Jewish Cooking in America by Joan Nathan

From Barnes & Noble

This revised edition of Joan Nathan's award-winning winning book is a companion to the upcoming 26-part PBS TV series, "Jewish Cooking in America with Joan Nathan" that includes over 100 photographs and illustrations. 35 recipes have never been printed.

From the Publisher

This rich tapestry of more than three centuries of Jewish cooking in America gathers together some 335 kosher recipes, old and new. They come from both Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews who settled all over America, bringing with them a wide variety of regional flavors, changing and adapting their traditional dishes according to what was available in the new country.

What makes Jewish cooking unique is the ancient dietary laws that govern the selection, preparation, and consumption of observant Jews. Food plays a major part in rituals past and present, binding family and community. It is this theme that informs every part of Joan Nathan’s warm and lively text.

Every dish has a story–from the cholents (the long-cooked rich meat stews) and kugels (vegetable and noodle puddings) prepared in advance for the Sabbath, to the potato latkes (served with maple syrup in Vermont and goat cheese in California) and gefilte fish (made with white fish in the Midwest, salmon in the Northwest, haddock in New England, and shad in Maryland). Joan Nathan tells us how lox and bagels and Lindy’s cheesecake became household words, and how American products like Crisco, cream cheese, and Jell-O changed forever Jewish home cooking.

The recipes and stories come from every part of the U.S.A. They are seasoned with Syrian, Moroccan, Greek, German, Polish, Georgian, and Alsatian flavors, and they represent traditional foods tailored for today’s tastes as well as some of the nouvelle creations of Jewish chefs from New York to Tuscon.

When Jewish Cooking in America was first published in 1994, it won both the IACP / Julia Child Cookbook Award for Best Cookbookof the Year and the James Beard Award for Best Food of the Americas Cookbook. Now, more than ever, it stands firmly established as an American culinary classic.

Publishers Weekly

You don't have to be Jewish to like the latest entry in the Knopf Cooks American series. You don't even have to like Jewish cooking. A food-lover's guide to Jewish American history and culture, it dishes up not just recipes but appetizing anecdotes, insights about various forms of religious observance and how they have been affected by transplantation to the New World, even a few jokes. Nathan ( Jewish Holiday Kitchen ), a skillful writer and an energetic researcher, evokes the greenhorn's astonishment at the plentitude of oranges; documents the ``revolution'' in kosher cooking inspired by the introduction of vegetable shortening in the '10s; explains how enterprising Jewish admen convinced various food manufacturers to tailor their products for kosher consumers; calls on Southern families who replace the walnuts and almonds of Eastern European cookery with pecans, and visits Maine cooks who prepare mock lobster salad. Her focus is expansive, covering not just standard Ashkenazic and Sephardic dishes and traditions but foods and customs from Bukhara, Salonika, Israel and Georgia as well as original Jewish American hybrids. The recipes themselves, clearly outlined if not always easy to execute, constitute something of a Jewish culinary hall-of-fame, with faithfully preserved instructions for homemade bagels and pickled herring, Lindy's cheesecake and contributions from chic restaurateurs (Wolfgang Puck, Anne Rosenzweig). Illustrations not seen by PW. BOMC alternate, HomeStyle Book Club alternate. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Nathan's new book is an important addition to this excellent series. Author of The Jewish Holiday Kitchen (Schocken, 1988. rev. ed.), Nathan has researched her subject extensively, and the result is as much cultural history as cookbook. Along with more than 300 kosher recipes, from classics like Herring Salad to regional reinterpretations such as Southwestern Gefilte Fish, there are period documents, including letters and diaries, interviews, nostalgic reminiscences and anecdotes, and lots of photographs, giving a real sense of time and place to the culinary traditions celebrated. Highly recommended. Homestyle Bks. alternate.

BookList

Much more than a cookbook--though it does contain over 300 recipes--this entertaining volume is also a history of the Jewish people through their food. Nathan introduces both people and food in a preface that discusses dietary laws, Jewish holidays, Jewish immigration to the U.S., and the impact of Jews--and their food--on American culture. With every recipe comes an original story or a reprint of an article or a personal vignette that intrigues and/or edifies. For instance, the recipe for falafel appears complete with a profile of Moshe, owner of the best falafel pushcart in New York City. There are also lots of photos, both modern and historic. A number-one choice for cookery collections, but make sure history buffs can find it, too.

What People Are Saying

Joan Nathan
A Review of Jewish Cooking in America

This is a newly released revision of award-winning author Joan Nathan's classic cookbook on Jewish cooking in America, a companion volume to her current PBS series of the same name. It is one of those must-haves for any complete cookbook library, and it most certainly is an essential piece of a Jewish cook's reference shelf. Well written with a wonderful sense of history and tradition along with straightforward recipes and instruction.

From a Barnes & Noble.com E-nnouncement

Joan Nathan's new, expanded edition of Jewish Cooking in America is a rich voyage into Jewish culture. Using not only recipes but photographs, stories, and old advertisements as well, Nathan traces the importance of food in Jewish life. Food not only draws the family together; it has a symbolic role. For example, during Rosh Hashanah, families dip apple slices in honey, representing their wishes for a sweet New Year. This new edition, expanded from the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award-winning 1994 edition, includes a preface that highlights Nathan's experiences while working on her PBS television series based on the book.

Joyous Rosh Hashanah Table Marks a Feast of Optimism
By Author Joan Nathan

Sunday evening, September 20th, marks the beginning of Rosh Hashanah—the New Year festival celebrated by Jews throughout the world. This holiday, a time for self-examination and the commencement of the period of repentance, precedes the day of divine judgment, which follows ten days later on Yom Kippur, September 30th.

Unlike Passover, where bitter foods are prepared in commemoration of hard times, the Rosh Hashanah table is laden with delicacies representing optimism for a sweet future. Dishes abound with honey, raisins, sweet carrots, and apples—all seasonal reminders of hope for the coming year.

My father's family, of German-Jewish heritage, had its own symbolic foods for this festival, many of which had been with our ancestral family in Bavaria for centuries. Unlike the tables of eastern European Jews, our table did not include such favorites as gefilte fish, tzimmes (sweet carrot casserole) or honey cake. Instead, we ate sweet-and-sour salmon, apple streusel, zwetschgenkuchen (plum pie), and other dishes.

Today we have a mixture of both traditions and new ones learned through the years. After the traditional Hebrew blessings over candles and wine, our meal commences with the prayer over a round challah, the sweet bread representing the double portion of manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness during their flight from Egypt. For Rosh Hashanah it is circular, representing a complete year. Then, an apple is dipped in honey, and a blessing is made, asking for a sweet and good year.

In Germany, the main course would have been roast goose with cabbage salad, potatoes, and carrots. In this country my family has substituted a honey orange chicken served with seasonal vegetables, including carrots. The Yiddish word mern, literally meaning "carrots," is translated as "to increase or to multiply."

Traditionally, honey cake is served at the end of the meal, symbolic of wishes for a sweet new year. The following recipe, which appears on p. 338 of my newly updated book, Jewish Cooking in America, is quick, easy, and a family favorite. I hope your family enjoys it too.

Oregon's Kosher Maven's Honey Cake

3 large eggs
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Grated rind of 1 lemon
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup honey
1 cup warm black coffee
3 1/2 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup slivered almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan.

2. Place the eggs, lemon juice, lemon rind, oil, honey, and coffee in the bowl of an electric mixer equipped with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until well blended. Gradually add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, sugar, and cinnamon, mixing for about 5 minutes, or until well blended. Add the slivered almonds.

3. Pour the batter into the tube pan. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Yield: 1 cake (P)

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