Kadeh: The Stuffed Bread of the Kurdish Jews of Zakho

Mero Ranyayi
May 29
5 min read

Kadeh: The Stuffed Bread of the Kurdish Jews of Zakho

Kadeh — also written kade, kadde, or zatila — is a Kurdish stuffed bread: a round of soft dough folded over a filling of cheese and greens, shaped into a half-moon or a flat parcel, and baked or griddled until golden, then brushed with oil and scattered with nigella seeds. It can be savoury, rich with feta and halloumi and chard, or turned sweet with dates and walnuts. And it belongs, more intimately than almost any dish in this series, to one of Kurdistan’s oldest communities: the Kurdish Jews. For the Jews of Zakho — an ancient Jewish Kurdish town in northern Iraq — kadeh was “the queen on the table.” It was the bread made for Shavuot, the dairy festival, and the memory of it is vivid: Kurdish women gathering to build a fire, laying a convex metal saj — sometimes fashioned from an old water heater — over the flames, each arriving with two bowls, one of cheese and one of her family’s own dough, taking turns to roll, fill, fold, and cook, then stacking the finished kadeh in a basket to keep warm. It was served with a tangy yogurt sauce called zizik. This is the ninety-sixth article in the series, and it opens a chapter the Kurdish table cannot be told without: the food of Kurdistan’s Jews and Christians. Kadeh is shared — Kurdish Muslims bake it, and Assyrians have their own version for Easter and Christmas — but its most lovingly recorded life is the Kurdish Jewish one, carried from Zakho to the kitchens of Jerusalem. To follow kadeh is to follow a whole community across the twentieth century.

Key Takeaways

• A Kurdish stuffed bread — dough folded over cheese and greens, griddled or baked, topped with nigella

• Treasured by the Kurdish Jews of Zakho as the Shavuot bread — “the queen on the table”

• Cooked on a saj over fire and served with a yogurt sauce called zizik

• Shared across Kurdistan’s communities — Muslim, Jewish, and Assyrian — and carried into the diaspora

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Kadeh (also Kade, Kadde, Zatila)

Strongly tied to: The Kurdish Jews of Zakho, northern Iraq; Shavuot

Filling: Cheese (feta, halloumi) and greens (spinach, chard); or sweet date and walnut

Cooked on: A saj (convex griddle) over fire, or baked; served with zizik yogurt sauce

Traditional Preparation

A simple yeasted dough — flour, water, oil, a little sugar and salt — is kneaded smooth and left to rise, then divided into small balls and rolled into rounds about six or seven inches across. The classic filling is dairy: feta blended with a melting cheese such as halloumi or mozzarella, often with cooked spinach or chard, garlic, and herbs folded through, and in some homes a spoonful of date honey to round it out. The filling is laid on one half of the round, the dough folded over into a half-moon and sealed, or wrapped fully around the filling and gently pressed back into a flat disc. Traditionally the kadeh was cooked on a saj, the convex metal griddle set over an open fire; today it is just as often baked in a hot oven on a stone. Either way it comes out golden, blistered, soft within and crisp at the edge, and is finished while hot with a brush of olive oil and a scattering of nigella seeds. It is eaten warm, torn open to release the steam and the cheese, alongside a bowl of cool, tangy zizik — the yogurt sauce that is its constant companion.

From Zakho to Jerusalem: A Kurdish Jewish Bread

Kurdistan was never only Muslim. For millennia it was home to Jews and Christians too, and the town of Zakho, on the Khabur river in the far north of Iraq, held one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world — Aramaic-speaking, deeply Kurdish in language, dress, music, and food. Kadeh was their festival bread, the centrepiece of Shavuot, when Jewish tradition calls for dairy. When the community left for Israel in the mid-twentieth century, the kadeh went with them. In a Jerusalem neighbourhood like Givat Shaul, the Zakho women rebuilt the old scene as best they could: a fire, a saj cut from a scrapped water heater, each woman with her own dough, the half-moons cooked in turns and kept warm in a basket. A grandson would later remember it as the queen of the table. This is the same instinct this series has met again and again — a Kurdish food becoming the thread a displaced people uses to hold onto home — but here it carries the added weight of a community that left Kurdistan almost entirely. To name kadeh as Kurdish, then, is also to remember that Kurdish identity has always been plural: that the saj, the cheese, the nigella, and the yogurt sauce belonged equally to Kurdish Muslims, to the Assyrians who bake their own kadeh for Christmas and Easter, and to the Jews of Zakho who made it the queen of their feast. It is one bread, and it holds a whole mosaic.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is kadeh?

Kadeh is a Kurdish stuffed bread made from a soft dough folded over a filling — most often cheese and greens such as spinach or chard, sometimes a sweet date-and-walnut mixture. It is shaped into a half-moon or flat parcel, cooked on a saj griddle or baked, and finished with olive oil and nigella seeds. It is especially associated with the Kurdish Jews of Zakho, who made it for the festival of Shavuot.

Who are the Kurdish Jews of Zakho?

Zakho is an ancient town in northern Iraqi Kurdistan that was home to one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities — Aramaic-speaking and thoroughly Kurdish in language, dress, music, and food. Most of the community emigrated to Israel in the mid-twentieth century, carrying their cuisine with them. Dishes like kadeh kept the memory of Zakho alive in their new kitchens, which is why so much of the recorded kadeh tradition comes from Kurdish Jewish families.

What is kadeh served with?

Kadeh is traditionally eaten warm with zizik, a tangy yogurt sauce often mixed with herbs or greens — part of the same Kurdish dairy world as jajeek and other yogurt dips. The cool, sour yogurt is the perfect partner to the hot, cheese-filled bread. Sweet versions, filled with dates and walnuts, are instead enjoyed with tea as an afternoon treat.

Conclusion

Kadeh is the ninety-sixth article in this series, and one of the most important, because it widens the frame. The Kurdish table was never only Muslim: it was also the table of the Jews of Zakho and the Assyrians of the northern plains, and kadeh — dough folded over cheese, cooked on a saj, scattered with nigella, dipped in yogurt — was a bread they all knew. For the Kurdish Jews especially it became something sacred and portable, the queen of the Shavuot table in Zakho and then in Jerusalem, a way of carrying a lost hometown in two bowls and a hot griddle. Ninety-six articles in, kadeh stands for the fullness of Kurdistan — a homeland of many faiths and tongues — and for the truth that a bread can keep a whole community’s memory warm long after the fire in Zakho went out.