Biscochitos: New Mexico’s state cookie strikingly similar to Jewish korzhiki

What’s in a name? Maybe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but when Elderhostel changed its name to Road Scholar, well, which one would you rather attend?

As I write this, I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my friends Anna and Felix Livits of Fullerton on a learning adventure with Road Scholar, the nonprofit educational travel organization for seniors. We are here to learn about New Mexico’s Converso and Crypto-Jews who were expelled from Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition. (Conversos were forced to convert to Christianity; Crypto-Jews have kept their Judaism a secret for centuries.)

One of our fascinating lecturers was Isabelle Medina Sandoval, author of “Guardians of Hidden Treasures,” a historical novel about generations of Crypto-Jews, beginning in Spain in the late 1300s and ending in New Mexico. They hid from the Inquisition, seeking freedom in the New World.

Dr. Sandoval’s own converted Catholic family, whose ancestors originated from Toledo, Spain, came to New Mexico in 1598, through Mexico.

One of the ways Jewish traditions were kept alive through the centuries was in the cooking and baking. Many of the dishes prominent in New Mexico’s cuisine are strikingly similar to the Jewish dishes passed down through the centuries.

Case in point: biscochitos, New Mexico’s state cookie.

“My Catholic family used to make them for Christmas,” Dr. Sandoval said. “Yet my mother used butter, not lard. I use Crisco.”

Dr. Sandoval brought us cookies to sample. My friend Anna, who emigrated to the U.S. with her family from Belarus in 1989, said, “My mom used to make a very similar cookie called korzhiki. Felix said that they look like his mother’s korzhiki too.

“I googled it in Russian and found a similar recipe,” she added. “When I was a little girl, my mother would roll the dough and put holes in it with a fork. She’d add the sugar and cut out diamond shapes or rounds with a glass. The little pieces left over she gave to us, and we made our own shapes.

“My father used to say that our family came from Spain, then went to Austria and then to Belarus after the Inquisition,” Anna said, recalling that another of our lecturers, cultural anthropologist Ron Duncan Hart, noted that some Jews fleeing the Inquisition fled to the Netherlands, Balkans, North Africa and Belarus. “I started thinking maybe my father was right.”

Dr. Sandoval did not have a written recipe, instead she makes the cookies by feel. I found the one featured here on New Mexico’s website.

Fullerton’s Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook.” Her website is cookingjewish.com.

Biscochitos

This recipe for New Mexico’s state cookie is from newmexico.org.

Note: Jewish bakers would use butter, margarine or shortening, never lard.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 to 11/2 teaspoons ground anise
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 pound lard, softened
• 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons sweet white wine, brandy, rum, apple or pineapple juice
• Topping: 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method:

1. Sift together flour, baking powder, anise, and salt.