Jewish Food: The World at Table

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Author of Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles April 15, 2005 When the El-Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia was bombed by Al Qaeda in 2002, the fragile remnant of a once thriving Jewish community was even further shattered. "The Tunisian Jewish community is one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world," said Matthew Goodman, author of "Jewish Food: The World at Table," from his home in Brooklyn, "and the site of El-Ghriba was one of the most ancient, going back, I believe, to the fifth century B.C.E. As of 1948 there were 100,000 Jews in Tunisia. Today there are fewer than 2,000." As the "Food Maven" columnist at The Forward, Goodman used his reporting skills to search out diverse cuisines of far-flung, once vital centers of Jewish life, some now on the brink of extinction. "What I tried to do with this book was to locate and preserve food traditions from communities around the world that are today endangered because the communities themselves are endangered," he said. "So many of them weren't able to survive the 20th century or survive only in the most attenuated form." More than 170 recipes, some of which have never before been written down, document the rich and varied Jewish culture of 29 countries, linked by law and ritual, yet distinguished by unique customs, traditions and celebrations, the history of a people told through its food. But what is Jewish food? Can it even be defined? "There are very few dishes that are shared by all Jewish communities around the world," Goodman noted, "only two or three, and only one shared ingredient, matzah. You couldn't define a cuisine based entirely on matzah. Jewish food is food that has been made by Jewish communities through the centuries and sustained by them, wherever they happened to be." Both Ashkenazic and Sephardic cuisines and cultures are celebrated, so you see the Sabbath stew, one of the few dishes shared by all Jewish communities -- charoset is another -- in the Solet of Hungary and the Moroccan Dafina. "Jewish Food" is an exciting read, filled with fascinating history. Did you know the mother of King Ferdinand of Spain was a converso, that Yemenites were the only people on earth who used Hebrew for communication before it became the official language of Israel and that the earliest borscht was made not from beets but from parsnips? Nestled among the recipes are essays on selected ingredients, dishes and communities, deepening our understanding of their historical context. "Food is kind of a repository of a community's history," Goodman observed. "You can see the wanderings of people over time. You can see the influence of conquest, of poverty, of travel. Food becomes a history lesson on a plate." As an example, he cited the use of pine nuts and raisins in Roman Jewish cooking, as in the Italian Matzo Fritters with Honey Syrup. "These ingredients were brought to Sicily by the Arabs where the Jews

This book is addictive. I spent an entire weekend reading it cover to cover. I received this book as an engagement present from a good friend. We are both cookbook collectors. The essays in this book are fascinating. They give you a real feel for the breadth of Jewish experiences in the diaspora. The recipies are exciting. I love to cook interesting and exotic foods and keep a strictly kosher home. It is a joy to have so many sumptuous recipes to choose from. One not of caution for the kosher crowd, I have still not been able to find all of the exotic spices and seasonings with kosher supervision. The majority - yes, but there are a few hold outs. The cookbook is still well worth the money.

This volume is almost two books in one. One part is a story of the Jewish diaspora told from the standpoint of the foods they had in their new lands. This takes the form of a series of essays that discuss the movement of food with the people. As they went to new places, they encountered new ingrediants and couldn't get others. The food had to change accordingly. These essays give a history of some of these changes and are fascinating to see how foods develop through change. The other part of the book is a cookbook of Jewish dishes from around the world. Of course there are the old standbys, mostly originating in the middle east. But the variety is what is striking here, you wouldn't think of Bombay curried fish as being a Jewish dish. What about Mexican Baked Blintzes -- what, you don't usually put poblano peppers in your blintzes. Then there's sweet and sour pot roast, brisket with coca-cola and many, many more. This is an unexpected book because so many Jewish cookbooks only have the traditionals and here there is so much more, and the stories to go with the dishes.

Okay, I know this author and I'm crazy about him. I am not what you'd call an accomplished cook, and further, I live smack in the middle of white bread country in an area where mainly Jewish people eat Jewish food and mostly in the privacy of their homes. I might not know about kreplach, kugels, and knishes, except from the Jewish folks I went to college with, and subsequently, from the few Jewish restaurants here in St. Louis, where shiksas like me go to eat exotically. On the other hand, I own a lot of cookbooks and really do use some of them on a regular basis. I watch Food TV on a fairly regular basis and pull recipes off food.com. I like to discover new (Okay, they're usually only new to me!) dishes and test them on my family and friends. Most important, I eat-a lot. While these facts hardly make me a food critic, they do make me feel completely qualified and objective in my decision to award this book all five stars. 1st star: For recipes that are easy to follow and that include vivid descriptions of the finished products. Further, a trip to my local chain grocery store confirmed that the ingredients are not difficult to find. 2nd star. For recipes that deliver, use fresh ingredients, and offer tips for simplifying preparation and also for amplifying flavors and textures. I made Petti di Pollo alle Erbe on the first night I owned this book. It was a good training dish for a Jewish food novice like me--very easy, and the recipe encourages herbs of your choice. I chose thyme and oregano and my family of five proclaimed it truly sumptuous. So encouraged, I made Potato Kugel-my first kugel ever-on the very next day, and it was another hit. The caramelized onions really rock! Next weekend I have to entertain a houseful of friends and relatives and guess what we're having? Probably one of the featured briskets, but I'm dying to try one of the meatball recipes. Conclusion: Even a tentative cook like myself can turn out a great dish using this book. I can't wait to try more. 3rd star. There is a wide selection of recipes; in fact, all the great Jewish dishes you might expect are here, along with many treasures. Recipes are presented from different countries-29 to be exact-and often offer more than one variety of a specific dish. 4th star. This book has been designed with use in mind-lots of clean, white space and good-sized, readable typefaces, making it a great choice for folks who like to write in their books (God forbid!), and those who are visually challenged. There are sections devoted to Poultry, Meat, Appetizers, etc., making it a cinch to find recipes and plan meals around the foods in your pantry-not the case with too many other cookbooks. Also, the ingredients are smartly listed like sidebars alongside the step-by-step instructions, a layout that makes a lot more sense than the usual manner of listing them above the instructions and forcing impatient readers like me to look up and down, up and down... 5th star. What's really s