There’s No Life Without Agristada

Food was always an important thread that tied together Regina Gilboa and Bracha Luft’s family. The sisters, who are both in their 70’s and live 20 minutes away from one another in and near Tel Aviv, were raised by a mother who cooked everything from scratch like spinach patties in a sour sauce, which Bracha still makes. But, it wasn’t just their mother Yehudit who was responsible for the food in their family. Their father, Sasson, who immigrated to Palestine when he was a young boy from Bulgaria, helped source the food the family ate.

He enlisted in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army Brigade at the age of 35, the sisters recalled when we cooked with them at Bracha’s home in Tel Aviv this fall. And, when he was discharged after three years, he wanted to establish a fishing village with the others he served with. They started Moshav Mikhmoret, on the the shores of the Mediterranean sea, where Bracha was born in 1946. The family only lived here for a few years before moving to Or Yehuda, where they could grow their own vegetables and fruit, but a tradition of eating fish seemed to follow them inland.

Every Friday night, agristada, a lemon-infused sauce that originated with Jews in Spain before the Inquisition, was used as a dressing for fish that started their meal. The sauce became synonymous with the dish and instead of calling it fish with agristada sauce, they simply called it agristada. In their family, they used to say “there’s no life without Agristada.”

It’s a sauce that traveled from the Balkans with the expulsion and ultimately to Israel with Sasson’s sisters, who ensured their family recipes weren’t lost. They passed it on to Yehudit, who left it with her daughters. While Regina included it in a self-published cookbook she made for her granddaughter, it is her sister Bracha she turns to to make it. Fortunately, the two still spend most Friday nights together — and hopefully, with the help of the cookbook, another generation will carry on the tradition.