Cookbook Give-Away: Backyard Kitchen The Main Course by Sarina Roffe

My first cousin Sarina Roffe is amazing. She’s one of the most accomplished, creative, and productive people I know. Sarina is a writer and author of Jewish history, and also lectures internationally, a genealogist with her own company that provides genealogical research, sephardicgenjourneys.com, and a business consultant, with 20 years’ experience of operations, senior management, communications, marketing, public relations and press experience, as well as public speaking, and crisis management. Sarina raised three children with her husband David and their oldest son Simon was born deaf in 1975.  Sarina was the founder and  is the Executive Director of the New York Cued Speech Center, which is a highly effective, visual system of communication used with deaf people. 

Now this is just a brief list of Sarina’s accomplishments. (I feel like a lazy slug next to her) 

Sarina and I are one year apart and we both grew up in Flatbush Brooklyn, about seven blocks from each other. My grade school, P.S. 153,  was down the block from Sarina’s house, and every day I would go to her house for lunch and her mother Renee always cooked something good and nourishing. 

When we were teenagers, every Saturday we would go to Manhattan on a cultural adventure and attend either a film, the theater, or a museum. Sarina was one of the few people I knew who was as curious about cultural things as I was, and I still have many good memories of our ventures. 

As I mentioned before, I am of Syrian Sephardic Jewish descent and both sets of my grandparents came to the U.S. in the early 1900s from Aleppo, Syria, and later settled in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn. 

Sarina’s father Abe, was my mother Adele’s older brother from a family of ten siblings, so Sarina is my first cousin. 

Sarina’s maternal grandmother came from Syria to America as an immigrant in 1921 and could not read or write. Esther met her husband, Selim, at an Egyptian restaurant owned by her sister, and Esther and Selim converted the garage of their new home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn into a kitchen. She supported her seven children with a thriving catering business. 

Sarina has always been proud of her ancestral culture and desired to hand down her grandmother’s recipes, which she inherited from her mother, to the next generation and the public. She published her first cookbook Backyard Kitchen – Mediterranean Salads in 2016, and with the success of that book, she followed up in February 2020, with Backyard Kitchen: The Main Course. The new book has over 90 mouth-watering recipes of her grandmother’s specialties, along with photos, and Sarina has updated and modified some of the recipes to keep up with today’s health trends and culinary lifestyles. She’s also Americanized them by altering the ingredients, so that they are easily accessible at most supermarkets and gourmet specialty shops.   

Sarina has been generous enough to offer a free copy of the book to a lucky blog reader. The fourth person who makes a comment on this post will receive a copy of the book. Email subscribers, if you go to the bottom of this email, in small print it says “You are subscribed to email updates from I Prefer Paris”. Click on I Prefer Paris, and on the bottom of the post you will see COMMENT in small letters. Click on that to make a comment. 

Click here to buy Backyard Kitchen The Main Course

Click here to buy Backyard Kitchen – Mediterranean Salads

Click here to buy both books, Backyard Kitchen – Mediterranean Salads and Backyard Kitchen The Main Course a discount. 

Proceeds from the books benefit Sephardic Heritage Project (sephardicheritageproject.org).

Sarina’s recipes have been included in the New York Times, the New York Times Jewish Cookbook, and Joan Nathan’s Jewish Cooking in America (Beardsley Award).

Mint Lemon Soup with Stuffed Meatballs (Kibbe Hamda)

Chicken with Eggplant Stuffed with Rice and Meat (Mih’she Svee’ha)

There’s also a blog/website with recipes https://sarinassephardiccuisine.com and an I-Phone app, Sarina’s Sephardic Cuisine, (there are cooking demonstrations on the app) https://sarinassephardiccuisine.com/the-app. I told you she was accomplished! 

Another amazing thing that Sarina does is every ten years she publishes a book documenting the genealogy of our family. As I mentioned above, there were 10 children in our parents family, and each of them had three to five children, then there were dozens of grandchildren, great grandchildren, and recently two of my aunts, who lived into their 90s, lived to see great, great grandchildren. Just to give you an idea of the size of the extended family, two years ago, one of our cousins hosted a family reunion at his oceanfront house in New Jersey. Over 400 people showed up that were just family, with no friends invited, and there still family members that couldn’t attend. So, imagine the task it takes to organize, sort through, edit, write and finally publish a book, with all the updates of the family about newborn children, deaths, weddings, bar-mitzvahs, and graduations. 

Please remember to send your Favorite Paris Story to me by tomorrow, June 10 @[email protected] 

Comments

[Kate Beswick]

what a fascinating story - and a remarkable woman!

[Nancy]

What a wonderful story! How lucky to have a cousin so close and she keeps the family’s records!? Even better!

[Jim McCarthy]

Wouldn't I love to spend a day or two with Sarina in her kitchen, cooking and taking and brushing up my Yiddish. Even boys of Irish and Eastern European descent learn some Yiddish growing up in NYC.

Such a sweet face she has, you know Sarina would be a kind and helpful teacher and fun to be with. I could bring my Hannukah cookies which I make every year for my pal Susan who is without her Jewish family these days. They are not bad !

[Julie Tave]

Looking forward to fixing and tasting recipes handed down from Allepo...a place we were fortunate to visit before the recent war. Bravo Sabrina!

[Jeanne Govert]

Everything looks yummy!

[Diane Thurlow]

I am going to show this article to my friend who looks just like Sarina. And the food is making my Jewish mouth water big time. Yumm! Thanks. I loved the story.

[Fran @ G'day Souffle']

Looks like I'm not the 4th comment in order to be the winner, but I'll comment anyway. The Mint Lemon Soup looks really good- reminds me of my Grandma's Matzo Ball Soup, but even better!

[Susan]

She looks like a delightful person.

[Beverley Auerbach]

Looks like I missed being #4, but it was still a great post and a fascinating story.

Aleppo was largely destroyed in the Syrian conflict. I met a number of Syrians from Aleppo in Turkey a few years ago - their stories were quite enlightening.

[mireille sorg]

I wish to have her new receipe book, it sounds just delicious and the storu of Sarina is just wonderful! I wish her the best.

[Lisa Sutton, PhD]

Your blog warmed my Syrian-Jewish-from-Brooklyn heart. I'm going to look at her books--love to cook SY food.