Food

For anyone who has grown up in a Jewish household, deli is a byword for comfort, promising big cushy booths and matzah ball soup and old-fashioned sodas, egg creams and malteds. Portions tend to be oversized and unabashedly hearty; the deli menu may be the only one in America immune to the scourge of the side salad.

While growing up in Jewish Los Angeles, I was exposed to many traditional Ashkenazic dishes — kreplach, cheese blintzes and strudel, to name a few. But it wasn’t until I developed an interest in cooking that I realized most other cultures have similar dishes. Kreplach reminds me of Italian ravioli or Chinese pot-stickers, and the wrapping for cheese blintzes is the same as French crepes. My mother always put egg noodles in chicken soup, similar to Italian fettuccini. And the cabbage strudel that I make is like what the Hungarian strudel bars in Budapest serve.