Taboon Restarauant - Moroccan Food | Hell's Kitchen

Christmas may get most of the attention, but Hanukkah claims the deep fryer.

And, Taboon, that beacon of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food in the morass of Hell's Kitchen, is doing wonders with that hot-oil tradition this year.

Sufganiyot (raspberry-jelly-stuffed doughnuts) are everywhere this month. But Taboon's Israeli-born Ayala Hodak is frying the rare Moroccan sfing until the end of Hanukkah on Tuesday, December 27.

Made without a jelly filling, sfing are rich from the addition of egg yolks and milk. They're also intoxicatingly fragrant with orange-blossom water, which is stirred into the dough before the sfing are fried in grapeseed oil (click here for a step-by-step slide show).

The sfing emerge from the fryer in squiggles and lumps–nothing like their round brethren, doughnut holes. Hot, sweet and faintly oily, the sfing are dandy as is, but we love them best with Taboon's house tea of mint, lemon verbena and sage served in short Moroccan tea glasses.

Best of all, Hodak's sfing are free. They arrive automatically at the end of the meal alongside the check.

Thankfully, there are seven more nights of light to enjoy them.

Taboon, 773 10th Ave. (at 52nd St.); 212-713-0271