The Sweet and the Savory: Diving into Yemenite Cuisine with Zehorit Heilicher

On a cold January night, a fragrant, steaming bowl of Yemenite chicken soup is the perfect recipe for combating the chill and darkness of midwinter. And, to Zehorit Heilicher, it’s a recipe that everyone can follow. That’s why she’ll be teaching it as part of her class, Spice & Fragrance, at Bet Shalom on January 23.

“I want people to go home and feel like, “oh, I can do that!’” Zehorit said about the menu planned for the evening. “’That was really fun and I can make it at home.’”

Zehorit has been teaching cooking for the past 15 years, and sees her teaching as a way to make good food accessible to the average home chef, and to supply them with useful, everyday skills.

“I see myself as a bridge between professional chefs and home chefs,” she said. “Learning from professional chefs and helping home chefs become more empowered to cook in their own homes and cook for themselves. Think locally, think seasonally, think flavorfully, healthfully, all of those things. That’s part of my passion.”

Not only is Spice & Fragrance a way to feel more empowered in the kitchen, it’s also a chance to learn more about Yemenite cuisine.

“As a native Yemenite, a Yemenite-Israeli, I grew up with the food,” explains Zehorit. “Then moving here, I really missed the flavors, because there are no Yemenite restaurants. There’s nothing like that here. The only way I can experience it is if I make it.”

What better way to learn about culture than through some delicious food? On the evening of January 23, warm up your taste buds with a menu of Yemenite chicken soup, made with hawayej, a Yemenite soup spice mix that makes the end result “golden, fragrant, flavorful, with a little bit of heat in it.”

“It’s a simple menu in a way, but it’s giving people a taste of Yemenite cuisine, the sweet and the savory, without overwhelming them, and giving them something that hopefully they will take home and be able to use,” Zehorit says.

Yum. Sign us up.

And if this delicious menu wasn’t enough to pique your interest and your appetite, Spice & Fragrance is part of an event series meant to bring more awareness to Yemenite-Israeli culture. Dreamed up by the Israel Center of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation and Bet Shalom, these two events will be a deep (and delicious) dive into the topic. Zehorit will also be moderating The Art of Leaving: An Evening with Ayelet Tsabari on February 20. Ayelet is the award-winning author of the memoir The Art of Leaving. Candid, smart, and at times gut-wrenching, the memoir follows Ayelet as she travels the world in search of herself and a sense of home while grappling with her identity as an Israeli of Yemeni descent.

Home and Yemenite identity are themes that strike close to home for Zehorit.

“I look forward to talking to her about the concept of home, and where we belong,” she says of the chance to be in conversation with Ayelet. “I’ve struggled with it in different ways, and she has as well. I thought her book was so candid and raw. It takes courage to truly to stand naked in the town square and say, ‘This is me!, This is all of me!’”

It’s an event series bound to be both enlightening and delicious. And food, says Zehorit, is a fantastic bridge between people.

“That’s what we share, all of us. When somebody makes something for us, and you sit at a table and share a meal, it’s an expression of love,” she says. “We feel loved, we feel taken care of, connected. That’s the power of food.”

Spice & Fragrance is the first in a two-event series focusing on Yemeni-Israeli culture. It is currently sold out (more tickets may be released soon—stay tuned—but you can still buy tickets to the second event featuring author Ayelet Tsabiri