"It's good to remember that cookbooks have been written in years previous to the one we're living," says Good Food’s Evan Kleiman. "I love having these books that were written in the 1980s and '90s, when research was done without the internet. People had to look at different kinds of primary sources and do a lot of traveling and interviewing of people in order to be able to write these kinds of cookbooks."
She's describing her impressive collection of Jewish cookbooks. The dozen on this list only skim the surface. "I could never choose which of these would be my favorite. But these are all a reflection not only of the place that the author is talking about but also the era in which they lived and did their research. They're all snapshots and immensely engaging," she says.
We figured that right now, after the High Holidays and amid the festivities of Sukkot, would be a perfect time to dip into Evan's archive.
Bitter Sweet by Kitty Morse. Photo credit: La Caravane Publishing
Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France
By Kitty Morse
This is a new book from author Kitty Morse who is known for her Moroccan cookbooks. She lives here in Southern California. She was going through a relative's attic and found a valise. Inside was an old notebook with handwritten recipes, the kind that were probably written by an auntie or a great-grandmother. It happens to be from the Alsatian side of her family. It tells an amazing story of occupied France as well as recipes that would be in a Jewish household during that time. We're going to interview Kitty for Good Food, so I am reading this now. I think I'll be making the Galette de Pomme de Terre, a potato galette made with sweet and russet potatoes.
The Art of Jewish Cooking by Jennie Grossinger. Photo by Elina Shatkin/KCRW
The Art of Jewish Cooking
By Jennie Grossinger
Jennie Grossinger was a member of the family that ran Grossinger's Catskills Resort Hotel. This book came out in 1958. I love it because it's a snapshot of what Jewish American cooks were making when I was growing up. If my mother had cooked from cookbooks, which she didn't, this would have been one of the cookbooks she would've had. One of my favorite things about it is that it is not only a document of Jewish American cooking but a document of its era. There is a chapter hilariously named Kugels & Charlottes. I think it's for people who aspire to make a Charlotte Russe but with onions. There is a recipe for Onion Charlotte, which I think is the perfect distillation of Jewish cooking mixed with some elevated European elements.
Dal 1880 Ad Oggi: La Cucina Ebraica Della Mia Famiglia. Photo by Evan Kleiman
Dal 1880 Ad Oggi: La Cucina Ebraica Della Mia Famiglia
By Donatella Limentani Pavoncello
I speak Italian. It was my major in college. From the time I started traveling in Italy, when I was 17, I always went to bookstores because I'm a reading nerd. This book is one that a lot of people cite. I love it for many reasons. It has this lovely cursive font so you get the sense it was a very personal choice. Most of these books are incredibly personal. These are menus of what the authors' families ate. This came out in the 1980s, I believe, and the author was from the Limentani family, which was one of the big restaurant supply families in the Jewish ghetto. Every time I went to Italy in the '70s, '80s or '90s, I would always go to Limentani and run riot buying knives and forks and amazing stuff. You can pretty much open this to any page, and it's really interesting. There's a holiday recipe for a Torta di Mandorle and Chocolata, a flourless almond and chocolate torte made with sugar and egg whites.
Chiacchere alla Giudia
By Mirella Calo
This is not a cookbook but I saw the artichokes on the cover. The title kind of means "Jewish chats" or "Jewish conversations." It's almost like a play that takes place in different places around the Jewish ghetto in Rome. A lot of it is written in the Roman Jewish dialect, which I find fascinating. And because it's about Jews, there's a lot of food in it even though it's not a cookbook. I really love it because it's a slice of life.
The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews by Edda Servi Machlin.
The Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews
By Edda Servi Machlin
This was really the first book that came out in the United States in English that told the story of Italian Jews from the point of view of a woman whose family was Jewish and lived in this very small town, Pitigliano. It told the story of Pitigliano as well as her family's recipes. I've made many, many recipes in this book. The one that I made a lot was a Lemon Juice-Marinated Fried Chicken. It's unusual because the chicken is dredged in flour then in egg then fried. It has a very different kind of texture.
A Russian Jew Cooks In Peru by Violeta Autumn. Photo by Elina Shatkin/KCRW
A Russian Jew Cooks In Peru
By Violeta Autumn
The great thing about collecting Jewish cookbooks is that because we're a diaspora people, the books reflect cultures from all over the world. The introductions always tell you a story about the history of how the Jewish people found their way to that particular place, and how their cuisine intermingled with the larger cuisine of the country. This book also had a little gem tucked into the book — a handwritten recipe card for Aji de Gallina, the famous Peruvian chicken and chili sauce.
I love the introduction of this book where the author says, "Basically, immigrants as a breed only last one generation because, of course, the children become something else. The children become more of the country. They create a chance condition that is fragile in its permanence. The immigrant never loses his traditional ways but he does assimilate the new and so manages to create something unique, which lives as he lives and then it's gone. That's what this book is all about. It's an attempt at recording one such moment in history that happens to taste awfully good." That paragraph can describe so many cookbooks written by immigrants.
Onions are a theme in Jewish cooking, so there is a whole recipe and thoughts about cooking onions. The author says, "This is the secret of what makes Yiddish dishes taste so Yiddish and also what makes Peruvian dishes taste Yiddish too."
A Taste of the Past: The Daily Life and Cooking of a 19th Century Hungarian Jewish Homemaker
By András Koerner
This book is quite different. It's more anthropological. It's almost like reading a novel. It puts you in the shoes of the women who were cooking at that time, in that place. The food is amazing, particularly the baked goods. For example, there's a great recipe for Potato Noodles with Poppy Seeds. Yum!
Cookbook of the Jews of Greece by Nicholas Stavroulakis. Photo credit: Kitchen arts & Letters
Cookbook of the Jews of Greece
By Nicholas Stavroulakis
Once again, here's a book that takes you through the history of the Jews of Greece, which is long. It gives you an insight into how they celebrate holidays. Many of these books concentrate on holidays because they're so indicative of tradition. It's a lovely book and it opens automatically to this page for buñuelos, written here as boumwelos. These ones are made from matzah, so it's another great matzah frying tradition, this one from Rhodes and Salonika.
La Cucina Ebraica Tripolina by Linda G. Hassan. Photo by Elina Shatkin/KCRW
La Cucina Ebraica Tripolina
By Linda G. Hassan
I got this book, which is written in Italian, in Italy. It focuses on the Italian cuisine of the Jews in Tripoli. Italy colonized Libya so there's this link between the two countries, and Jews have lived in Libya since Babylonian times. It's a really interesting book because there aren't a lot of Libyan cookbooks in English or Italian. The recipes are awesome.
There's this kind of dough, which in Morocco is called warqa. It's like filo but it's made differently. This is the only book I've seen that has a picture of how to do it. If you make these sheets of dough properly, then the bourekas that you make with them are unbelievably thin and shatteringly crisp but they also have a delicacy that you wouldn't get with filo, which is thicker.
One of the things I loved in this book are the stuffed vegetable recipes. There's a whole chapter on them. In Libya there is this tradition of stuffing potatoes. Sometimes they're made by stuffing meat between slices but this one is actually made in a similar way to an Italian potato croquette, with mashed potatoes then filled with a ground meat mixture. It's a fun book because it's so visual.
The German-Jewish Cookbook by Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman. Photo credit:Brandeis University Press
The German-Jewish Cookbook
By Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman
These are the kinds of baked goods that I grew up with and really love. It's interesting because the Jewish community in Germany was one of the most assimilated in the world until World War II, when it was almost completely wiped out. So these recipes are important and the stories are important to read. The book does so many amazing things with potatoes — soups, salads, entrees. And the cakes! There are recipes for a Chocolate Hazelnut Torte, another flourless chocolate cake featuring hazelnuts, which I really love. Chocolate Cherry Cake. Marble Cake. Orange Cake. The kinds of cakes that you take out when people visit or for a coffee klatsch.
Olive Trees & Honey by Gil Marks. Photo credit: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Olive Trees & Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World
By Gil Marks
Gil Marks is a wonderful author. Vegetarian cooking in the Jewish community is really huge because of kashrut, so it behooves Jewish chefs to know how to do a lot with vegetables. This has dishes from Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Persian and Georgian traditions. For example, there's a braised cabbage dish from India and there's also a Middle Eastern dish of cabbage stuffed with bulgur.
The Aromas of Aleppo by Poopa Dweck. Photo by Elina Shatkin/KCRW
The Aromas of Aleppo
By Poopa Dweck
This book is gorgeous. And the food of Syria is one of the great cuisines of the world. I've made Poopa Dweck's recipe for Caramelized Onions Stuffed with Ground Meat and Rice several times, and it's fantastic. You cook an onion until it starts to fall apart in the pan. Then, you unwrap the layers and stuff them with a meat mixture and you braise the whole thing. It's delicious.
She has great tips for how to make simple things, like olives and salads, more interesting. For example, she suggests making a bulgur salad with tamarind, which I love because I love zing. Nowadays, you would probably see that salad made with pomegranate molasses, so it's good to be reminded that there are other sours and they work in different ways. Even something as simple as a tomato salad can be tweaked. The book has a recipe for one that's made with lemon and allspice. When's the last time you used allspice in a tomato salad? Something simple can transform something that is familiar into something very different.