Mafrum Kitchen Co. | Mediterranean Family Recipes & Slow Catering

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Seasonal Sourcing

We work with three farms in the Galilee and a single olive press in the lower Golan. Nothing else.

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Slow Sauces

Our tomato base simmers for fourteen hours. The cumin is toasted whole the morning of service.

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Family Catering

Weddings, holidays, anniversaries. We cook for twelve to three hundred, and we will not ship outside the country.

From the kitchen

Six dishes worth a slow afternoon

A small preview of the recipe book. Hand-written ingredient lists, the why behind each step, and the one detail nobody bothers to mention.

Stuffed Vegetables · 2h 40m

Mafrum Potatoes

Roasted potatoes split open, stuffed with seasoned beef, simmered in tomato-chraime until the skin is silk.

For 6 at table★ Family favorite

Slow Stew · 3h 10m

Friday Chraime

Tomato-paprika fish stew the color of the sunset, eaten with bread that's older than the fish.

For 4 at tableSabbath standard

Pasta · 4h 20m

Hand-Rolled Couscous

Semolina rolled grain by grain on a flat tray, steamed three times, served under everything.

For 8 at tablePatience required

Pastry · 1h 40m

Sfenj at Sunrise

Yeasted doughnuts fried in olive oil, dusted with powdered sugar, eaten standing in the kitchen.

Makes 18Breakfast tradition

Salad · 25m

Tripolitan Carrot

Cooked carrots crushed with cumin, harissa, and lemon. Served cold, eaten warm.

For 6 at tableAlways first out

Round khobz flatbreads on a wooden board

Bread · 6h total

Saturday Khobz

Round loaves baked the night before, torn by hand, used for everything that follows.

Makes 4 loavesStarter required

Anatomy of the dish

Inside one mafrum.

Cross-section of a single mafrum potato, with every ingredient and method annotated. We worked out the labels with a real Tripolitan cook from Bat Yam before drawing the lines.

Annotated anatomy diagram of a mafrum with six labels

Cross-section, with labels. Cook the components separately; assemble at the end.

Our Story

The recipe books were lost. The kitchen wasn't.

Our grandmother left Tripoli in 1948 with a single brass pot and the memory of every dish her mother had ever made. She rebuilt the kitchen from scratch in a small apartment in Jaffa, and three of us grew up eating from it.

Mafrum Kitchen is a quiet attempt to write down what she never bothered to. The stuffed potatoes. The fish in chraime. The long Saturday couscous. The carrot salad nobody could ever quite replicate, until we asked her three times in a row to do it slowly.

We don't sell the recipes. We send one a week to anyone who asks, and we cater family events when the schedule allows.

"You don't need a recipe. You need a slow afternoon and someone you love at the table."

Three generations of the Mafrum family, in the kitchen

The family, around 1978.

Catering

Three ways to set the table

We cook for twelve to three hundred. Drop us a note describing the occasion and we'll write back with a menu.

The Small Table

For 8–16 guests at home.

₪180 / per guest

One main, three salads, bread
Cooked in your kitchen
Hand-off in person, no waitstaff
Saturday and weekday evenings
One week of lead time
Minimum ₪1,800 for the table

Most asked

Family Sabbath

For 20–60 guests at venue.

₪380 / per guest

Full Friday menu, eight courses
Sabbath-compliant preparation
Service team of three
Includes Saturday lunch leftovers
Two weeks of lead time
Minimum ₪9,500 for the evening

Large Event

For 60–300 guests, multi-day.

from ₪650 / per guest

Custom menu, twelve+ dishes
Full kitchen + service team
Weddings, anniversaries, bnei mitzvah
Site visit included
Six weeks of lead time
Quoted per event after a kitchen call

What guests say

Tables we've cooked for

"My grandmother cried at the carrot salad. She hadn't tasted that exact thing since she was a little girl in Tripoli. We didn't tell her we'd cried in the kitchen too."

Dafna H.

Family Sabbath, Ramat Gan

"We had thirty cousins at the wedding. Three were vegetarians, four were on diets, two had peanut allergies. Mafrum cooked for all of them without ever making us feel like a logistical problem."

Yair & Lena

Wedding, Ein Gedi

"The Friday newsletter is the only one I actually read. Three years now. I cook from it every other week. It's slowly turned me into someone who knows how to host."

Mira K.

Recipe subscriber, 4 years

Frequently asked

Before you write to us

Is the recipe newsletter actually free?

Yes. One recipe every Friday, no upsell, no platform, no tracking pixels. The catering side is what pays for the kitchen, and that's by design.

Do you ship outside the country?

No. The food we cook doesn't travel well, and the people we cook for are the kind of people who'll come to our kitchen. We've turned down very generous offers and we're going to keep doing that.

Are the recipes kosher? Halal? Vegetarian-friendly?

Our home kitchen is kosher and most recipes are easily adapted. The Family Sabbath catering tier is fully kosher-compliant including preparation timing. About a quarter of the recipe book is vegetarian by default.

How far ahead do I need to book a catering event?

One week for the Small Table, two weeks for Family Sabbath, six weeks for a Large Event. We sometimes have shorter notice availability — write and ask.

Can I learn to cook these recipes with you in person?

A few times a year we host small kitchen sessions for four to six people. We don't advertise them — they go out only to the newsletter list. Subscribe and you'll hear when the next one opens.

Who is "we"?

Two sisters, our mother, and a part-time prep cook who's been with us nine years. Our grandmother, who started all of this, passed in 2019 at ninety-six. Her brass pot is still on the stove.

Slow food,old countryfamily kitchen.