This New Year, did you sit down to a steaming bowls of chicken soup with kneidlach followed by a hearty, slow-cooked brisket and kugel? Or was the main dish a pot of Tunisian t’fina pakaila (a meaty Rosh Hashanah stew) packed with white beans, spinach and herbs with Persian jewelled rice (morasa polo)?
Bourekas sit side by side with bagels and chremslach with kibbeh. Where many Ashkenazim living in the UK would have stuck to our traditional Eastern European-influenced feast, we’re now studding everything with pomegranates, scattering pistachios on salads and cakes, and slathering hummus on our Shabbat challah.
Jewish food has always reflected the dishes of the community in which we lived. Former JC food editor, Evelyn Rose was ahead of the curve when she touched on the variety of our cuisine in her New Complete International Jewish Cuisine in 1976; and in 1997, Claudia Roden took us on a journey around in the world with her Book of Jewish Food.
What’s different now is that many of the recipes that before we’d only read about in the pages of those books are now more common on our tables and on menus in restaurants, cafes and market stalls around the world.
A new book gives an encyclopaedic snap shot of Jewish food in the 21st century. “The 400 recipes in my book capture Jewish food as it is today” says author, Leah Koenig, who drew upon knowledge, gleaned during her time as editor of The Jew and the Carrot — the food and sustainability blog founded by US Jewish environmental group, Hazon.
Although the book took two years to write — and another year to edit — she didn’t clock up too many air miles. “I didn’t have to do too much travelling to write this book. I’d done so much in the past as part of my work, so could draw on connections I’d made then. I also benefit from living in a very diverse city with lots of Jewish communities” says the New Yorker.
“The interesting thing about the Jewish global population, is that even though there are a lot of places where there is no longer a Jewish community, I could research their food in other countries. I found a Moroccan community in Montreal; Syrians and Russians in Brooklyn and a Turks in Seattle. The Turkish community is one of the oldest Sephardi populations in the US.”
Home cooks from these communities provided her with ample recipes, and she discovered that not only does our food differ from country to country and region by region, it even differs by village.
“My friend’s grandmother is from Turkey and said her stuffed vine leaves are totally different from the ones cooked in neighbouring villages. Everyone’s version differs a little. My problem was which was the more accurate recipe to go with? I had to make that call or create my own recipe from a combination of theirs.”
Despite the huge variations in Jewish cuisine globally, she still felt all the foods were somehow familiar. “There are ‘through-lines’ in our food — kosher, our religious holidays and Shabbat — that link all the recipes.”
She recalls a visit to the home of Ethiopian chef, Beejy Barhany, who, as a four year old, had been airlifted from Ethiopia to Israel during Operation Moses. Barhany grew up in Israel, but had settled in New York after her national service. “She runs an amazing Ethiopian restaurant with Israeli influences.”
“I cooked with her when I was writing about Ethiopian Jewish food. We sat in her apartment in Brooklyn as she made a lentil dish and a chicken dish — both in the book — that are traditionally eaten for Shabbat. The air was full of garlic and onions cooking. It was just before Shabbat, and even though I’d never eaten that dish, it just felt so familiar. I had this crystallising moment of realising the closeness of Jewish cuisine and those through-lines.”
She had a similar experience as a newly-wed on her honeymoon in Rome. “This was another watershed. Through a friend of a friend we ended up eating stracotto — a beef stew — cooked by a kosher caterer on Shabbat. I had actually been a vegetarian for ten years before that, but it looked so delicious, I decided to eat meat. I literally said to my husband — ‘when in Rome’!”
The new dishes she tried also felt familiar. Home cooking for her had been traditional Ashkenazi fare. “My mother’s family were from Hungary and she used to talk about an amazing pull-apart cake that was like a giant cinnamon bun. Her grandmother used to make it — it’s the kind of thing you’d only eat at your bubbe’s.” The recipe for this cake, aranygaluska, that translates as golden dumpling, is also in the book.
Included in the book are a series of recipes from some of the top Israeli and Jewish chefs in the world. “This new crop of chefs has brought Jewish cooking into the international spotlight. I wanted to show the increasingly defining role they are playing in the celebration and evolution of Jewish food far beyond Jewish communities.” Her chosen chefs, have restaurants across the globe — from the US and Mexico to the UK, Germany and Poland as well as Australia and Israel. Each shares recipes, which include rose tahini from US-based chef, Alon Shaya; pistachio cheesecake from Parisian Florence Kahn, and grilled versht (beef salami) and apricots with honey and mustard from Canadian Anthony Rose.
For Koenig, the book feels like the personal and professional culmination of the last 12 years. “I feel an excitement about Jewish food that I wanted to capture.”
