1,000 Jewish Recipes (73 page)

Dedication

This book is dedicated with love to my mother, Pauline Kahn Luria

And in loving memory of my father, Louis Kahn, and my mother- and father-in-law, Rachel and Zechariah Levy

Acknowledgments

When you're as passionate about a subject as I am about Jewish cooking, inspiration comes from a great variety of people. Growing up in an Orthodox Ashkenazic home in Washington, D.C. and being part of a close-knit Jewish community was, in a sense, the beginning of my education for this book. My active research into Jewish cooking began thirty years ago when I lived in Israel, and all along the way people have been so kind and generous with their recipes and insights on how they cook and the part food plays in their lives.

This book was my biggest undertaking ever. The challenge of researching, cooking for, and writing a book with 1,000 Jewish recipes seemed daunting. It turned out to be a pleasure and has enriched my life on many levels.

Ideas for the book came from so many sources, from people to publications to radio and television shows to the Internet, that I cannot begin to list them all. I learned from lucky encounters at Seders, parties, and markets. Relatives and strangers told me about their special herb mixtures, their beloved versions of Passover haroset, or the best grocery stores to buy treasured spices. The fondness with which people I had just met described their favorite foods and their mealtime memories fueled my enthusiasm and made for many enjoyable, interesting experiences. Many even invited me into their kitchens. I would like each person to know how much I appreciate the information he or she gave me.

I have gained so much from the questions and suggestions of students in my Jewish cooking classes and of readers of my cooking column. A warm "thank you" also goes to my immediate and my extended family as well as my husband's, and to my friends, neighbors, teachers, colleagues, and acquaintances, who contributed their knowledge of Jewish culture and cuisine. I value all I have learned about cooking and Jewish life from my mother, Pauline Kahn Luria, who emigrated as a young child from Warsaw to the United States and has lived in Jerusalem for the last thirty years. She taught me not only the secrets of tasty Ashkenazic cooking but also how to make just about any recipe kosher.

During the past three decades I have gained invaluable insights into the Yemenite Jewish lifestyle and cooking from my mother-in-law, Rachel Levy, who was born in Yemen and lived in the Tel Aviv area for most of her adult life.

I would like to thank my brother, Tzvi Kahn, who was happy to join me in such endeavors as searching for the best challah for Shabbat in his neighborhood in Jerusalem, of which he has been a proud resident for the past thirty years. No one could evoke our childhood memories as well as he. With his lifelong fascination with Jewish culture and history, he has helped me to keep apprized of new food customs becoming popular in Israel.

Each of my sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law taught me wonderful recipes and cooking tips from the meals our families shared over the years: Mati Kahn, Tzvi's wife, an immigrant to Israel from India; Hedva and Dudu Cohen, Nirit and Yahalom Levy, and Etti and Prachya Levy.

I am grateful to my husband's relatives in Israel for their tips about Sephardic cooking and the warmth of their hospitality, especially his Aunt Mazal Cohen, his cousin Sara Boni, and to Saida Avraham; his cousin Cohava Cohen in New York and his relative Dvora Cohen in Paris.

My special gratitude goes to my aunt Sylvia Saks, my late uncle Herman Saks and their children, Marilyn Saks-McMillion, Marlene Oliver and Michael Saks, for their support, ideas, and enthusiasm for my work over the years. Thanks also to my cousin Mildred Greenberg for her cooking tips.

Of our friends in Los Angeles, I especially appreciate everything I have learned from Valerie and Chaim Alon, a couple dedicated to celebrating Jewish life and good Jewish cooking with their four children. They are the best neighbors anyone could have. Thanks also to my friend Shulamit Wilder and her mother Perla Abergel for their Moroccan-Jewish specialties; and to my professional chef friend Teri Appleton, who is full of delicious ideas on every dish from hummus to cheesecake.

I also learned much from my friend in Jerusalem, Ronnie Venezia, from wonderful desserts to tasty Lebanese-Israeli cooking, and from her late mother Suzanne Elmaleh, who taught me her authentic Lebanese Jewish specialties in Ronnie's kitchen.

From Jaklyn Cohen of Holon, Israel, I learned to prepare kubbeh and other dishes of the Jews of Iraq. From Ninette Bachar of Givatayim, Israel, I learned Tunisian Jewish Shabbat dishes. Paule Tourdjman, a friend in Paris, introduced me to many dishes and traditions of Moroccan Jews. My friend Greg Dinner in London, England, a writer and food lover, encouraged me always and shared his family's traditional holiday recipes with me.

As a newlywed living in Bat Yam, Israel, I learned much from my neighbors, who patiently explained to me how they cook their heirloom dishes, and from colleagues, friends, and fellow students from many ethnic traditions, whom I met during my studies and work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Tel Aviv University.

Ruth Sirkis, Israel's best-known cookbook author, was my mentor and later my first Hebrew cookbook publisher. I appreciate all she taught me about cooking, food writing, and recipe testing during the two years I worked as her sole assistant.

Over the past decade I have been given a terrific opportunity to write regular newspaper cooking columns and thereby further explore and freely present culinary customs and recipes. In Los Angeles thanks go to Jim Burns, my editor at the
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
, and in Israel to Carl Schrag, Faye Bittker, Haim Shapiro and Batsheva Tsur, my editors at the
Jerusalem Post
.

Many other food editors of magazines and newspapers encouraged me throughout my career by their words of encouragement and by publishing my articles and recipes. I would especially like to thank Zanne Stewart and Kemp Miles Minifie of
Gourmet
magazine; Barbara Fairchild and Kristine Kidd of
Bon Appétit
magazine; Larry Levine of
Western Chef Magazine
; Russ Parsons of the
Los Angeles Times
, formerly of the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
; and Susan Puckett of the
Atlanta Journaland Constitution
, and former food editors Charles Britton of Copley Los Angeles Newspapers and Kit Snedaker of the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
.

When I was growing up in Washington, D.C., my teachers at the Hebrew Academy and at Midrasha Hebrew High School enlightened me about the Jewish heritage. In Paris during six delightful years, Anne Willan and my chef-instructors and colleagues at La Varenne Cooking School, especially Fernand Chambrette, Albert Jorant and Claude Vauguet, taught me the art of fine cuisine.

I owe a big debt of gratitude to my editor, Linda Ingroia, for her thorough reading and creative suggestions that improved the book, as well as for her good humor while gently pushing me to do my best. I also appreciate the work of Michele Laseau, Trudy Coler, and Holly Wittenberg, the designers; of Melissa Moyal and Mark Steven Long, the production editors; of Amy Gordon, the copy editor; and of recipe tester Elaine Koshrova. Thanks also to Maureen and Eric Lasher for their support and for finding a good home for my book.

Most of all, thanks to Yakir, for helping me with shopping, cooking, and eating all my renditions of gefilte fish, honey cakes, and countless other dishes, and for making it possible for me to embark on (and for sharing with me) an amazing culinary adventure that had spanned three decades and continents.

Introduction

Growing up in a traditional Jewish family means living in a cycle of celebration. The rhythm of life is dictated by the next upcoming event or holiday and Jews everywhere enjoy celebrating each one with traditional festive dishes. Food, in fact, is one of the most important elements of Jewish culture.

As children, my brother and I knew that at the end of every week there would be special dishes for Shabbat, the Sabbath—the day of rest that begins Friday at sunset and ends Saturday after sunset. We could expect to enjoy aromatic homemade chicken soup with light matzo balls, a beautiful braided challah, a golden brown roast chicken, noodle kugel with mushrooms and onions, and my mother's scrumptious chocolate applesauce cake. There were honey cakes and plenty of other sweets for Rosh Hashanah, cheesecakes for Shavuot, triangular filled pastries called hamantaschen for Purim, and a whole week of special food during Passover. In other Jewish families some of the dishes were different but all were following the same schedule of feasting.

The customs of the Jewish festivals are a major influence on Jewish cooking. Because cooking is prohibited on the Sabbath and on certain holidays, Jews around the world have created a variety of slow-cook and make-ahead main courses. Since bread is not eaten on Passover, every community has developed matzo casseroles, stuffings, and other matzo specialties.

The special element that colors Jewish food traditions is
kashrut
, the rules of keeping kosher. These regulations are not simply lists of permitted foods, but constitute a guideline for menu and recipe planning, not just for the holidays, but for 365 days a year. Keeping meat and dairy foods separate leads to an ongoing search for tasty dairy-free sauces and accompaniments to serve at meat meals. Avoiding nonkosher meats and shellfish leads to an emphasis on developing delicious dishes of fish, chicken, and kosher meat.

Like American cooking, Jewish cooking is multicultural. I first noticed the richness of the Jewish culinary culture when I lived in Israel. Growing up on such Ashkenazic specialties as gefilte fish, chopped liver, and blintzes, I assumed that these foods were what all Jews ate. I was completely unaware of Sephardic phyllo-dough
bourekas
, Moroccan couscous, and Yemenite meat soup. Discovering these dishes and their new flavors was a true awakening for me. They inspired me to explore new realms of Jewish cooking and to expand my knowledge of my own Polish-Jewish cooking background as well.

All my life I had been learning about Jewish food as part of my culture. During my college years in Israel, my passion for Jewish cooking was aroused and I began trying to learn as much as I could about my rich culinary heritage.

Fortunately, educating myself in this direction proved easy. Living in Israel for more than seven years, I was surrounded by Jews from all over the world, even from places that I had never heard of like Kurdistan and Bulgaria. My new relatives by marriage were from Yemen, Morocco, and India. I had neighbors from Tunisia and Iraq. I even found quite a few old acquaintances from my elementary and junior high school, the Hebrew Academy of Washington, D.C., who had also become motivated to move to the Jewish state. They had plenty to teach me about Russian and Hungarian-Jewish food. I continued to discover many more Jewish specialties during my years of living in two other major Jewish centers: Paris and Los Angeles.

I also went back to my mother, who has always been known in our family as an excellent cook and baker. When I was younger, I had been too busy with school to learn how to cook, but now my mother and I find great pleasure cooking together whenever we can. I encourage all parents and grandparents to follow the time-honored Jewish tradition of cooking with their children and grandchildren, as this time spent together and the knowledge gained are priceless treasures.

Like other styles of cooking in the modern world, Jewish cuisine has evolved over time. Few people cook dishes today exactly as they were prepared two hundred years ago. For example, our health concerns lead us to make chopped liver with less chicken fat than our grandmothers used, or perhaps with none at all. Sometimes we might even make vegetarian "chopped liver," but this appetizer still retains its identity with the characteristic flavor of deeply browned onions. From time to time we might add asparagus to our potato kugel, because many more fresh vegetables are available to us year round than could be found years ago in central Europe. Many of us bake our blintzes instead of frying them because today homes have ovens.

Actually, this way of creating new dishes is not new. Over the ages, it too has been part of the development of cuisine. As ingredients became available, people used them. If this had not happened, there never would have been potato latkes for Hanukkah. The dish was created in eastern Europe but potatoes come from the New World. A few hundred years ago, Ashkenazic Jews in Europe had not heard of them.

Israeli food also has had a pronounced influence on Jewish cooking. Thus we find Israeli salads, pastries, and stews in Jewish homes and restaurants from Paris to Los Angeles. Perhaps this modern Israeli style could be defined as a fusion of Mediterranean cooking with traditional Jewish foods from many lands. Because so many Jews live together and exchange ideas, Israeli home cooks are creating their own distinct version of Jewish cooking.

The increasing prominence of Israeli "cuisine" makes perfect sense. The eastern Mediterranean is not only the birthplace of kosher laws and Jewish culture, it is also where oil has always been the main cooking fat, not butter or animal fat, and where meat is rarely cooked with cream. With the increasing involvement in cultural traditions of Jews both young and old, and with the widespread interest in healthful eating, Israel is now becoming a center for the renaissance of Jewish cooking.

Even with this great diversity, a kernel of flavor remains in our group memory and food culture. We all cook dishes we remember from our childhood, especially for the holidays. This is a chain that links us to our culinary past. Recreating these unique dishes and tastes is a celebration of Jewish life.

The recipes in this book preserve the traditional tastes of the different Jewish communities and also represent the type of food that is cooked today in Jewish homes around the world. The dishes benefit from the wealth of fresh ingredients available and reflect our desire that what we eat be mostly healthful and simple to prepare.