Writer and film producer Monica Haim comes from a Colombian Jewish family where one side migrated from Eastern Europe and the other from Turkey, Iran, and Syria. When she was growing up in Miami, guava challah was often part of the Shabbat celebration.

In Joel Linkewer’s family, meals are a map of where they’ve lived, tracing a route from Belarus and Poland to South America, to Puerto Rico, and finally Miami. They serve this ceviche alongside potato blintzes and fried plantains called tostones at their Hanukkah celebrations. 

This smoky eggplant dip from Esther Weyl’s Moroccan-Brazilian community is served at Shabbat lunch. An egg yolk and olive oil give it a creamy richness. 

Like many Jewish families with North African heritage, Shabbat meals in Esther Weyl’s Moroccan-Brazilian community feature several salads like this vibrant number and other small dishes like fish escabeche to snack on.

Jessica Solnicki, who lives in Argentina, learned to cook many of her mother-in-law’s Tunisian recipes including a series of small dishes called kemia, like this one with beets and cumin. 

In Joel Linkewer’s family, Ashkenazi blintzes filled with potatoes are served right alongside spicy ceviche and fried tostones at Hanukkah celebrations.

These delicate fish albondigas or meatballs cooked in a simple onion, garlic, and tomato sauce are made for Shabbat lunch in Belém, Brazil by Donna Clara and her daughter Myriam. 

Halibut fillets and fava beans are gently simmered over a bed of cilantro in this recipe from Monica Haim, whose family is from Colombia. Today, Monica makes the dish for her family in Homer, Alaska, where her husband is a third generation fisherman.

Esther Weyl would sit on her grandmother’s lap as she cooked, but it was only after her grandmother passed away that Esther started to explore her recipes like this one for a hearty potato casserole. 

“We can’t talk about Sephardic cuisine, especially that from Morocco, without mentioning almoronia,” explains cookbook author and researcher Hélène Jawhara Piñer. The recipe can be traced to the 13th century and is still made the same way in Brazil.

Sometime after moving to Brazil from Morocco, Esther Weyl’s community replaced chickpeas in their Shabbat dafina with flour dumplings called cafe de massa. Like all traditional Shabbat stews, this one is meant to cook overnight, so plan accordingly.

Malena Svarch’s Ashkenazi family settled in Cuba in the early 1960s. She grew up in a period of poverty and austerity when food was scarce. The long cooking time for this dish helps camouflage the tough cuts of meat that her mother brought home.  

Vivian Wecselman-Fishman’s mother Etienne used to make this South American casserole of beef layered with spiced cornbread for Shabbat dinners when they lived in Lima, Peru. 

The creamy sauce in this Peruvian classic has roots in Arab cooking that came with Spanish colonizers when they conquered the Inca Empire in the 16th century. When Vivian Wecselman-Fishman was growing up in Lima, Peru, the dish was served in her home for Shabbat.  

Beans and rice are formed into cakes or patties and fried for this Peruvian dish that Vivian Wecselman-Fishman’s mom used to make for Shabbat. In their family, it’s made with lima or butter beans and served with the classic accompaniment salsa criolla.

In Brazil, Esther Weyl prepares this meringue with the Amazonian fruit cupuaçu. In its place, Esther suggests using orange marmalade.

For Monica Haim, this date and walnut cake is part of a meal that’s deeply nostalgic and helps her connect to her family, which has its roots in Colombia and Miami.

Guava and cream cheese are folded into these puff pastry triangles in this simple recipe. You can serve these for a sweet breakfast or dessert.