaps most unusual and fun of all is her recipe for “new wine,” which isn’t really wine at all, but fresh pressed grape juice; and one for  pomegranate wine, as described in the Song of Solomon.

Kitty Morse recently explained to me that problems with her publisher not reprinting this book  when the first edition sold out prompted  her to reclaim the rights, and she is now publishing the book  herself in a revised edition.  Though many of her other cookbooks can be bought through Amazon or other online merchants, those interested in  A Biblical Feast can follow the link at www.abiblicalfeast.com.

Laurel Corona is a professor of Humanities at San Diego City College, and the author of The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice, and co-author of Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance. She also wrote seventeen YA titles for Lucent Books, including three on Jewish subjects:  Israel, Judaism, and Jewish Americans