Sabich

Sabich

Course	Breakfast (among Iraqi Jews) and Street food (entire country), Sandwich
Place of origin	Israel
Main ingredients	pita, eggplant, hard boiled eggs, Israeli salad, amba, parsley, tahini sauce, and hummus
Ingredients generally used	potato, onion, and zhug
Cookbook: Sabich   Media: Sabich

Sabich or sabih (Hebrew: סביח‎ [saˈbix]) is an Israeli sandwich popular mostly in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area in Israel which consists of pita stuffed with fried eggplant and hard boiled eggs. Local Israeli consumption is said to have stemmed from a tradition among Iraqi Jews, who ate it on Shabbat morning.^[1]

Etymology

The food is named for the founder of the first sabich stand in Israel, Sabich Tsvi Halabi, a Jewish man born in Iraq.

A popular folk etymology is that Sabich comes from the Arabic word صباح [sˤaˈbaːħ], which means "morning", as the ingredients in the sabich are typical for an Iraqi Jewish breakfast‎.^[2]

Ingredients

Sabich, served in pita bread, traditionally contains fried eggplant slices, hard-cooked eggs, a thin tahini sauce (tahini, lemon juice, and garlic), Israeli salad, chopped parsley, and amba. Some versions use boiled potatoes. Traditionally it is made with haminados eggs, slow-cooked in Hamin until they turn brown. According to the diner's preference it can be served topped with green or red zhug as a condiment and sprinkled with minced onion.

History

Sabich was brought to Israel by Iraqi Jews who moved in the 1940s and 1950s. On the Sabbath, when no cooking is allowed, Iraqi Jews ate a cold meal of precooked fried eggplant, boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. In Israel, these ingredients were stuffed in a pita and sold as fast food. In the 1950s and 1960s, vendors began to sell the sandwich in open-air stalls.^[3] There is a rural version called Sabich salad (Salat Sabich in Hebrew)

Gallery

See also

• Cuisine of the Mizrahi Jews
• Israeli cuisine
• Jewish cuisine
• Culture of Israel
• Middle Eastern cuisine

References