A Thousand Recipes (But Who’s Counting?)

It’s not a stretch to call Woodland Hills-based author Faye Levy’s 625-page “1,000 Jewish Recipes” a culinary bible. It may be the only Jewish cookbook you’ll ever need.

It begins with recipes for the Jewish holidays, starting, oddly enough, with Passover instead of Rosh Hashana. Holidays are the focus of about 300 of the dishes here. The rest are categorized by course, from appetizers to desserts.

Levy, who has written a number of reliable cookbooks, both kosher and non-kosher, alternates between Sephardic dishes and the Ashkenazic cuisine of Northern Europe and Russia, explaining the characteristics of each style. She takes advantage of the luxury she has in this volume (IDG Books Worldwide, $35) to unbutton her rich creativity and offer variation upon variation for classic dishes.

Tired of the same old potato or noodle kugel? You’ll find more than 20 kugels here, including a lush double-corn version, like a corn pudding, which I loved. Another one amounted to macaroni and cheese. For knishes, tzimmes, challah and latkes there are also dozens of options.

Yet some of the dishes, especially the salads, offered variations that seemed so subtle they hardly merited separate recipes. The corn, sweet pepper and green bean salad for Rosh Hashana is almost the same as the corn, green bean and zucchini salad with tomatoes for Shavuot. But then, the author had that 1,000-recipe challenge.

Her potato kugel with Parmesan, eggplant stuffed with rice and pine nuts, apple bread pudding made with challah, and fish fillets baked with olive oil, vinegar, white wine and pine nuts are dishes I will make again for many occasions. The old-fashioned cinnamon coffeecake could have used more filling for my taste, but its flavor and light texture took on more character after it had been set aside, well wrapped, for a day.The introduction provides a thorough explanation of the requirements of kosher food, like making sure meat is cooked until well done so there is no blood. Taking this into account, Levy wisely omits recipes for beef steaks and roasts that usually taste best when cooked medium rare.

Kosher meat is cut only from the forequarters, so the tender loin cuts are not used, and it is also not aged, which is another method for tenderizing. That makes braised and stewed dishes, like the ones included in this book, preferable to roasts or grills.

Levy’s fish dishes are also thoroughly cooked, a preference that has nothing to do with the dietary rules, so if medium-rare salmon is to your taste, simply reduce the cooking time called for.