My family had one Jewish cookbook growing up. Apparently, Jennie Grossinger was all we needed to get us through preparing holiday meals. I also remember thumbing through my grandmother’s endearingly stained and splattered copy of the “The Settlement Cookbook,” which I looked at for quaint, socially outmoded amusement rather than indispensable kitchen instruction.
That’s a total of only two Jewish cookbooks I saw for the first several decades of my life.
Times have changed. I may no longer have Jewish grandmas to show me the ropes, but boy, do I have books. The jumble of Jewish-themed cookbooks in my own kitchen includes ones by Claudia Roden, Gil Marks and Yotam Ottolenghi, to name a few, and yet my collection barely scratches the surface of relevant tomes that have hit the market since I’ve had my own kitchen and a family to feed.
Now that an artisanal deli has become a must-have attraction in any city worth its kashering salt, the publishing industry is finally catching up with trends in Jewish food. “The Mile End Cookbook” became a hit when the celebrated Brooklyn deli released its recipes in late 2012. So far, 2015 has seen intriguing new additions, with titles that pull deeply from the historical well while hewing to current sensibilities.
These authors would rather you ditch the Lipton onion soup mix and embrace from-scratch authenticity and seasonality. So, a glance at a typical “K” index means kabocha squash, kale, karpas, kasha, kebabs and kreplach.
Food writer Leah Koenig’s fresh take and wide-ranging palate in “Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes & Customs for Today’s Kitchen” (Chronicle Books, $35) is a personal and progressive contribution to the genre. “I wrote ‘Modern Jewish Cooking’ for the next generation of Jewish cooks,” Koenig states in the introduction. “My hope is that it makes the dishes from the past feel accessible and relevant, while leaving room for experimentation and personal expression.”
[RECIPE: ROAST CHICKEN WITH FENNEL AND ORANGE]
The Brooklyn-based author, who regularly contributes to outlets such as the Forward and Tablet, and wrote “The Hadassah Everyday Cookbook” in 2011, embraces a heterogeneous worldview and makes broad connections throughout the book’s 11 chapters. Her miso-roasted asparagus recipe isn’t like the proverbial needle scratching the record, but rather part of a logical gastronomical gestalt.
“Modern Jewish Cooking” is accessible and aspirational enough to be the perfect gift for Jewish millennials who want to start getting their hands dirty by making foods with memories attached, along with dishes fit for a meal at their favorite Brooklyn or Silver Lake farm-to-table restaurants. It helps that Koenig includes tips for “stocking your kitchen like a grown-up.”
[RECIPE: CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH APRICOT JAM FROSTING]
But the book might also reinspire home cooks stuck in old habits. The recipes are technically kosher, and the final chapter focuses on Jewish holidays, but Koenig doesn’t consider it a “kosher” cookbook.
Kashrut laws notwithstanding, all these titles jettison any stubborn food purism. Koenig includes a recipe for jalapeno-shallot matzah balls, a twist that overlaps with the unconventional ingredients in “The Community Table: Recipes & Stories From the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan & Beyond” (Grand Central Publishing Life & Style, $35). Culled from members of the JCC, “The Community Table” makes the leap from the individual to a broader social and cultural network. Photos of adorable kids cooking probably won’t interest a 20-something amateur cook, but they might entice people in later stages of life.
[RECIPE: KALE, FARRO AND CARROT SALAD]
“We are three New York women, all mothers, wives and committed cooks: one art historian, one professional chef, one organic vegetable gardener; one traditional, one Conservative, one Reform Jew,” authors Katja Goldman, Judy Bernstein Bunzl and Lisa Rotmil write.
The recipes and beautiful photography radiate warmth and a smart melding of the old and the new. The 21st Century Whitefish Salad recipe, for instance, features Greek yogurt, salmon caviar and a serving suggestion of Belgian endive leaves in lieu of a bagel. A chart in the appendix categorizes every recipe into dairy, meat or pareve, followed by Shabbat and holiday menu suggestions, and the book’s kosher-for-Passover content.
[RECIPE: LIGHT & CREAMY CHEESECAKE WITH NUT BRITTLE & BLUEBERRIES]
Shifting from the Northeast to the West Coast, Berkeley-based winemaker Jeff Morgan and his wife, Jodie, together have authored the lovely “The Covenant Kitchen,” which leaves this reader coveting a seat at their welcoming, abundant dinner table.
[RECIPE: SUMMERTIME TOMATO SALAD WITH TAHINI]
“The book illustrates our life here in Northern California, where — after growing up in assimilated, secular families — we have rediscovered our Jewish heritage while making kosher wines” sold under the Covenant Wines label Jeff started with the help of Southern California-based Herzog Wine Cellars in 2003. “The Covenant Kitchen” also tells the moving story of how the Morgans came to make what are some of the most respected kosher wines in the world while deepening their connections to Jewish life and practice, as well as with Israel.
Although former Wine Spectator magazine editor and vintner Jeff Morgan pegs his interest in food and wine to the time he lived in the south of France during his former professional life as a musician — traditional French techniques and flavors appear in many of the recipes — living in California has expanded the couple’s culinary leanings. Hence, recipes for ginger sesame noodles and lamb chops with cilantro chimichurri sauce and warm quinoa salad.
The book is oriented toward kosher households, with the caveat that “you don’t have to keep kosher to make and enjoy the dishes featured here.” Wine lovers will appreciate the special focus the Morgans give to the fruit of the vine. The chapter about wine discusses the winemaking process at Covenant, provides historical facts about Jews and wine, and outlines a basic primer that addresses a range of frequently asked questions. Suggested pairings accompany each recipe, too.
Despite including ingredients that are largely available in most grocery stores, quality and freshness matter to the couple, who spent years producing much of their own food on their Napa Valley ranch before moving to Berkeley. “The Jews of antiquity dined well for thousands of years without margarine and other processed foods. We tend to follow their lead,” they write.
Along these lines, “The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen” by Fania Lewando (Schocken Books, $30) reminds us how all that was old is new again. Joan Nathan’s foreword outlines how the book came to be after she met Barbara Mazur and Wendy Waxman, a team who found the manuscript at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and were eager to get it published.
“The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook” reprints Eve Jochnowitz’s translations of Lewando’s terse and prolific recipes, which were originally published in 1938 and comprised Europe’s first female-authored, Yiddish language vegetarian cookbook. Jewish cuisine has always included many vegetarian recipes because of kashrut laws, but Nathan provides additional spiritual and political context about Lewando, who owned a kosher dairy restaurant in old Vilnius that doubled as a salon of sorts for creative types and visitors, such as Marc Chagall, as well as a cooking school.
[THREE RECIPES FROM 'THE VILNA VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK]
“Lewando created a Jewish culinary palette that celebrated nature’s bounty,” Nathan writes. “In meatless meals, long viewed as indicators of hardship and sorrow, Lewando found bright flavor and the key to health and well-being.” Beautiful illustrations from vintage seed packets add another historically compelling touch (after all, Lewando worked in the era long before “food stylist” was a legitimate job title).
The book is also a primary source for the Jewish vegetarian movement that grew under the looming menace of the Holocaust. (Lewando and her husband died while escaping the Vilna ghetto about three years after it was published.) The tome is complete with platitudes about diet and health, excerpts from the guest book at Lewando’s restaurant, and a prescient chapter with “vitamin drinks” and juice recipes.
Lewando did not embrace an abstemious philosophy, given that she wrote recipes for wine, mead and liqueurs. Why make breadcrumbs from stale rolls when you can make kvass? So, when you’re out buying summer produce, look no further than Lewando’s legacy to find arguably the most appropriate use of your haul. And, ideally, it will be fresh enough to please her discerning tastes and standards.
