Iraqi · Baghdad
Tbit
Baghdadi chicken & rice
The Iraqi-Jewish Shabbat pot that cooks low overnight, so the rice turns deep gold and the whole house smells of cardamom by morning.
A table set in Baghdad, Bombay & Istanbul.
Over thirty-five years of baking, and a lifetime of family recipes carried across three countries — finally written down, the way my mother and grandmothers made them.
35+ yrs
3
Sun
Everyday recipes
Weeknight dinners and big-batch classics, simplified so anyone can make them.
From the bakery
Challah, baklava, ma'amoul — over thirty-five years of muscle memory, finally written down.
The holiday table
Shabbat and the festivals — the food, and how to set the table around it.
Lately on the table
All recipes → From the bakery
Ma'amoul
date-filled semolina cookies
Tender semolina cookies pressed in a wooden mold and filled with spiced dates — the cookie I made by the hundred at the bakery for every holiday.
Turkish · Istanbul
Su böreği
layered cheese börek
Silky boiled-then-baked pastry sheets layered with feta and parsley — the Istanbul classic that eats like lasagne's pastry cousin.
Indian · Bombay
Aloo makala
crisp whole fried potatoes
Whole potatoes simmered, then fried slow and low until glassy-crisp outside and soft within — the Baghdadi-Bombay table's most fought-over dish.
From the bakery
Pistachio baklava
rose & honey syrup
Paper-thin filo layered by hand with green pistachios and bathed in rose-honey syrup — the bakery bestseller, ten years running.
Turkish · Aegean
Yaprak sarma
stuffed grape leaves
Grape leaves rolled tight around herbed rice and pine nuts, cooked low with lemon and olive oil — a whole quiet afternoon, worth every minute.
Nothing in the latest batch for that one — see all recipes.
Three kitchens, one table.
I'm Tamara. I learned to cook from women who never measured a thing — a grandmother who carried Baghdad's kitchen to Bombay, a mother who brought it on to Vancouver, and a mother-in-law who set all of Istanbul on the table. I baked for over thirty-five years — more than ten of them running my own bakery — and these days I cook for the people I love around our table in San Diego, which is the part I loved all along.
Every recipe here is the real one: tested in a busy home kitchen, written down at last so it doesn't get lost.
Sofra SOF-rah — in both Turkish and Arabic, the table where everyone gathers to eat. The one place all three kitchens meet.
Baghdad
my grandmother
Bombay
my mother
Istanbul
my mother-in-law
San Diego
our table
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One tested family recipe a week — the story behind it, and how to bring it to your own table.