celebratory meals. Cooked, stuffed and baked vegetables are central to the cuisine, as are various kinds of beans, chickpeas, lentils and burghul (cracked wheat). Rice takes the place of potatoes. Coming from the Mediterranean and "sunny" climes, Mizrahi cuisine is often light, with an emphasis on salads, stuffed vegetables and vine leaves, olive oil, lentils, fresh and dried fruits, herbs and nuts, and chickpeas. Meat dishes often make use of lamb or ground beef. Fresh lemon juice is added to many soups and sauces. Many meat and rice dishes incorporate dried fruits such as apricots, prunes and raisins. Pine nuts are used as a garnish. Pomegranate juice is a staple of Persian Jewish cooking. Kubbeh, a meat-stuffed bulgur dumpling, features in the cooking of many Mizrahi communities. It is served in the cooking broth, as a kind of soup. Sephardic cuisine in particular is known for its considerable use of vegetables unavailable to the Ashkenazim of Europe, including spinach, artichokes, pine nuts and (in more modern times) squash. The cooking style is largely Middle Eastern, with significant admixtures of Spanish, Italian and North African flavors. The most popular Sephardic and Mizrahi dishes include malawach, jachnun, sabich, mofletta, meorav yerushalmi, kubaneh, skhug and amba. Mizrahi Jewish cuisine has many unique dishes that were eaten by Jews in Iraq, Eastern Turkey, Kurdistan, Iran and Yemen. Shabbat and holiday dishes Shabbat Good food is an important part of the mitzvah of oneg Shabbat ("enjoying Shabbat"), hence much of Jewish cuisine revolves around Shabbat. As observant Jews do not cook on Shabbat, various techniques were developed to provide for a hot meal on Shabbat day. One such dish is cholent or chamin, a slow-cooked meat stew with many variations. The ingredients are placed in a pot and put up to boil before lighting the candles on Friday evening. Then the pot is placed on a hotplate, traditional blech (thin tin sheet used to cover the flames and on which the pot is placed), or in a slow oven and left to simmer until the following day. Cholent emerged in ancient Judea, possibly as far back as the Second Temple period. Over the centuries, as Jewish diaspora communities developed, they created variations of the dish based on the local climate and available ingredients. A prominent feature of Shabbat cookery is the preparation of twists of bread, known as challot or (in southern Germany, Austria and