The Sephardi Shul in Sydney is too far from my house to walk, and I always wanted to daven there. My friend who is Sephardi, kindly allowed me to sleep over at his house and have my meals there. I had a fanatastic time and my taste buds got a lesson in culture and history.
I thought it would be interesting for others to read, therefore I am posting a point form summary of some of the things I learnt and experienced.
Food
Sephardi food is very different to the type of food I usually eat, however that doesn’t mean it isn’t good, on the contrary it tastes fantastic! The spices, the aroma are out of this world. My friend’s family originally come from India and Singapore, the majority of the Sephardim who reside in Sydney come from that part of the world as well. I’ll spell out the foods phonetically and give a brief description of what each food is.
Friday Night
“Aloo makala” = basically just roast potatoes cuts up into smaller chunks
“halba” = a green dip made out of coriander, garlic, salt and fenigrade(?) seeds
“plau” = yellow rice with spices
“aruk” = fried fish balls with rice and shallots
(Plus chicken schnitzel, chicken, icecream and salad. I only mentioning the food with the Indian / Iraqi names)
“Agar agar” – hard jelly made of seaweed
Saturday Day
“Hamim” – chicken and rice cholent with whole eggs with there shells in it.
“Kaka” – round biscuit
Davening / Halacha / Custom
The Sephardim daven the whole of the Pesukei Dezimra aloud. They have 2 or 3 chazzanim who take turns reading out the psalms.
Because there are less brachot on Shabbat, they pass around “koom-koom”, a gold genie looking bottle of rose water, which everyone makes a bracha on.
While in the ark the Torah is opened for a while and then closed, before being taken to the bimah
Their davening is more or less the same in comparison to Nusach Ashkenaz, with a couple of differences in the Amida, etc. What I found very interesting was their version of Adaon Olom which had a couple of extra verses that our version does not have.
Their tunes that they sing the prayers to are unique and quite beautiful. The trop with which they lain the Torah is completely different to Ashkenazim, both in speed, style and how they accentuate the words
I had to crack my egg myself. The reason being, is that when one is in mourning, the Sephardim have a custom that another person will crack open the egg for you. I also had to eat the egg with salt as they do not have salt with eggs during the mouring period.
I have summarised my weekend in point form and have to say I had a fantastic Shabbat and was exposed to a different side of Yiddishkeit that really gave me inspiration and a greater appreciation of minhag and our different cultural heritages. At the end of day, its wonderful to think that beside all the differences we are all still part of Am Yisrael and all follow the same religion, praying to the same G-d.
(If anyone knows any websites on Sephardim, in particular recipes for their food 
please email me)