Subscribe now

Happy Hanukkah friends,

My heart was heavy with grief as we lit the first Hanukkah candle on Sunday night. Grief for the Jewish community in Sydney. Grief learning that, among the victims at Bondi Beach, were children and survivors of the Holocaust. Grief for the students at Brown University and their families. Grief learning that, two of the survivors had already lived through previous school shootings. Grief knowing that encounters with antisemitic violence have become a feature, not a bug, of living a Jewish life. Grief knowing that gun violence remains a feature, not a bug of American life.

But while I continue to hold space for that grief, today’s newsletter is defined by joy. It features an interview with one of my culinary heroes, David Lebovitz, celebrates his newly-revised classic cookbook Ready for Dessert (plus offers a chance to win a copy), and shares a recipe for his Tangy Lemon Frozen Yogurt.

I truly hope that reading David’s words below adds joy to your holiday celebration. And I hope that, despite these horrific attacks against everyday Americans and Jewish communities worldwide—attacks that justifiably stir up grief and anger—that we hold onto the notion that we are all bound up with one another in the web of humanity. And that now is the time to double down on creating light.

Cookbook Giveaway: Win A Copy of Ready for Dessert

Want to win a copy of Ready for Dessert by David Lebovitz? (Believe me, you absolutely do.) Here’s how:

1. Comment below with your favorite dessert recipe. Comments are open to paid subscribers of The Jewish Table.

2. I will do a random drawing from the comments and announce the winner next week.

Good luck, and happy baking!

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by David Lebovitz, who is one of my long-time culinary heroes. Lebovitz is a Paris-based pastry chef, alum of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, and very possibly the first-ever food blogger. (He started blogging back in 1999, and has been delighting readers with his classic and creative recipes and engaging storytelling—more recently via his newsletter—ever since.

Lebovitz is also a cookbook author many times over. In September he released an updated version of his classic book, Ready for Dessert, which was first published 15 years ago. Not content to rest on his laurels, he updated and tweaked the recipes to reflect the changes in baking over the last decade and a half, and also added several new sweets. The book’s collection of desserts—Maple-Walnut Pear Cake, Apricot Marzipan Tart, and Chocolate Pots de Crème—bridge the divide between decadent and doable. And in a food media landscape that increasingly rewards brevity and flash over all else, David’s carefully-tested recipes and thoughtful, instructive headnotes stand apart.

With a dessert cookbook of my own coming out in a little less than a year, it arguably is not the wisest time for me to hype up a *different* dessert book. But for recipes this enticing, and someone as iconic and menschy as Lebovitz, it is an honor and a pleasure to share Ready for Dessert with you.

Lebovitz graciously took the time to answer The Four Questions (actually five this time), and talked about how baking has changed since his first book was published 26 years ago, the best advice he received from Alice Waters, and a lesser-known French dessert he thinks has major crossover potential for American bakers.

Read on, and don’t miss his recipe for Tangy Lemon Frozen Yogurt below the interview. Sufganiyot may be the most iconic Hanukkah dessert, but I would like to make an argument that this fro-yo, which makes excellent use of in-season citrus, is filled with delicious dairy that is particularly prized on Hanukkah, and features a secret ingredient that many of our Ashkenazi ancestors relied upon (pssst, it’s citric acid, aka “sour salt,”), would make a fitting and refreshing end to your holiday feast.

1. How has your approach to making dessert evolved in the years since Ready for Dessert was first published?

DL: So much has changed in the baking and dessert world since my first baking book was published in 1999. I’m from San Francisco, and back then we had artisan chocolates, Meyer lemons, blood oranges, and other ingredients that weren’t well known across the country. But now you can find things like Guittard chocolate chips, Meyer lemons, and almond flour in American supermarkets and at places like Trader Joe’s. Plus, the internet has expanded people’s access to baking tools and ingredients—like tart pans and European cocoa powders—so I decided to update the recipes in Ready for Dessert to reflect those changes, and to add additional recipes that reflect how I bake here in Paris. Those include recipes for Palets Bretons, the most delicious butter cookies in the world; a Riz au Lait (rice pudding) with a special technique and presentation that mimics the version at an esteemed Parisian bistro; and the recipe for the Maple Tarts from Tapisserie bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in Paris, which is so good that people come from around the world to try it.

2. I read in another recent interview that Chez Panisse Desserts changed the way you cook. Can you talk a bit more about how?

DL: It’s hard to overstate the influence that Lindsey Shere, who was the founding executive pastry chef at Chez Panisse, had on a generation of bakers, including me. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have her as my mentor. While one can go to pastry school to learn techniques (which I did, in France and in Belgium), learning about flavor is something that comes with experience. We were so fortunate at Chez Panisse to have neighbors and local farmers bring us the most spectacular produce imaginable: fraises des bois (tiny wild strawberries), French butter pears, raspberries that were still warm from being picked, and strawberry figs (named for their vivid red centers), plucked from a neighbor’s tree.

In many ways, when you’re a baker or pastry chef and have ingredients like that, you want to create desserts that aren’t overly complicated, as it’s pretty hard to improve on those fruits in their natural state. So making desserts that highlighted their flavors was our goal. When I left the restaurant after thirteen years, Alice Waters—the owner of the restaurant—suggested that I write a follow-up to Chez Panisse Desserts, but then said to me, “You should do your own thing,” which was great advice. And I did. Now I bring that ethos to all my desserts, which include chocolate, buckwheat, and caramel. I still keep things straightforward, focusing on flavor rather than fancy techniques, and I keep things as uncomplicated as possible.

3. Can you share one American dessert from the book that you’ve helped introduce to your friends in France? And conversely, one dessert you’ve picked up during your time in France that you think American bakers should know more about?

DL: I’d say the American dessert that most wows French people is the Fresh Ginger Cake. The French aren’t known for using lots of spices in dessert, except for pain d’épices, and fresh ginger (and molasses) aren’t normally used in French desserts, so it’s a bit of a surprise for them to find both in an extra-moist cake. Everybody loves it.

At some point, I think American pastry chefs will discover the Floating Island, or Île flottante, which is one of my favorite French desserts and one that I added to the revised edition of Ready for Dessert. It’s a bowl of ice-cold crème anglaise with a pillowy, marshmallow-like baked meringue floating in the middle, with a drizzle of caramel and some crunchy nuts scattered over the top. Pastry chefs in the U.S. have become really adept at refashioning French desserts (Cronuts, kouign amann, etc.) for American tastes, and Floating Islands are almost a blank canvas for reinvention, with opportunities to add other flavors and textures.

4. What are your favorite desserts to bake during the colder months?

DL: I’m a big fan of chocolate all year round, but especially in the winter, when there isn’t the same abundance of fruits and berries that we have in the summer. I also stocked up on chocolate this year while working on a brand-new edition of The Great Book of Chocolate, which added dozens of chocolate recipes to my repertoire. For the holidays, there’s a chocolate chip pecan pie recipe that I like to bake, and Warm Chocolate Cakes with a melting salted-butter center that I think are perfect after an elegant family dinner. The book isn’t out yet, but there’s a version of the chocolate chip pecan pie in Ready for Dessert, and chocolate babka is always popular.

5. Since The Jewish Table is generally focused on Jewish cuisine, I have to ask: Do you have a favorite Jewish dessert? If so, what do you enjoy about it, and do you have any memories of eating it to share?

DL: I grew up in a mixed family, but (thankfully) eating always played a big part in all celebrations. On my father’s side of the family, since he had four brothers (which meant I had lots of cousins), family gatherings were generally dessert buffets since no one had the space—or the kitchen—to cook dinner for twenty-five people. One dessert that stands out is Chiffon Cake, which apparently was baked by Sephardic Jews in Spain. I remember being astounded at how tall and how moist it was. I just came back from a month in Japan, where I had Chiffon Cakes flavored with matcha, black tea, and pandan, and now that I’m back home, I want to try a version with kinako, roasted soybean powder. If I do, I’ll share the recipe in my newsletter.

Tangy Lemon Frozen Yogurt

Headnote from David: Lemon has always been one of my favorite frozen yogurt flavors, as I like things that are tart and tangy. But I often wondered how commercial lemon ice creams and frozen yogurts got their extra zing that homemade batches lacked. The answer came to me when I was in a Middle Eastern spice market and saw little bags of citric acid. I brought some home and did a test, adding just a few crystals to the frozen yogurt mix before churning. When I dug my spoon in, I realized I’d found that tangier flavor I was looking for, an improvement I’m happy to share.

Leah’s note: I tried the frozen yogurt recipe both with and without the citric acid. David is absolutely correct that the sour salt crystals add a delightful extra punch of mouth-puckering tartness. But don’t let an absence of citric acid stop you from making this frozen yogurt. The combination of Greek yogurt and lemon zest + juice offers mellower, but still delicious, citrusy fro-yo.

Makes 1 qt (1L)

3 cups (720 g) plain whole-milk Greek yogurt

Grated zest from 1 lemon, preferably organic or unsprayed

1/4 cup (60 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice

2/3 cup (130 g) sugar

1 tablespoon agave nectar or mild-flavored honey

1/4 teaspoon citric acid (see Tips), or more to taste

Pinch of salt

1. In a blender, process the yogurt, lemon zest and juice, sugar, agave nectar, citric acid, and salt until smooth.

2. Pour the mixture into a medium bowl. Taste and add a little more citric acid to adjust the tanginess to your liking. Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled, at least 8 hours or overnight. Freeze in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Serving: This frozen yogurt is best served shortly after churning. If it rests in the freezer and gets too hard to scoop, remove it from the freezer 5 to 10 minutes before scooping, or zap it in the microwave.

Tips: Citric acid crystals, sometimes called “sour salt,” are available in Middle Eastern markets, some pharmacies, and online. Fruit-Fresh, a product sold in supermarkets for use in canning and preserving, is mostly citric acid—in powder form—and can be used in place of citric acid crystals.

Reprinted with permission from Ready for Dessert by David Lebovitz, copyright © 2025. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC

Hello The Jewish Table readers! I have a special treat for you this week: a conversation with Rachel Simons, founder of Seed + Mill (which makes incredible tahini and halva), and author of the recently published book, Sesame: Global Recipes & Stories of an Ancient Seed.

Below the interview, you will find Rachel’s recipe for Sesame and Miso Peach Crumble. It’s an ideal summer dessert, that glams up sliced peaches with a clustery crumble topping of nutty tahini, white miso, chopped walnuts, and just enough sugar to make the fresh fruit sing. The recipe is available for all subscribers, and I hope you make it while the peaches are perfect.

Also! Don’t miss the chance to win a GIVEAWAY copy of Sesame. The giveaway is open to paid subscribers (deets below), but in honor of stone fruit season, I am offering a special summer discount. Use this link by July 15 to get 20% off a paid annual subscription to The Jewish Table. If you’ve been meaning to upgrade, now is the perfect time.

20% off The Jewish Table

Cookbook Giveaway: Win A Copy of Sesame

Want to win a copy of Sesame by Rachel Simons? Here’s how:

1. Comment below with your favorite sesame recipe or dish (tahini, black sesame paste, sesame seeds, toasted sesame oil, halva, whatever moves you!) Comments are open to paid subscribers of The Jewish Table.

2. I will do a random drawing from the comments and announce the winner next week.

   Leave a comment

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Rachel Simons, the co-founder and proprietor of Seed + Mill and author of Sesame: Global Recipes & Stories of an Ancient Seed.

I vividly remember when Seed + Mill opened up their tiny shop in New York’s Chelsea Market back in 2015. The bright, green tile-lined counter top. The glass display case filled with birthday cake-sized wheels of halva topped with crushed flower petals, chopped pistachios, coffee beans, and cacao nibs. Their creamy soft serve topped with crumbled halva. It all felt like a revelation. And my love for the company’s products, particularly their lusciously creamy tahini, has only grown over the last decade.

Rachel co-founded Seed + Mill with two friends, inspired by a love of food and travel that developed during her Jewish upbringing in Sydney, Australia and her many travels across Asia, Israel, and beyond. Her beautiful cookbook features traditional and modern sesame-based recipes from around the globe including Deconstructed Baba Ghanoush, Vegetarian Tahini Ramen, Gomasio-Crusted Salmon Skewers, Pistachio Halva Cheesecake, and a Bittersweet Chocolate Tahini Tart. (Oh my goodness.)

She took the time to chat with me about Seed + Mill’s evolution over the last decade, the surprisingly (and hearteningly) diverse team of people who come together to make their tahini and halva, and how she transformed her mother’s Shabbat apple crumble into something personal and new.

Why did you start Seed + Mill, and how has it evolved over the last decade?

I arrived in New York nearly 11 years ago and met my co-founders Lisa and Monica. We had a lot in common. We were two lawyers and a marketing executive all in the same stage of life and all with a common love of food and travel. We came from three different continents and wanted to dive into the entrepreneur experience. We liked to talked to people, and we wanted to bring the world to New York.

We came to halva and tahini almost by coincidence. I have always been interested in the intersection of culture and history and food, and I love to cook with pure ingredients. I have travelled extensively and lived in places like Hong Kong and Tel Aviv where sesame paste is widely used. Sharing tahini at Chelsea Market allowed us to meet 20,000 people a week to hear their stories and find out how sesame is historically significant where they live.

Almost 10 years on, I now run Seed + Mill by myself. Lisa and Monica are still shareholders, but Monica moved to the Netherlands and Lisa moved on to other projects. But what has changed the most is the world of food politics, which is evolving all the time. From a personal point of view, I used to feel very apologetic about where our products were made. I used to say the “Middle East,” because I was anxious to say they were made in Israel. We have faced a lot of boycott aggression over the years and have lost accounts because of it, but I am determined to celebrate our partners and keep talking about the cultural and religious diversity of the people who make Seed + Mill tahini and halva.

Can you share more about those partners?

Our tahini is produced in a town close to Nazareth in the north of Israel. The factory is owned by an Arab-Israeli family that has been making tahini for a long time. Their company’s leadership team includes Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and they employ many Druze workers in their facility. I am immensely proud of this well-functioning, harmonious business that is thriving despite everything going on around them. It is a beacon of hope to see and be a part of this kind of economic and cultural cooperation.

Our halva is made by an Iraqi Jewish family in the South of Israel. They arrived in the 1950s as refugees from Iraq, and have been making halva according to their family recipe for decades. Making halva is an art, not a science and they still produce everything by hand in wooden bowls. They also employ a diverse group of workers, including Russian and Thai immigrants. No one has an agenda other than putting something beautiful and delicious on people’s tables.

When people blanket boycott all Israeli products, I think it is in part because they do not see the stories behind some of the companies. I hope that I can help humanize the people behind the politics. 10 years ago I just thought I was opening a store in Chelsea market. I now realize I have this unique opportunity to be the ambassador for some of these families and counteract the misinformation for whoever is willing to listen.

How did you go about gathering recipes for Sesame?

The book’s global approach to recipes is a reflection of who I am as a cook and human being in the world. I’ve lived many places and my ancestors come from many places, so the book reflects my lived experience. My great grandparents were from an area called Bohemia that later became part of Czechoslovakia. My grandfather moved from there to Zimbabwe (Rhodesia at the time) to be a leather maker.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was sent to the Theresienstadt labor camp during World War II, and managed to stay alive along with her mother because she was a horticulturist who knew how to farm and plant. Her siblings were sent to Auschwitz.

After the war, my grandfather traveled back to Prague and found that his family had all been killed. While there, he met my grandmother and convinced her to move to Bulawayo with him. My mom and uncle were born there 11 months apart. My parents met in London and my dad, who is Australian, convinced my mom to move to Sydney with him, which is where I was born. I lived there until I was 18 and then moved to Tel Aviv, back to Sydney, then London and Hong Kong, and back to Sydney when I had kids. I moved to New York 11 years ago.

I’m 49 years old now, and I tell people it took me 49 years to write the book. Growing up in Australia, I’ve traveled extensively in Asia and enjoyed the cuisines of Japan, Thailand, China, and Indonesia. The book probably has more influence from that continent than the Middle East, even though Seed & Mill has been seen as a more Middle Eastern-inspired company. Ultimately, tahini is the same thing as sesame paste. If you go into any Japanese restaurant or grocery store, the amount of sesame available is on par with Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, or Israel. It just goes by a different name. I wanted the book’s recipes to reflect that.

What recipe from the book is most personally meaningful to you?

Everything in the book is meaningful and intentional, but if I am going to go with something deeply personal I would say the Sesame and Miso Peach Crumble. My mom made an apple crumble every Shabbat throughout my entire childhood. It was always apple or apple plus something else like rhubarb. And her topping was always a triumvirate of sugar, butter, flour. Sometimes cinnamon.

As I grew up and started to cook, we would have these arguments. I would say, “Let’s add nuts, or oats, or this and that.” And she would say, “No, I like it this way.” So when I started making fruit crumbles for my own family, I got more experimental. I added tahini and miso and found them to be a complex and interesting twist on the traditional recipe. Of all the recipes in Sesame, this one shows how I inherited a love of food and cooking from my family and took it in my own direction.

Sesame and Miso Peach Crumble

Headnote from Sesame: “In my childhood home, mum would make an apple crumble for dessert every Friday night, and was very precise about her recipe. Even though the exact same dish arrived at the table every week for over a decade, it was always deliciously comforting and welcome each time. When I started a family of my own, I continued the tradition of making fruit crumbles, but I was far less focused on following a recipe and preferred to use it as an opportunity to throw whatever I have on hand in my pantry into the crumble topping. I always mix it by hand until I like the taste and the texture is somewhere in between not too dry and sandy and not too wet and soggy! I recently started adding miso to my crumble, which I think works beautifully with the sesame, and adds a unique flavor to an enduringly, classic dessert.”

Leah’s Note: The triple dose of sesame in the crumble topping—tahini, sesame seeds, and toasted sesame oil—brings this dessert to another level. Definitely don’t skip any of them.

Serves 6

2 ½ pounds ripe peaches (approximately 6 to 7), pitted and sliced

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

1 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar (optional: depending on how sweet your peaches are)

1 teaspoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon water

1 cup flour

1 cup granulated sugar

½ cup walnuts, roughly chopped

½ cup unsalted butter, melted

⅓ cup tahini

⅓ cup sesame seeds

1 tablespoon white miso

1 ¼ teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Ice cream or heavy cream, to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2. Place peaches in a baking dish (I typically use a 9-inch Le Creuset baking dish, but an 8-by-8-inch square baking dish will work). Toss the peaches with the lemon juice and zest, and brown sugar, if using.

3. In a small mixing bowl, use a fork to whisk the cornstarch and water. Add mixture to the peaches, toss gently until well combined, and set aside.

4. In a medium bowl, add the flour, granulated sugar, walnuts, melted butter, tahini, sesame seeds, miso, salt, and sesame oil. Using your hands or a fork, mix until just incorporated and the mixture looks like wet sand, but holds together when pressed.

5. Crumble topping over peaches, squeezing some of the topping into larger chunks and letting some remain loose and crumbly.

6. Bake until the topping is golden brown and the peaches are fragrant and bubbling, approximately 1 hour. Check that the topping is not burning after about 20 minutes and loosely cover with foil if necessary.

7. Serve warm with ice cream or heavy cream.

This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from Sesame: Global Recipes & Stories of an Ancient Seed, by Rachel Simons (Ten Speed Press, 2025).

Subscribe now

I first met Beejhy Barhany 12 years ago, while writing a story for The Forward about Ethiopian Jewish cuisine. I contacted her for a phone interview and ended up with an invitation to cook together in her home kitchen. Naturally, I accepted and I remember her generosity, her easy teaching style, and the delicious food we made like it was yesterday:

‘You want the onions, garlic and ginger to melt into one another,” Beejy Barhany told me while stirring a pot that would soon hold kik alicha, a creamy yellow split pea stew from Ethiopia. On another burner, doro wat, a chicken stew studded with hardboiled eggs, bubbled under the lid. I stood close by, at a small table that doubles as extra counter space, chopping more onions and letting the heady scent filling Barhany’s Harlem kitchen bring me back to the handful of meals I have shared with friends at Ethiopian restaurants.

Today, Barhany is the owner of Tsion Cafe—a vegan, kosher Ethiopian restaurant in Harlem. And she recently published her first cookbook, Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond.

Gursha is filled with recipes for the dishes Barhany grew up eating as an Ethiopian Jew who immigrated to Israel as a child—braised collard greens (gomen), red lentil stew (messer wot), hearty beef stew (kai wot), and the teff-based flatbread, injera. There are also recipes she fell in love with or created throughout her life and travels, including Sudanese doughnuts and Berbere Fried Fish, which flavors a dish popular in her current Harlem home with Ethiopia’s most beloved spice blend.

Like all truly great cookbooks, Gursha goes beyond recipes to share the stories behind the food. Barhany’s own story is both harrowing and inspiring. She was born in Ethiopia as part of the Beta Israel community, which practiced Judaism’s pre-rabbinic laws and customs since antiquity. She remembers an early childhood of abundance, beauty, and generosity. Of fruit trees and corn stalks and welcoming guests with an aromatic bite of doro wat wrapped in injera.

Life changed dramatically for Barhany in 1980 when she was 4 years old. Her grandmother woke her in the middle of the night and said, “Let’s go. Get dressed. Hurry up.” As she writes in Gursha’s introduction:

“The plan had been in the works for months. Following the assassination of Emperor Haile Selassie, a campaign of mass killings, known as the Red Terror, began sweeping the country, and my family decided that now was the time to go. While our village had not been persecuted or seen violence, we were still forbidden to leave Ethiopia. So we had to travel at night, in secret.”

Along with 300 other villagers, Barhany walked through the desert with limited supplies and often desperate for water. People got sick along the way. One woman, Barhany’s mother’s close friend Mehrata, went into labor and birthed a baby girl. As Barhany writes:

“The weeks after an Ethiopian Jewish woman gives birth are considered sacred. The new mother is isolated in a special house…and supported by other women. But at this perilous time, it was impossible…So just fifteen minutes after giving birth, Mehrata climbed back on a horse. The other women dug into sacks of flaxseed and mixed it with water, so that Mehrata could sip a steady supply of the drink known as Telva, which would help keep her strong…And the group kept going.”

After several difficult weeks the group reached Sudan, which would become their way station for two years until they could arrange to fly to Israel. Variations of this intense trip were repeated thousands of times over as Ethiopian Jews left their homeland for a new one. Once they arrived, they were unfortunately met with xenophobia. She writes:

“We quickly realized that our dark skin set us far apart from most Israelis, including other fellow new arrivals at the integration center we moved into…We had to prove that we were in fact Jewish. The Israeli government insisted that we formally convert to Judaism, which was particularly insulting to us as the people we saw seemed far less observant about traditions that were, to us, nonnegotiable.”

Today, the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel numbers close to 160,000, with another 1,000 people, including Barhany, living in the United States. As Gursha so beautifully depicts, their stories and cuisine are an important part of the larger Jewish story and worthy of celebration.

Read on for my recent interview with Barhany. Plus, try her recipe for Spiced Cabbage and Tomatoes, and enter to win a copy of Gursha.

Subscribe now

As a restaurant owner and cookbook author, tell me about food’s unique power for sharing stories about Ethiopian Jewish culture?

Food is a mechanism-it’s a tool to engage people with ease. Everybody loves to eat, so food is a universal language. I can’t think of a better way to shine light on the rich flavors of Ethiopia, and also bring more awareness to our history, heritage, tradition, and holidays. We can break a lot of barriers and misconceptions of a culture via food. When people are engaged to trying new tastes, they are halfway there already.

Not only that, I think Ethiopian cuisine more broadly does not receive the recognition it deserves. There are so many foundational things—eating greens, flavorful vegan food, trying ancient grains—that are trendy now, but have been in our cuisine for millennia.

The stories you include in the book–your own story of immigrating from Ethiopia to Israel, and those of your family and friends—are powerful, harrowing, and inspiring. What did you hope these stories would to add to the overall cookbook?

I wanted to show the resilience, commitment, and determination of my family and community for fulfilling their immigration journeys to Israel. The stories demonstrate their sacrifice and bravery and how they kept up with Ethiopian culture in a new place, with new ingredients, new people, and a new language. I wanted the stories to bring the good, the bad, and the ugly—I didn’t want to sugar coat it. These are rough, true stories that happened, and it is part of the story that has to be told. Ethiopian Jews sacrificed so much and deserve honor and recognition. For me the question is, how do we move forward in order to have a more unified Jewish world?

You write in the book that the foundations of Ethiopian Jewish cuisine are garlic, ginger, onions and the spice blend, berbere. Can you describe what role these four ingredients play?

Throughout my writing process, I knew I wanted to make Ethiopian food very accessible—to start from the basics and build from there. Garlic, onions, and ginger you can find anywhere and you need them to make just about any Ethiopian stew from cabbage with potatoes and carrots to yellow split pea stew.

From there, you can jump into something a little more complicated with berbere, but it can still be accessible. My mom and grandmother dried shallots and red onion in the backyard and then took them to the mill to grind before mixing them with the other spices. You don’t have to do all that. You can buy powdered garlic and onion and mix them, making your own unique blend. (See Barhany’s berbere recipe below.) After you mix your berbere you are on the way to making many different dishes, like hearty beef or doro wot or red lentils. You make a big batch and store it for when you need it. Once you have the foundations ready, you are good to go.

You once told me that your mom would send you back to New York with enough berbere to last for a while. But I also know everyone makes it a little different. How has your own recipe changed over time?

It has definitely evolved. My blend is always strong on the Ethiopian korarima (a spice related to cardamom). But I adjust the recipe according to seasons and my mood. Sometimes I add earthy nigella and coriander. Sometimes I want to add more dried shallots. The best things happen through accidents in my experience. Sometimes you add more of something than you meant to but it ends up even better.

Can you describe your family’s Shabbat table when you were growing up? How did it change when you were suddenly living amidst a diverse group of Jewish people?

It changed of course. We had more schnitzel for Shabbat after moving, and we had rice along with the doro wat (spicy chicken stew). We had challah along with dabo (traditional Ethiopian Shabbat bread). For the kids, food was made milder while the parents ate it the spicier way. For Shabbat breakfast we would mix crumbled dabo with sour cream and dukus/mitmita (Ethiopian seasoning salt). And dishes from other parts of the Jewish diaspora, like Yemenite jachnun and malawach made it onto our tables.

Also, for the first 20 years or so after immigrating, Ethiopian Jews in Israel had no access to teff so they made injera from corn and wheat. I include a recipe for that version in Gursha, which is a great starter recipe for making homemade injera. From there you can gradually experiment with the ivory and brown teff flours and the 3-5 day fermentation process if you want to.

What is something that surprised you about writing this cookbook?

The meticulousness of the photo shoot took me by surprise. I did not know about food stylists or any of that stuff. I thought you made a dish and then bam, take the photo but it was a long process. I learned a greater respect for the value of cookbooks. I know what it takes and I don’t take it lightly. This book is just a glimpse of Ethiopian cooking. There are so many ethnic groups and tribes beyond Jewish Ethopians—Ethiopian cuisine is diverse and versatile. I hope Gursha gives an introduction that inspires people to want explore more.

Cookbook Giveaway: Win A Copy of Gursha

Want to win a copy of Gursha? Here’s how:

1. Comment below with your favorite Jewish vegetable dish.

2. I will do a random drawing from the comments and announce the winner next week!

   Leave a comment

   ---

Spiced Cabbage and Tomatoes

(My Mother’s Cabbage)

Headnote from Gursha: This delicious dish combines Israeli and Moroccan influences, with a crucial dash of Ethiopian heat from the berbere. It started as something my mother whipped up after traveling from Israel to Harlem to help me with my newborn daughter in November 2005. She surveyed the ingredients I had lying around and made this dish at a time when I needed comfort most.

Note from Leah: This cabbage was easy to make and easier to eat. I made a few modifications based on my spice preferences and the ingredients I had available. I’ve included notes about my tweaks in the recipe.

Serves 10

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 red onion, diced

6-8 garlic cloves, to taste, minced

1 head green cabbage (about 2 1/2 pounds), quartered through the core and cut crosswise into roughly 2-inch pieces

4 tomatoes, roughly chopped, or 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, most of the liquid drained

1 red bell pepper, chopped (I forgot to buy so didn’t use one - it was delicious anyway)

1 bunch scallions, sliced

2 jalapeños, roughly chopped, seeds included (or removed if you are sensitive to heat)

2 teaspoons Berbere (recipe follows or buy here)

2 teaspoons ground cumin (I used 1 teaspoon, but adjust to your taste)

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt (I used Diamond kosher salt), plus more to taste

1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper, plus more to taste

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped (I used parsley, because that’s what I had - delicious)

1. In a large pot, warm the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute until softened, about 2 minutes.

2. Add the cabbage, tomatoes, bell pepper, scallions, and jalapeños and stir to combine. Mix in the berbere, cumin, salt, and pepper, and half of the cilantro and stir until incorporated.

3. Cover the pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables have softened and released some water but the cabbage still has a gentle crunch, about 30 minutes.

4. Taste and add additional salt and pepper if needed. Serve garnished with the remaining cilantro.

Berbere (Aromatic Ethiopian Spice Blend)

Makes about 2 1/2 cups

1 cup sweet paprika

1/2 cup cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons ground cardamom

2 tablespoons ground ginger

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon black pepper

2 tablespoons fine sea salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons ground fenugreek

1. In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients together and transfer to an airtight jar. Store at room temperature for up to 6 months.

This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond by Beejhy Barhany. (Alfred A. Knopf, division of Penguin Random House, 2025.)

Subscribe now

A few weeks ago, I had the great fortune of interviewing Ruth Reichl about her most recent book—a sumptuous, historically-anchored romp through 1980s Paris called The Paris Novel.

Over the better part of the last two decades, I have grown accustomed to the emotional spectrum that comes along with interviewing the world’s culinary greats. And to be honest, I don’t typically get nervous anymore. But then there are those extraordinary cases, like the time I flew to London to interview Claudia Roden. (I’m still catching my breath from that experience.) And my recent phone call with Ruth. I’ll admit it: I had some butterflies as I dialed.

When I began my own food writing career in 2007, I did so with the goal of being published in Gourmet magazine, where Reichl masterfully led the charge as Editor-in-Chief. Thanks to a global economic crash and a media landscape that was changing at a dizzying pace, Gourmet folded in 2009, and I never had the chance to fulfill that dream. But my fandom for Reichl continued unabated. From her genre-defining food memoirs and archive of New York Times restaurant reviews, to her newsletter, La Briffe, which is essential reading for any food lover, Reichl continually reinforces her role as a food writing icon.

Nobody writes food quite as vividly as Reichl. And The Paris Novel, not surprisingly, is filled with beautiful meals—particularly the lead character, Stella’s, rapturous encounters with Parisian dining circa the 1980s:

Baskets of croissants arrived, along with an entire baguette, still warm from the oven. Cold chunks of golden butter; pots of thickly fruited jam…Small pungent goat cheeses. Wild strawberries. Thick creamy yogurt. Honey still in the comb…Stella spread the cold butter and watched it melt onto the warm bread. She added apricot jam, and when a spoonful fell onto her shirt, she swiped at it with a finger, which she then put into her mouth. “I feel as if I could eat everything on the table.’”

Same girl, same.

The storyline centers on Stella, a stodgier-than-her-years young woman, who has been gifted an odd inheritance/instruction following her estranged mother’s death. Essentially: go to Paris and don’t come back until you have spent all the money. Stella is not attuned to the finer things in life—in fact, she has studiously avoided them. She has never shared her mother’s passion for couture, fine dining, parties, or adventure and has, instead, led a stoic and predictable life.

But Paris, as Paris is known to do, changes everything starting with the moment Stella slips into an impossibly beautiful, and impossibly expensive, black dress in a Parisian boutique (a moment inspired by Reichl’s own life). From there, a series of breathtaking meals, a wild goose chase to track down the legacy of French painter and muse, Victorine Meurent, the rubbing of shoulders with a coterie of literary and artistic greats, and a forging of several unlikely friendships along the way, helps Stella unlocks her latent epicurean desires.

The Paris Novel, meanwhile, uncorks any and every desire readers’ may have for the City of Lights. Whether or not Stella’s Paris still exists four decades on is up for debate. But Reichl’s depiction of the city’s vagabond charms, winding streets, “shockingly cold” Chablis that conjures “melting snow rushing down a mountain,” and chefs in starched whites turning out sizzling lamb chops that taste like “a wild, windswept marsh, the tide rushing in and out,” read like an invitation.

It was all I could do not to book a ticket to Paris after I finished reading.

***

Reichl was raised in a New York Jewish family but told me, “I didn’t grow up with much Jewish food. We had a very secular household.” Her mother Miriam, meanwhile, was a famously terrible cook. Even so, the recipe packages Reichl published while she was editor at the LA Times and Gourmet—showcasing, say, an Indian Passover seder or Turkish-Jewish sweet-and-sour-celery dish—helped broaden the conversation around Jewish food, long before it hit the mainstream.

The Paris Novel is not a Jewishly-themed book, but if one is given the chance to interview one of her heroes, she takes it—jitters and all. Fortunately for me, Reichl was an absolute joy to talk to, with a down-to-earth warmth to offset her intimidatingly vast knowledge of her craft and grasp of the ever-changing world of food. And fortunately for all of us, The Paris Novel is a delight for the senses.

Read on for our conversation about the little black dress that inspired The Paris Novel, the connections between cuisine and couture, and whether Americans’ romanticized notions of Paris are still realistic. (Spoiler: Reichl believes that they are.)

Then, keep scrolling for the recipe for Ruth Reichl's Berry Tart—an almond-perfumed, fragipane filled, fresh berry-topped dessert that is a triumph on either side of the Atlantic. (I’m already planning to make it again in a couple of weeks for Shavuot.)

The Paris Novel was inspired by a chapter in your memoir Save Me the Plums about a black dress you tried on (but ultimately didn’t buy) in Paris. Can you talk about how you built a novel around that transcendent couture moment?

It was originally my late editor Susan’s idea. She said, “I loved that chapter, and I so wanted you to buy the dress despite it costing $6,500. Couldn’t you write a novel about a character who does get the dress and it changes her life?” And I immediately thought, “Oh, I can do that.” I also immediately thought of Victorine, a French model and painter who had been in the back of my head since graduate school. I was fascinated by her—a woman who posed as a prostitute in Édouard Manet’s Olympia, and not as someone who is ashamed, but someone who tries to make the viewer ashamed for their assumptions. She was also a painter whose work was shown at the Salon. I wanted to write my masters thesis at the University of Michigan on Victorine, but it was the 1960s. Women artists weren’t considered “of interest.”

The Paris Novel ended up being a chance to unearth all these ideas and moments that had been sitting in the back of my head. I don’t always enjoy writing—I enjoy having written. But I truly enjoyed writing this book. I just fell in love with the characters.

I also love how The Paris Novel demonstrates how food and fashion both have the power to transform people.

I’ve always been fascinated by what clothes can do, and there are a lot of parallels between haute cuisine and haute couture. Both of them are arts that employ artisans and both are considered luxuries. I think it is a shame that we are losing the seamstresses, the people who make lace, the people who weave beautiful cloth. We are losing them just as we are fighting hard to keep the artisans that are great bakers, cheesemakers, and butchers.

Some years ago I was part of an event with the wonderful farmer and food justice activist Karen Washington. Someone in the audience got up and asked, “How can you justify the price of the tomatoes you’re selling?” And she asked him, “How much did you pay for those shoes?” He sat down pretty fast, because her point was so clear.

We are willing to pay more for the things we truly value.

That’s exactly right. We are now in a culture where you can buy 10 pairs of blue jeans made in sweatshops or one pair that is beautifully made by hand that will last longer than the others combined. It is all about shifting focus to value quality.

You wove many real literary and culinary icons into the novel, from James Baldwin and George Whitman to Richard Olney. Who was your favorite real-life character to write?

I loved writing Richard Olney. I met him a few times in person, but I never really knew him—I think every time I met him he was drunk! I did a lot of research into him, and reading his memoir, he came alive to me in a way he never did in real life. I just love what happens to him in the book—especially the dinner scene that James Baldwin recalls. The meals Olney served at his home were legendary, but the scene in the book was totally invented. It is one of my favorite things I have ever written.

Next to Stella, of course, Paris really is a main character of the book–particularly 1980s Paris. Why did you decide to set the book in the 1980s? And how has Paris’ food scene changed over the last four decades?

In literary terms, I really wanted to capture the entire century of Paris. In the 1980s, you still had people there who could remember Paris of the 1920s—of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. But another reason is that in Paris in the early 80s, the dollar was strong and the Franc was weak. You could go there on nothing—it was an amazing time to be an American in Paris.

In 1983/84, I had been a restaurant critic for almost 10 years, but I was freelance without an expense account. I was probably the only critic in America who had never been to a three star restaurant in France. I got my first real job at the LA Times, and that changed everything. I traveled to France and would have these incredible meals that started at lunch and lasted through dinnertime. All of the meals in The Paris Novel are meals I ate in France during that period on the LA Times’ money. It was fun to try and reimagine them from Stella’s point of you—as someone who was just discovering food.

Americans still hold this romanticized notion of Paris—do you think it’s realistic?

I do. I still find Paris magical. Paris is built to such a human scale. You can still walk through The Marais and it is not that different than when Hemingway was there. When I was first going to Paris in the 1960s and 70s it was very hard to have a bad meal. That is not the case anymore—you can easily have a bad meal in Paris. But if you plan well, you can spend a month there and never have anything but wonderful food at all the different price points. I feel the same way about New York City. You cannot overplay how great a time you can have in either of these cities.

Purchase The Paris Novel here.

Ruth Reichl’s Oléron Berry Tart

The Paris Novel does not include recipes, but Reichl’s memoirs do. This buttery, French berry tart recipe is adapted from her book, Tender at the Bone. It has a soft frangipane center that is studded with juicy berries that turn into nibbles of jam in the oven. The original recipe calls for four cups of raspberries berries, half of which are arranged on the tart before it is baked, with the remainder getting heaped on top after it has emerged from the oven and cooled. While more berries is always better, at today’s prices four cups of fresh berries turn this tart into quite the expensive dessert. I used half the amount and it was still wonderful.

Note: This recipe requires a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom (like this). You could probably also make it in a pie plate, but I have not tried it that way.

Note: This recipe uses 4 egg yolks. Don’t throw away the whites! Use them to stretch a frittata or to make a double batch of my almond horn recipe from Modern Jewish Cooking.

Serves 8

For the Crust:

1 1/2 cups (210 g) all-purpose flour, sifted, plus more for rolling

1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar

8 tablespoons (113 g) cold unsalted butter

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1 large egg yolk

Chilled water, as needed

For the Filling:

1 cup (100 g) blanched almond flour

3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar, divided, plus more for sprinkling

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract, optional

2 cups (130 g) fresh raspberries (I used half raspberries and half blackberries), washed, drained, and patted dry, plus more for topping, optional

Confectioner’s sugar for dusting, optional

1. Put the flour and sugar into a bowl. Cut the butter into small squares and add to the flour-sugar mixture. Toss with your fingers until the butter is coated in the flour, and then rub until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

2. Add cream to the egg yolk and pour into the flour mixture. Mix and press with a fork until the pastry begins to clump and holds together when squeezed. If not moist enough, add a tablespoon or so of cold water until it clumps together. (Be careful not to add too much water.)

3. Sprinkle flour across a counter and place pastry on the flour. Push the dough with the heal of your hand until the butter has all been worked through. Gather into a ball, form into a disk, and wrap well in parchment paper or plastic wrap. Let rest in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or up to overnight.

4. Remove and allow to warm up for 5 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle more flour onto the counter. Roll the disk into an 11-inch circle. Fit gently into a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press into the pan gently, being careful not to stretch the dough. Trim off the edges and put in the freezer for 10 minutes until firm.

5. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350˚F (180˚C). Line the tart shell with parchment paper and fill with dried beans. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the parchment and beans, then bake until lightly golden, 4 to 5 minutes more. Remove from the oven and let cool while making the filling.

6. Stir together the almond flour and 3 tablespoons of the sugar in a medium bowl, set nearby.

7. In the bowl of a stand mixer or using a handheld electric mixer and another medium bowl, cream the butter and remaining sugar at medium speed until fully combined. Beat in the egg yolks, vanilla extract, and almond extract, if using, followed by the almond flour mixture.

8. Spread the almond cream into the cooled, pre-baked tart shell. Carefully arrange the berries on top of the tart. Sprinkle the top of the tart with a teaspoon or two of additional sugar then bake until the almond cream is lightly puffed and set, 35 to 40 minutes.

9. Remove from the oven and let cool for at least 2 hours before slicing. If desired, cover the top of the tart with additional fresh berries just before serving and use a fine mesh sieve to dust the top lightly with confectioner’s sugar.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Hello, The Jewish Table Readers!

This week’s newsletter is such a treat. I am joined by my friend and fellow writer, Bonny Reichert, to talk about her lovely new memoir, How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty. Bonny also shared a quick and delicious recipe for the Lox Bowl her father made for her when she was growing up. The combination of smoky lox and briny capers with bursts of cherry sweet tomato and slices of mellow, marinated onion takes exactly 10 minutes to make, and brings together the best flavors of the Jewish breakfast table—with a bagel, or without.

After reading the interview, and immediately making and devouring the Lox Bowl (I know you’re tempted!), be sure to scroll down for a first hand account from a friend and USAID employee whose life-saving humanitarian work hangs in the balance because of Trump and Musk’s reckless budget slashing. In this time of rampant misinformation, I think it is so important to hear directly from the people and communities—including our friends and neighbors—who are shouldering the worst of the impact.

The Four Questions Interview: Bonny Reichert

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Bonny Reichert, a Toronto-based journalist, chef, and author of the recently published memoir, How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty.

Reichert and I first connected in 2015, when she interviewed me for a story about modern Jewish cooking for the The Globe and Mail. Last year, she emailed me to ask if I would be interested in reading her new memoir, which she described as, “my experience as the child of a Holocaust survivor, growing up in the restaurant business.”

I said yes, of course—I am always game to check out new food writing. But I admit I went into reading How to Share an Egg feeling a bit wary. I was raised on stories about the Holocaust—at school, at Hebrew school, and through books like Lois Lowry’s influential novel, Number the Stars. (Goodness, I must have re-read Number the Stars a half-dozen times in my early teen years.)

There’s a rhythm to most Holocaust stories. There’s beauty and resilience, yes, but mostly there’s crushing, soul-shocking pain. Of course there is—the horrors of the Holocaust left a singular gash on the Jewish community and a stain on the fabric of humanity. But cumulatively, over time, encountering that amount of pain and horror can leave one feeling a bit numb and resistant to encountering more.

Fortunately, it only took a few pages of reading to realize that Reichert’s approach to storytelling found a way to cut through the numbness. Yes, the book is about her dad, who was a 9 year old Hasidic Jewish boy living in Poland when Hitler’s reign turned the sweet world he knew into a nightmare. But Reichert, who was a young child in Canada when she first noticed the numbers tattooed on her father’s arm, also tells her own story—the one of a daughter growing up and searching to become herself in the Holocaust’s long shadow.

At its heart, How to Share an Egg is less a story of “the Holocaust,” and more a chronicle of how trauma passes through families from one generation to the next. It is about the weight of grief and how it weaves and shifts through time, but never disappears.

I recently had the chance to interview Reichert about her heartfelt, honest, and deeply relatable book (which I have already ordered copies of for multiple family members). She shared with me how she overcame her decades-long writers block around writing her dad’s story, about her family’s trauma-informed relationship to food, and her “spiritual mothers” in the food writing world.

—

1. You write about your long term writer’s block around telling your dad’s story—and how a bowl of borscht you ate in Poland helped open the floodgates. What was it about that experience that finally allowed you to get his (and your) stories out?

I grew up knowing about the Holocaust, and my father told stories when I was little. He wasn’t secretive or unable to talk, but he turned his stories into what felt like fairytales. Then in the late 70s when I was a young teenager, I saw a miniseries about the Holocaust and it looked very different from what my father had presented. It was my first time seeing it all from the outside, and I lost the protectiveness he’d given me as I reconciled the two realities. I was basically terrified for the next 30 years.

I never wanted to go on a heritage trip to Poland or visit the camps. My dad always said, “I suffered enough, I don’t want you to suffer.” But then, several years ago, he heard there was a family tomb—it turned out to be his grandfather’s tomb—in a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. And he changed his mind on a dime. So my mother, one of my sisters, and I went with him and we found his grandfather’s name etched in the stone. It was an incredible moment—to see this proof from his whole way of life before the war erased it all.

Afterward, we stopped at this bleak little restaurant that our guide found. It was raining outside and I had a headache and was absolutely done. Our guide ordered for us and out came these bowls of borscht. They were beautiful—transparent, red, cool, clear, and simple with a tray of chopped cucumber, boiled potatoes, sour cream, and fresh dill as garnishes. I was just stunned, I can still feel it. It’s not that I particularly loved borscht as a child, but it was so honest and pure. I thought all at once, “My own grandmother probably made borscht just like that in Poland.” I suddenly felt so connected and moved and realized that this heritage wasn’t just about the Holocaust. It was about everything that came before and after. It opened up something in me and when I came home I started to write.

2. That must have been really emotional to finally feel the floodgates open.

For so long I felt this conflict because I knew my dad wanted me to write a book about his story. But I knew that was impossible, and I had to find my own way in. Once I realized that the book actually needed to be a personal memoir with my family’s story wrapped around it, I wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about it. I felt anxious that he’d be disappointed or feel too exposed. But he said to me, “Nothing you could do could disappoint me. Do you know what unconditional love is?”

After that, I felt this huge lifting. I felt a lot of healing in creating this work, which is not a direct regurgitation of his experience, but a transformation. I worked his trauma through my own hands to turn it into something else.

3. You write about the dichotomy between your dad’s abundance-minded relationship with food as a Holocaust survivor-turned restaurateur and your mother’s closed off relationship to food. What was it like as a young person navigating those two poles?

It should have been confusing! My dad had his restaurants, which were a central part of our lives. And my maternal grandmother, who was part of running the family, cooked constantly. They both put energy into feeding and enjoying, and creating a sense of plenty. Meanwhile, my mom put her energy into trying to control food. She wanted to be thin, she wanted her children to be thin, and she wanted to eat modern food, not “Jewish food.” On Passover, Baba Sarah would make knaidlach and my mom would roast Cornish hens. We did not eat brisket in our house—that went too far for her. I think my mother had her own first generation trauma and found her mother, who was a very large woman, and her immigrant family status embarrassing. She wanted to ascend.

While the messages were very different, the consistent message from everyone was that food mattered. And somehow it all balanced out. My mom definitely had a disordered relationship to food, but none of my three sisters nor I do. It is kind of incredible, but it all balanced out—this need of my dad and grandmother to feed and my mom’s nervousness around food.

4. Your book shares some stylistic similarities to Ruth Reichl’s memoirs, and of course there’s the allusion to MFK Fischer’s book How to Cook a Wolf in your title. Can you talk about your influences for the memoir, and how their work inspired you?

I call these authors—Ruth Reichl, and MFK Fisher, and Elizabeth David, and Alice Waters, and Laurie Colwin—my spiritual mothers. Colwin was the first one I discovered more than 25 years ago. My husband came home with a copy of Home Cooking and that little book rocked my world. Food writing was still new as a concept, but once I understood it was a genre, I started looking for it. I bought another book called Clementine in the Kitchen that had a forward by Ruth Reichl, and I felt like she was speaking directly to me. I just freaked out at how cool they all were. I did not have a particularly strong relationship with my mother, so there was a lot of room for other mentors. So when I say that these women are my spiritual mothers, I really mean it. It’s like a conversation, and it has been really important to me.

How to Share an Egg, by Bonny Reichert, was published by Penguin Random House in January, 2025.

Ten Minute Lox Salad

This Ten Minute Lox Salad, which was shared with me by author Bonny Reichert, is one of those incredible “you-don’t-need-a-recipe” recipes that takes a few choice ingredients, mixes them together, and creates pure Jewish comfort. In her newsletter, Field & Pantry, Reichert writes about the dish’s origins:

“A slightly quirky kid with a distinct palate, I loved all varieties of tinned and smoked fish but did not enjoy bagels, which seemed bland and dry by comparison. So Dad created a dish, just for me; Lox Salad, we called it — juicy, cubed tomatoes; onions marinated to soften their bite; capers, and chunks of smoky lox, all dressed with a little oil, vinegar, salt and pepper.”

Reichert’s description is basically the recipe—a dish that is easy enough to make right now, if you’ve got everything on hand. I’ve shared a few clues here for how to put it together, but feel free to dress it up/down however you’d like. A bit of chopped fresh dill, lemon zest, and/or everything bagel spice would certainly not be out of place! Serve it alongside bagels (if they’re your thing), crackers (if they’re not), and a bit of cream cheese for schmearing.

Serves 1 (scale up or down as desired)

1. Thinly slice one-quarter of a small yellow onion. Place it in a bowl and top the slices with a couple of splashes of white wine vinegar and water. Let sit for about 10 minutes, then drain.

2. While the onions are marinating, halve a handful of cherry tomatoes and cut a piece or two of lox into bite-size pieces. Add both to a bowl along with a spoonful of capers and the drained onion slices.

3. Drizzle the bowl with olive oil and a bit more vinegar. Season with salt and pepper, toss, and serve immediately.

Subscribe now

A Personal Account from a USAID Worker

Ten days ago, a friend shared a letter about losing her job at USAID in the wake of Elon Musk and Doge’s chaotic (and in many cases illegal) cuts to government funding. To be clear, I am *not* against the idea of rooting out waste and fraud in the government. But Trump and Musk’s actions are not good-intentioned. They are an attempt to further enrich themselves while putting Americans and people around the world in danger. These slash and burn cuts have had deeply painful, real-life consequences including:

• Putting American farmers’ livelihoods in jeopardy.

• Closing VA hospitals and cutting life-saving health services to America’s veterans.

• Gutting the USDA Forest Service—the very people responsible for being stewards to America’s national parks and managing forest fire prevention.

• Making responding to the next pandemic (which could very well be around the corner) much harder.

With permission, I am sharing a condensed version of my friend’s letter below. I’ve kept her name confidential, but can attest that she is an incredibly bright, hard working, ethical, and good hearted person. As she told me via email, “The Talmud teaches us, “Saving a life is as if you have saved the whole world.” I do this work because I'm a human. I do this work because I'm Jewish. Because the thought of people suffering, despite the great bounty available to others, is devastating to me. Because had my refugee great-grandparents not had the chance to immigrate, I would not be here today.”

Please take a moment to read her words. It is just one story (of thousands), but it brings to life the stupidity, chaos, and cruelty of Musk and Trump’s efforts. There is so much misinformation and propaganda flying around on social media, so these personal, eye-witness accounts are so important to witness and share. For more, The Daily just shared a new related podcast called: Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories.

“Feb 6, 2025

Dear Family and Friends,

By now you have likely heard in the news about the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), my employer since 2020. We are currently witnessing in real time an unlawful seizure of power as Trump, in collaboration with an individual who was neither elected, confirmed, nor granted security clearance, destroys USAID.

USAID works on everything from education to water systems to renewable energy to democratization to assistance. I work specifically on the disaster and emergency side, within USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA). Our mandate is to save lives and alleviate suffering.

The administration has repeatedly attacked our projects, claiming our allocations process is corrupt and irresponsible. The reality? In order to award a grant for humanitarian assistance, we conduct a multi-month review process. I am personally responsible for upwards of $70 million in humanitarian assistance. Please believe me when I say I take every precaution to ensure all laws are followed. Working in dangerous contexts, we are in touch with the Office of the Inspector General frequently, and audits of our work are expected. Failed audits have serious consequences.

In week one of the new administration, a pause was put on all foreign assistance. With limited guidance, we had to figure out what this meant for our work and for that of our partners. We were also instructed to report on colleagues working on DEIA initiatives within ten days, or face disciplinary action.

In week two, we were told to apply for a waiver to allow emergency assistance to keep flowing. We were also told we weren’t allowed to speak to colleagues at the Department of State. All of our contractors received stop work orders.

On Friday, January 31, AI appeared on all USAID devices without warning. It was understood that it was being used to record internal meetings and generate transcripts that would be FOIA-able and used against us, while employees navigated a black hole of guidance.

In the waning hours of week two, Musk sent his 19-24 year old acolytes to storm the USAID offices, demanding access to highly classified spaces. Musk’s small boys forced their way into these spaces and threatened to call the U.S. Marshals on the brave USAID security staff who tried to prevent them from entering. The senior USAID officials were then placed on administrative lead as Musk’s DOGE boys raided the space despite having absolutely no security clearance, permission to access, or right to be there.

In week three, all personal services contractors lost access to email and computers, with zero communication from the Agency. As of February 4, nearly all direct hires – career civil servants and foreign service officers – had also lost access to email and computers.

Why is Humanitarian Assistance Important?

Upon establishing USAID, President Kennedy explained that any cuts to aid “would be disastrous and, in the long run, more expensive. Our own security would be endangered and our prosperity imperiled.”

Humanitarian assistance is not perfect. In some ways it maintains neo-colonial systems, with an inherent power imbalance. It is also not a sustainable solution. Providing health care and emergency food assistance today does not guarantee a better tomorrow for beneficiaries. Systems that are broken too often remain broken.

But humanitarian assistance, complemented by stabilization, development, and democratization work, making use of the rest of USAID’s tool chest, has the possibility to change lives. Public-private partnerships help grow economies around the world while simultaneously bolstering American businesses. Aid efforts create economic reasons for potential migrants to stay at home. Aid saves lives by providing HIV, malaria, and TB medications. And governance initiatives can stem conflicts before they become violent.

USAID staff are currently on the ground in Kampala, Uganda, working to stop an emerging Ebola outbreak. The 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in West Africa did not massively impact the US thanks to USAID’s work. Remember the panic in NYC in 2014 when just one case made it to the US? Yet USAID staff in Uganda no longer have access to their email; these are the people in charge of communicating with the White House, National Security Council, and CDC.

BHA staff are currently responding to the world’s most pressing crises: the war in Ukraine, the war and Famine in Sudan, the war in Gaza, the conflict in Yemen, and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Our work to meet the needs of the most vulnerable is a vital step towards eventual peace; nowhere is this more true than in Gaza. The ceasefire deal, signed January 19, stipulates certain quantities of humanitarian assistance that must be brought into Gaza during phase one. If these aid commodities don’t make it into Gaza, the ceasefire deal will fail.

Humanitarian aid workers – myself included – receive extensive training for operating in dangerous contexts. I have been trained how to drive an armored vehicle, brace for a bomb, perform emergency trauma care on victims of a violent attack, and escape from a burning building. Many of my colleagues are former military who dedicate the same pride and integrity they exhibited during their military service to the work we do every day.

Soft power is vital to America’s safety and to the image of the US abroad. As former USAID Administrator Samantha Power said to Colbert on February 5, “USAID is on the frontlines of some of the hardest challenges our country faces and that some of the most vulnerable people in the world face.” She added that USAID is “an investment in our stability, in our security, in our alliances.

Whether you’re concerned about foreign aid or not, you should be concerned about unchecked power and the unlawful concentration of power in the executive.

—

Update as of Feb 13:

A judge’s temporary restraining order has bought many of us another week. Now back on email, we are doing what we can to continue to deliver aid to the world's most vulnerable. A colleague described it yesterday as, "like working with a gun to our heads." I am prepared to lose my job within the week, along with thousands of my colleagues. But in the meantime, I will continue to follow three different codes of federal legal regulations as I work to safely shepherd your tax dollars to address the needs of the world's most vulnerable on behalf of the American people.”

You can follow the USAID Stop Work account on Instagram for up-to-the-minute information.

Subscribe now

Between 2004-2010, I made a lot of kale salads. Like, a LOT. I pulled out the woody stems, chopped up the fibrous leaves and massaged them with salt (remember massaging kale?!), tossed them with tahini dressing and cucumber, or chopped apple and candied pecans—the works.

At the time, I was working for a Jewish environmental organization and considered Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, to be my personal food rebbe. Kale—so earthy, so virtuous, so easy to source locally—was not just dinner, it was part of my identity. I ate so many kale salads during those years, I eventually had my fill and moved on. Or so I thought.

While scanning through Zahav Home: Cooking for Friends & Family—the new cookbook from Philly-based culinary dream team Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook—I came across a kale salad recipe that took an entirely different approach to the leafy brassica. Instead of chopping the leaves, you pulse them in a food processor, which shortens the overall prep time and yields a tender texture somewhere between a chopped salad and tabbouli. The blitzed kale leaves then get tossed with pickled red onion, orange segments, and heaps of pomegranate seeds and pistachios.

I ate this new kale salad with a spoon (like I do with most chopped salads), and its bright flavors and overlapping crunchy and juicy textures revived my long lost love for the winter green. You can find the Kale Salad with Pomegranates recipe from Zahav Home, along with a The Four Questions interview with Solomonov and Cook, below.

Meanwhile, I am curious: kale had such a giant *moment* in the early aughts, but that moment is decidedly over. Chime in to let us know, are you still eating kale in 2025?

Subscribe now

Three Reads for Your Heart

It has been a rough week. Again. And we are in for an ongoing onslaught of “weeks” over the next four years. Here are three reads (or rather two reads and one listen/watch) that helped keep me calm(ish), focused, and informed this week—I’m sharing them in case they feel helpful for your heart and nervous system too.

What Happened on January 20 by Anya Kamenetz

Kamenetz shared a list of consequential things that happened on January 20—like the ceasefire and return of three Israeli hostages to their families, and the EU’s commitment to stop buying fossil fuels from Russia—that have nothing to do with the inauguration or the chaotic and vengeful flurry of executive orders that followed. She framed the exercise this way, which I really appreciated: “I’m not interested in sticking my head in the sand, but in widening the aperture of my attention.”

Day of Reckoning: A Reminder and a Hope, by Bess Kalb

Here’s an excerpt of Kalb’s newsletter—it is worth read the whole thing. “Today is a reminder that there is a groundswell of people in this country who are just as horrified as you are, and that none of it matters unless we do something about it. Today is a reminder that even though the path to Trump was paved by racism and sexism and misinformation, apathy cleared the way. He is only possible when the people against him do nothing.”

Heather Cox Richardson in conversation with Jen Rubin, The Contrarian

In this video, a historian (one of the best) and a journalist (who recently left the Washington Post to co-found a new, democracy-focused news platform) discuss the precedent for arriving at this political moment, and where we go from here.

*BONUS: The bravery shown by Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde—who delivered a sermon to the new president during yesterday’s National Prayer Service—is just incredible. May she be a model for us all in how to show up (in ways big and small) for justice and love over hate, fear, and greed.

The Four Questions Interview: Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by chefs Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. Since first opening the modern Israeli restaurant Zahav in Philadelphia in 2008, the James Beard Award winners have become two of the country’s most influential restaurateurs.

Today, the duo runs 23 restaurants in Philadelphia and beyond. (My personal favorites are the next-level falafel shop Goldie and the kebab-focused Laser Wolf, which has an outpost in Brooklyn). They also co-authored three acclaimed cookbooks, including the best-selling Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking.

The idea for Zahav Home was sparked during the early months of the pandemic. Solomonov and Cook are, of course, known for their restaurants. But in March, 2020, Covid 19 immediately shuttered life—and food—as they knew it.

“Nothing had prepared us for this moment,” they write in Zahav Home’s introduction. “With no idea what else to do, we did the only thing that made us feel close to normal: We cooked. We cooked breakfast and lunch for our families. And then we cooked dinner… Cooking and eating together was our salvation. It occupied our hands and our minds. And every once in a while, one of us would cook something that would startle us into saying: ‘This would be really good on the menu.’ A little glimpse of hope for the future.”

Zahav Home is an ode to the powerful comfort cooking for family and loved ones brings. It is filled with flavors that will be familiar to anyone who has eaten at Zahav—pomegranate and za’atar, tahini and charred eggplants—but the recipes for Butternut Squash Baba Ganoush, Date Glazed Salmon Fillets, and Phyllo Borekas with Swiss Chard and Feta are specifically designed for the home kitchen. The book was produced and photographed over the course of many months with no food styling team. Solomonov and Cook prepared the dishes at home, and photographer Michael Persico caught everything in real time.

Restaurant life is definitely back on these days, but Zahav Home is as relevant as ever. Solomonov and Cook took some time to chat with me about their early memories of cooking together, their favorite dishes from the book, and what dinner time with their families (Mike’s kids are 13, 10, and almost 2, and Steven’s are 17, 15, and 12-year old twins) looks like today.

Can you share an early memory of you two cooking together?

SC: Mike has a much better memory than me. But my earliest memory is when when we were opening Federal Donuts in 2011, and we developed the whole menu together. We would come in really early to the Zahav kitchen and test fried chicken recipes, and make dozens of doughnuts in the basement of our restaurants with poor ventilation. Anyone who says tasting food is a good job hasn’t actually done it!

MS: I’m remembering a trip we took to Israel after Zahav opened. It was a food focused trip with other industry people led by Joan Nathan, and we had this dinner in Tel Aviv where we had to make a couple of dishes. I don’t remember exactly what we made, but I remember thinking, “We don’t ever really get to cook together.”

SC: I remember feeling really self conscious that day. Everyone in the group was a chef, but I hadn’t worked in a professional kitchen for 5 years at that point. I think I made a bulgur and pomegranate salad. We actually cook the most together now. Fortunately we get along well in the kitchen.

2. Through the book, readers get a really good sense of what dinner time felt like at your homes during those early pandemic months. Have you been able to maintain some of those rhythms?

MS: One of the only good things about the pandemic is that it disciplined my time cooking at home with my family. These days, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights we are home having dinner together. That definitely did not happen prior to the pandemic.

SC: My lifestyle is different than Mike’s—my family always eats together. But now that the kids are getting older and running in a million different directions, dinner can be a bit of a free-for-all. About four nights a week, we all sit down together to eat. My wife is an amazing cook, but we don’t often cook together because coming out of a professional kitchen, I have to be organized and clean as I go, and she doesn’t always follow that same mindset.

3. What are some of the triumphs or realizations you had while translating recipes from a professional kitchen to a home kitchen?

SC: We were working out of the same pantry as Zahav, but the recipes themselves were all designed for a home kitchen. We made and shot all of these recipes in one take, start-to-finish, with no chef tricks. I am proud of that. This is a book to be used.

MS: My favorite realization is that even in home ovens, broilers can be really effective. A broiler plus a sheet tray lets you sear foods with minimal cleanup.

4. Which recipes from the book do you make again and again?

SC: I make the spatchcock chicken at least once a week. It’s 45 minutes in the oven and done. It is perfect. I put whatever veggies I have underneath and they get cooked in the schmaltz. Everyone goes crazy for it. I also make the salmon with everything spice all the time—at least twice a month.

MS: My wife makes the meatballs with Israeli couscous—that is a big favorite in our household. And the microwave broccolini. You don’t have to boil a big pot of water and shock the vegetables in ice water. It is quick and real.

Kale Salad with Pomegranates

Serves 4

[Headnote from Zahav Home] Blitzing the kale in a food processor is a time-saver that transforms the dark leafy green from dry and tough to tender and juicy. When pomegranates are in season, we eat them to excess. Too often, pomegranates are a mere gesture in a dish—a few lonely seeds scattered on top. This salad calls for more than enough to consider reserving a few spoonfuls as a treat for the chef. There’s nothing more luxurious than a giant spoonful of pomegranate seeds (except, perhaps, caviar).

[Leah’s testing note] I found the vinegar and salt amounts called for in the original recipe to be too sharp and salty for my personal taste, and made modifications accordingly. I included the original amounts in case you want to try it that way and see what you prefer.

½ medium red onion, sliced into half-moons

1/3 cup red wine vinegar (original recipe called for for scant 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon Diamond kosher salt (original recipe called for 1 tablespoon)

1 large or 2 small pomegranates

2 large bunches kale, ribs removed, washed and dried

1 cup unsalted pistachios, roughly chopped

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more as needed

2 to 4 mandarin or clementine oranges (depending on size), peeled and separated into segments

1. In a bowl large enough for the entire salad, stir together the red onion, vinegar, and salt.

2. Prep the pomegranates: Have a bowl handy for the seeds. Slice each pomegranate in half horizontally. Working with one half at a time, whack the skin side with a wooden spoon to loosen the seeds directly into the bowl. Remove the pith and discard.

3. Working in batches (don’t overpack the bowl), blitz the kale in a food processor until it looks like roughly chopped parsley. Add to the bowl with the marinated onion, stirring until evenly coated. Let sit for 10 minutes to allow the kale to absorb the dressing.

4. Add three-quarters of the pistachios plus the olive oil, tossing until evenly coated. Scatter three quarters of the pomegranate seeds and oranges on top, then stir everything together. Scatter the remaining nuts and fruit on top.

5. Drizzle more olive oil on top if you like.

   Recipe adapted from Zahav Home by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. Copyright © 2024 by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook. Reprinted by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

I’ve planned to run this recipe for Heartbroken Beets, from chef Jeremy Salamon’s lovely new cookbook Second Generation for weeks, now. But when I originally slated the dish into my newsletter’s editorial calendar, I had no idea just how heartbroken I would feel over last week’s presidential election results.

Thank you to everyone who commented on last week’s newsletter, The Grief of Early Dawn — a piece of writing that erupted, almost fully-formed, from my brain onto the page. (I can’t remember another time when I’ve experienced that kind of spontaneous flow state, but I guess grief can do strange things.) Your comments were a balm for me personally and, I am sure, for this wider community as well.

Interestingly, the handful of mean and dismissive responses that last week’s newsletter elicited—the ones that called me a “loser,” a “disappointment,” and an “empty suit,” after I’d shared my fears—arrived by private email, not public comment.

I will not dwell on their words, because I don’t find them meaningful. But I do think it is notable that the folks who sent them did not have the courage to share their thoughts where others could witness them. To have won an election, and to still be so full of anger (and meanwhile too ashamed to express it in front of a wider community) is telling—and sad.

So yes, Heartbroken Beets. It’s a visually gorgeous, simple, and truly delicious recipe that marinates beets in a honey-balsamic vinaigrette and optionally pairs them with shards of funky, salty blue cheese. (I substituted fresh goat cheese when I made them—it worked great.) The mix of sweet, earthy, and tangy flavors will turn, as Salamon described it in his cookbook, a “beet avoidant into a beet lover.” I am honored to share Salamon’s recipe with you, along with a fascinating companion interview.

I hope you make these Heartbroken Beets this week. And I hope you remember that we may feel heartbroken about our country right now. But we are not heartbroken like “forever shattered and lost.” We are heartbroken like making room for “the light to get in.”

The Four Questions Interview: Jeremy Salamon

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by chef Jeremy Salamon. Salamon is the James Beard-nominated founder of Agi’s Counter, a Hungarian-Jewish-inspired restaurant in Brooklyn. As someone with young children who has very limited time for dining out, I rarely hit the same restaurant more than once. But Agi’s creamy borscht, buttery pogasca biscuits, palacsinta (Hungarian crepes), semolina dumplings, and rotating selection of perfect coffee cakes are worth returning to again and again.

In September, Salamon published his first cookbook, “Second Generation: Hungarian and Jewish Classics Reimagined for the Modern Table, which tells the tale of his family, his community, and his approach to Hungarian-American cuisine in the 21st century. The recipes in the book are incredibly “cookable”—dishes like Körözött (Hungarian Pimento Cheese), Nokedli Cacio e Pepe, and Caraway Apple Cake that are at once homey and new. (*Note to kosher keepers, the book is not kosher—but there are plenty of kosher-friendly recipes.)

I have been a fan of Salamon’s since Agi’s Counter opened three years ago, so it was a delight to learn that he is also a true mensch and a delight to talk to. In The Four Questions this week, he talked about the book he discovered on a bookstore’s sale table that changed his life, his favorite dishes from Second Generation, and the central roll that babka and Cognac played in convincing grandma Agi to share her Hungarian recipes with him.

1. Tell me more about your grandma Agi and the role she’s played in your cooking.

Both of my grandmothers were pivotal figures in my childhood. I literally grew up between them geographically. On Friday night we would go to Nana Arlene’s and Sunday nights were for Grandma Agi. In both homes, our gatherings were centered around family, but their styles were very different. Grandma Agi’s food was definitely not as “pretty” as Nana Arlene’s—but it was always comforting. There was a lot of goulash and paprikash. If there were vegetables, it would be iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing. Nana Arlene was the Martha Stewart of the family. She sewed her own tablecloths and trussed chickens.

At grandma Agi’s the kids would play in the den while she would be having a glass of wine and eating grapes while making some sort of stew. She came from Hungary and then went to Austria and New York before settling in Florida. Her version of Hungarian cuisine was shaped by her experience of fleeing her home country and settling in America. And what I’m doing at Agi’s Counter mirrors that. My version is the second generation point of view. I’ve been to Hungary and done my research, but I grew up with her version of the cuisine, and then I took it and did my own thing. That’s the constant evolution of food. It’s how food works.

2. How did grandma Agi respond when you approached her about your interest in cooking Hungarian food?

She knew I was interested in cooking throughout middle school and high school, but I don’t think she understood why. She would say, “Why does a man want recipes? Men don’t cook. Women cook—we cook for you.” She was also confused why anyone would want to know about Hungarian cuisine. As the years went by and she saw my career progressing, she finally came around. I went down to Florida and said, I’m going to do a pop-up restaurant, and I need your recipes as a jumping off point.” She said, “Okay, you’ll have some Cognac with me,” and I was like, “What?!” It turns out, she kept her recipes in the same cupboard where she stored her Cognac and crystal.

She pulled some babka from the freezer and we sipped Cognac while we went over her recipes little by little. They were mostly clippings from Hungarian newspapers and magazines with handwritten notes on them. In Second Generation, you will find lots of handwritten notes throughout the recipes and in the book’s margins—that’s why. But honestly, my coming out to her as gay and introducing my boyfriend to her was so much easier than getting those recipes!

3. I read in Second Generation that Hungarian-Jewish restaurateur George Lang (of NYC’s Café des Artistes fame), was also an influence on you?

I love George Lang. I have read his book Nobody Knows the Truffles I’ve Seen multiple times over the past decade. I didn’t know about him until I walked into the Strand bookstore 12 or 13 years ago and that book was sitting on top of a pile. I had never seen a Hungarian cookbook or one that had an entire chapter dedicated to the history of the cuisine. Reading through it felt like peeling back the layers of the onion and finding this really rich, beautiful, tragic history of a cuisine I thought I knew.

Personally, I cannot look at Hungarian cuisine without associating it with Jewish culture and tradition—and personal histories like Lang’s story and my grandma Agi’s story. Kashrut is not really part of the conversation for me. I went to Jewish day school through sixth grade, but my family did not keep kosher at home. And it wasn’t part of the narrative for grandma Agi either, who loved cooking with pork fat. But I think there is a new interest in Eastern European and Jewish cooking that is just starting to boil, and I find it really exciting.

3. What do you hope Second Generation adds to the conversation about Hungarian Jewish cuisine?

I hope that the book does something similar to what Agi’s Counter is doing, but is able to reach people who can’t travel to New York City. When I opened up Agi’s, I had pogasca and palacsinta on the menu, and different versions of lecso and goulash that all sound like you have peanut butter on the roof of your mouth when you say them. At first, a lot of folks did not know what any of those dishes were. But three years in, these foods have become a part of our customers’ vocabulary, and they are being talked about in the media. It is exciting to be able to help push the needle forward and expand people’s food horizons.

4. What dishes from Second Generation do you make most often at home?

Definitely the Chicken Liver Mousse with port and thyme leaves. I don’t have a super high speed blender at home like I do at the restaurant, so I can’t get it quite as smooth. But it is still delicious. I also love the Caraway Caesar Salad which adds caraway seeds to the dressing and a bunch of fresh dill to the salad greens.

Heartbroken Beets

Headnote from Second Generation: These beets—an essential ingredient in Hungarian and Jewish cooking—used to be on my menus at the Eddy and Wallflower, but I had already been making them for myself for a long time. When I started dating my boyfriend, Michael, this was one of the first things I made him and it turned him from beet avoidant into a beet lover. The tender beets get smashed, like a broken heart, then marinated in a sweet-savory mix of garlic honey, olive oil, and vinegar so the flavors can seep into all the cracks and crevices. The blue cheese is optional, but it really balances all the flavors and adds a nice creaminess.

Note from Leah: I swapped in fresh goat cheese for the blue cheese, which offers a different flavor profile, but was really delicious. I have no doubt that shaved parmesan or crumbled feta would also work well.

Serves 4

2 pounds small red beets (Note: smaller beets will soak the marinade in more effectively than larger/denser beets.)

1/2 cup Fermented Garlic Honey (see below) or wildflower honey

2 cups extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup white balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt

5 ounces blue cheese, sliced into thin shards (optional)

1. Place the beets in a large pot of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook for about 45 minutes, until fork-tender. Drain the beets and cool slightly until just cool enough to handle.

2. Using a rag, wipe the skins off the beets. Discard the skins. Place the beets on a cutting board and gently press the beets using the palm of your hand just until they split open. Transfer the beets to an airtight container.

3. Whisk together the honey, olive oil, vinegar, and a generous pinch of salt in a large bowl. [Note: Don’t skimp on the salt. You want to add enough that the marinade tastes full-flavored.] Pour the dressing over the beets so they are completely covered. Let the beets marinate for as long as possible, up to 1 day at room temperature or up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

4. Spoon the beets onto a serving plate. The marinade should leach out onto the plate and pool around the beets. Scatter the shards of blue cheese around the beets.

Fermented Garlic Honey

Makes 4 cups

4 cups very good raw honey

2 garlic cloves, smashed

1. Thoroughly clean and dry a 1-quart mason jar. Combine the honey and garlic in the jar and seal the jar tightly.

2. Let sit in a cool, dry place for 10 days, until the honey is very runny and bubbles are forming on the surface. Refrigerate for up to 3 months. The longer it sits, the more flavor it will develop.

This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from Second Generation by Jeremy Salamon and Casey Elsass. Copyright © 2024 HarperCollins Publishers.

Subscribe now

Hello from the Road! After several days of driving, a delightful dip in a roadside waterfall, a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and a night of glamping in Michigan, we made it to Nebraska for our family reunion.

While we are here enjoying a week of cousin time and completing several 1,000 piece puzzles, here’s a recent interview I did with Dan Pashman, plus a delicious, summery pasta salad recipe from his new book Anything’s Pastable.

The Four Questions Interview: Dan Pashman

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Dan Pashman. Dan is something of a marvel. He is the founder of the award-winning podcast, The Sporkful. A few years back he created a *brand new pasta shape* called cascatelli, which is designed to maximize pasta’s “sauceability,” “forkability,” and “toothsinkability.” Today you can buy this pasta shape at Trader Joe’s (among many other places) which, I dunno, feels like a pretty big deal?

And this past spring he, with the help of a team of recipe developer collaborators, he published Anything’s Pastable, a cookbook that features more than 80 wildly inventive, globally-inspired pasta recipes.

I first met Dan and his wife Janie nearly two decades ago when they lived in Manhattan and were part of the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) program I helped run at their synagogue. More recently, I had the pleasure of being a guest on The Sporkful alongside writer and journalist Aymann Ismail talking about Muslims’ and Jews’ relationship to pork in response to Impossible Foods launching a vegetarian pork product. (That was a very fun conversation.)

Over the years, I have enjoyed watching Dan’s star rise, and have appreciated his curious, cheerfully contrarian approach to food and eating. It takes a bold person to diss something as beloved as angel hair pasta. But when you think about it, he’s absolutely correct when he describes it as: “Much too thin, it goes from raw to mush as soon as you drop it in water.” It is also bold to include recipes like Cacio e Pepe e Chili Crisp, and Shakshuka and Shells rather than, say, from-scratch noodles or homemade tomato sauce in a book about pasta. His noodle kugel recipe, meanwhile, includes labneh and persimmon jam which…yes, please!

Below the interview, I’ve shared a pasta salad recipe from Anything’s Pastable called Lemony Tuna with Olives, Capers, Green Beans and Parsley. While researching Portico, I discovered how well noodles and tuna—plus lots of briny flavors—play together. Despite not being a huge fan of fish in general, the Spaghetti with Tuna and Tomato (Spaghetti Tonno e Pomodoro) is one of my favorite dishes in Portico. So I was delighted to see a warm-weather pasta salad in Dan’s book that follows a similar flavor profile.

Whether on his podcast, with his brand new pasta shape, or via his cookbook, Dan is always asking questions that challenge the food norms and push boundaries in a way that expand what’s possible. In this conversation, he shared his thoughts on why pasta traditions are meant to be broken, the team of recipe developers he worked with to create a “quintessentially American” cookbook, and his ideal Jewish meal.

1. You’ve built your career in food around curiosity and cheerful contrarianism. Was there someone in your life who helped spark that curiosity about food?

I grew up in a food obsessed family. Long before the internet, when we were going on vacation, my mom would collect a folder of magazine clippings about the places she wanted to eat. I remember visiting my aunt in Houston in the 1980s and we had fajitas made with freshly made flour tortillas that blew my mind. That meal kicked off a Pashman family fajita kick—for a time we pretty much always had a flank steak marinating. More generally, I come from a long line of lawyers so I’ve learned to enjoy analyzing and overanalyzing things!

2. Italian cuisine is notorious for holding tightly to tradition. But your book complicates the idea that food traditions have to be static—and reminds readers that noodles appear in many food cultures. Can you tell me more about your perspective and what you learned while working on the book?

The most important thing I learned is that pasta only became the “national food” of Italy about 100 years ago when the fascist regime needed to find a food to unite the disparate regions of the recently-formed country and feed the masses cheaply. I talk in the book about how carbonara, which is arguably one of the most famous Italian pasta dishes, was only invented in the 1940s and for a decade the ingredients varied widely. Also ciabatta, which feels like it has been around forever, was invented in the 1990s!

I think there has been a lot of mythologizing around Italian cuisine that people have bought into, but things are changing. Some people in Italy are pushing back about being too simplistic with their storytelling. The idea that there is any place on the planet where food has been cooked exactly the same way for centuries is ludicrous! You can’t stop a culture from changing and evolving.

Pasta is the perfect blank canvas for flavor and texture because it does not have a ton of flavor on its own. It gives the baseline of comfort food, and you can put just about anything on it. When we were working on the recipes, the question wasn’t “What works well with pasta?” It was “What do I like that I haven’t already seen on pasta?”

3. Your book openly acknowledges—and truly celebrates—that you worked with a team of seven recipe developers. Talk to me about how you all worked together and what it was like to create a cookbook as a team?

I started by reaching out to friends in food media for recommendations of great recipe developers. I knew I didn’t just want Italian food people, I wanted people with a range of expertise and backgrounds who could help me create what I think of as a “quintessentially American” cookbook. It was honestly a haphazard process as I started reaching out to people and piecing it together. But they all added so much to the final book. I knew the way I credited recipe developers in the book was not the norm, but I did not realize how unusual it was until the book came out and people started commenting on it! People who work on cookbooks deserve to get the credit.

[Note: The Anything’s Pastable recipe team includes Asha Loupy, Katie Leaird, James Park, Darnell Reed, Irene Yoo, Nathalie Christian, and Rebeccah Marsters.

4. Can you share a bit about your relationship with Jewish food?

I grew up eating classic Ashkenazi Jewish foods—bagels and lox, brisket, and kugels. And I still love all those foods. But in recent years, I have gained a deeper appreciation for the breadth of Jewish cuisine. A lot of the flavors of the Jewish diaspora, like preserved lemon and harissa, have made their way into this cookbook—though I don’t always call them out as specifically Jewish since they are often Jewish and other things.

Today, I would probably describe my ideal Jewish meal as a shawarma buffet. Store bought pita isn’t usually great, so I would serve it with flour tortillas. But I’d make chicken or lamb shawarma marinated in NY Shuk’s Shawarma BBQ Sauce, and put out a big spread with pickles and hummus and tomato and cucumber salad and let people go to town.

Lemony Tuna with Olives, Capers, Green Beans and Parsley

Serves 4 to 6

Headnote from Anything’s Pastable: We’ll start our pasta salad odyssey with one of my go-to weekday lunches, which I often throw together with leftover pasta from last night’s dinner. Everyone needs a good pantry pasta salad in their back pocket for those meals, or for days when it’s too hot to cook or you get a last-minute invite—something that delivers on ease, elegance, and flavor. This is that dish for me. Here we’re pairing it with torchiette (little torches), which are similar to my vesuvio shape and work on similar principles, with curving slides that hold bits and pieces. With torchiette, I love the dynamic contrast between the torch’s narrower, denser handle and wider flame.

[Leah’s note: If you don’t have preserved lemon, this dish still tastes very good without it. You can up the lemon zest a bit to compensate.]

1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt, plus more as needed

1 1/4 cups roughly chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, divided

⅔ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 tablespoons finely chopped preserved lemon, plus 1 tablespoon preserved lemon liquid

2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 pound torchiette pasta (a.k.a. torchio; or use vesuvio, cascatelli, or rigatoni)

8 ounces haricots verts (or regular green beans), cut into 1-inch pieces

8 to 12 ounces jarred or canned oil-packed tuna, lightly drained (*see note)

⅔ cup pitted green olives, torn in half (use a full cup if you really love olives)

2 tablespoons drained capers, roughly chopped

1. Bring 4 quarts of water and the salt to a boil in a large pot. Meanwhile, in a blender, combine 1/2 cup of the parsley, the olive oil, lemon zest and juice, preserved lemon and preserved lemon liquid, garlic, and 1/2 teaspoon of the pepper. Blend until smooth, about 30 seconds, then transfer to a large bowl, scraping out the blender jar.

2. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until just al dente (the low end of the package instructions). During the last 3 minutes of cooking, add the green beans to the pot. Drain the pasta and beans, shaking off the excess water, and immediately transfer to the bowl with the dressing. Add the tuna (flaking it into large pieces), olives, capers, 1/2 cup of the parsley, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and gently fold until evenly coated. Taste and season with more salt, if necessary.

3. Transfer the pasta to a serving dish, sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup of parsley, and serve warm, room temperature, or cold.

[*Note from Dan: When it comes to tuna, this is the time to splurge on the good stuff instead of the flaked tuna packed in water. Look for tuna packed in olive oil—I love Spanish brands Ortiz and La Brujula, the Italian brand Tonnino, and Portuguese brands Santa Catarina and Porthos. When draining the tuna, you want to get rid of just the excess of oil in the tin or jar, letting a little of the flavorful stuff cling to the fish. And whatever you do, don’t rinse it!]

This recipe, which was developed by Asha Loupy, is reprinted, with permission from Anything’s Pastabale by Dan Pashman (HarperCollins Publishers, 2024)

Subscribe now

Hello Dear Readers,

I have some truly lovely things to share with you this week, like this delicious Zucchini Pashtida (think: crustless quiche) from the new cookbook, The Jewish Holiday Table, and an interview with my dear friend and fellow food writer, Devra Ferst.

But like so many other weeks over the last 8 months, I have been consumed and distracted this week by the daily horrors unfolding in the Middle East. After so many months of pain and outrage, I know that many of us are wondering how do we come back from this—as Jews, as humans, as a community?

But I’ve also been wondering not just how can we come back—but also, how do we not lose absolutely everything when we have already lost so much?

The loss of Israeli hostages in Gaza—people who spent their last days terrified and alone—is the loss of the whole world.

The loss of children in Rafah to horrific violence they did nothing to deserve, is the loss of the whole world.

Meanwhile, the loss of children in the Congo and Darfur and Nigeria, who have also suffered immensely and died at the hands of hate and greed—but have gone mostly forgotten in the Middle East-obsessed news cycle—is the loss of the whole world.

How, I have wondered many times late at night when I can’t sleep, do we hold all of this bad, all of this heartbreak, all of this darkness, and not forever lose the entire world? I don’t have a great answer. But I think there is wisdom and solace, and even hope, in fully feeling our grief and outrage, while seeking out and amplifying the moments of light, however few and far between they may seem.

For me, recent moments of light have included:

• The truly brave work of Standing Together—the grassroots Jewish-Arab peace organization—that managed to stop radical settlers from blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza.

• The Black faith leaders in America who, despite being angry with Biden, are campaigning *against* Donald Trump. Because they rightfully understand Trump to be an existential threat to freedom, both here and abroad.

• The World Central Kitchen that, despite everything, continues to show up to feed people in need. In Gaza. In Ukraine. In Brazil after the recent floods. I remain in awe of their daily heroism.

The bad, the horrific, the shattering heartbreak…it is is everywhere. We don’t have to look for it. And I don’t suggest that we minimize it in any way or turn a blind eye towards it. But by fixing our gaze, at least some of the time, to the pockets of good, to the light, to one another, we can sustain a kernel of hope. And as long as that kernel remains, we have not lost everything.

The Four Questions Interview: Devra Ferst

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Devra Ferst, a co-creator of Jewish Food Society’s new cookbook, The Jewish Holiday Table.

Early on in my food writing career (and even earlier in her’s) Devra was the food editor at The Forward. We worked on many stories together during her tenure, and I was always impressed by Devra’s thoughtful edits and unmistakable enthusiasm for Jewish food. In the years since Devra joined me on the freelance side of things, we have remained friends, occasional collaborators, and general fans of one another.

It was no surprise to me when Devra joined the team at Jewish Food Society—a non-profit organization founded by Naama Shefi that preserves and celebrates Jewish culinary heritage from around the world. Over the past several years, Devra has helped build Jewish Food Society’s ever-growing treasure trove of global Jewish recipes and stories. And recently, alongside Shefi and the JFS team, she turned this collective passion for global Jewish food into a cookbook.

The resulting book offers a gorgeous collection of holiday-centric menus from notable Jewish folks around the world. From Fany Gerson’s Mexican-Jewish Passover menu (Brisket Tamales, Gefilte Fish in Spicy Tomato Sauce, Mexican Chocolate-Covered Caramelized Matzah) to Beejhy Barhany’s Ethiopian Shabbat dinner (Collard Greens with Garlic and Ginger, Dabo, the soft and spiced Ethiopian bread used for Shabbat), the recipes are stunning in their breadth and diversity.

But just as delicious are the personal essays that accompany the menus. Each one tells a story of family, of immigration (and often religious or cultural persecution), of setting down new roots in an unfamiliar place, of finding comfort in family dishes, and about how those dishes evolved, along with the people making them, in their new home.

Devra worked closely with each of The Jewish Holiday Table’s contributors to help them craft concise and compelling essays. In our interview, she told me about the joys and challenges of capturing a family story, the recipes she can’t stop making from the book, and what it felt like to share her own grandmother’s story (and her Juniper Gravlax recipe). Devra is every bit as delightful and insightful today as she was way back when she was my editor at The Forward. I hope you take a moment to read her words, and then enjoy the recipe below!

1. How would you describe the focus of The Jewish Holiday Table, and what do you hope people take from it?

The most important takeaway I hope readers get is the breadth and diversity of the Jewish kitchen. It is pretty extraordinary and, as someone who grew up Ashkenazi in the US, I didn’t fully appreciate it. I’ve been writing about Jewish food for a long time, but this book pushed me to understand just how broad and important the Jewish kitchen is—and the importance of preserving dishes and memories. I hope people see themselves in this book! Especially people whose families aren’t at the forefront of the dialogue of Jewish life in America.

I also hope people cook from the book, and not just recipes that feel familiar. I understand and respect that people have traditions around holiday menus. But I would encourage everyone to add a dish, rather than subtract. You can still make your bubby’s kugel, but what might you add that feels new? Or maybe the first night of Passover you go with your family’s traditional dishes, and the next night you mix it up. These recipes are so wonderful that you also don’t need to wait for a holiday to make them.

Finally, I hope that people sit down and really read the book. It is so narrative heavy and the stories are so varied and meaningful. I want people to take it from their kitchen to their couch and enjoy it like a novel as well as a cookbook.

2. You worked closely with the book’s essay contributors. What was that process like?

When we first started working on the book, we planned to follow a similar reported story format similar to what we do for The Jewish Food Society’s website. But we realized it would be even better to help people tell their stories in their own words. I spoke to the contributors many times during the process—in person, on the phone, and over Zoom—and came away with pages and pages of notes. And I used those interviews to help them craft their stories. It is a challenging thing to do! How do you summarize the entirety of your family’s history in just 400 words?

My job was to help them get to the core of their narratives, and pull out which dishes were the most integral to their specific stories. In many cases, like with Ron Arazi’s Moroccan-Jewish family, you cannot talk about Sukkot without talking about Fava Bean Soup with Harissa. And for Mitchell Davis, his family’s Ashkenazi Rosh Hashanah meal in Toronto—their Brisket with Onions, Kasha Varnishkes with Onions and Mushrooms, and Carrot and Sweet Potato Tzimmes—is the center of their holiday. It’s a very intimate thing to talk to people about their families and traditions, but it is so rewarding. I don’t want to sound cheesy, but it was truly an honor.

3. I loved that you also had a chance to share your own family’s food—specifically your grandmother’s Juniper Gravlax recipe. What was it like to share that story?

Writing that story was really emotional for me. My grandmother was such an important person in my life. I still think about her all the time. And I saw the essay as an opportunity to give her some of the honor that she deserved, but didn’t always get in her lifetime. It was particularly meaningful to get to write about our relationship, which shaped my life pretty profoundly and evolved from being strained, especially after I lost my mother at 13, to a true inter-generational friendship.

You can’t separate grammy from her gravlax. It is so delicious and so simple. It is a recipe that is Jewish and it’s not Jewish. But in my family, we don’t have a cholent or tzimmes recipe. We have this gravlax. It is part of my family’s story and part of the American Jewish experience.

4. Is there a dish that you learned about while working on the book that you have since incorporated into your own life?

Naama’s family recipe for Zucchini Pashtida (zucchini casserole) is so good, I can’t stop making it. I has this amazing balance of textures from the thinly sliced zucchini and the Panko. I’ve made it a bunch of times for family and friends, and it is always a hit. The Cherry, Chile, and Cilantro Salad by Hila Alpert is also so good. If you told me to combine cherries with cilantro, it wouldn’t have worked in my brain. But it is actually such a refreshing and incredible combination. It is a great dish to make when cherries are in peak season.

Subscribe now

Zucchini Pashtida (Zucchini Casserole)

Like Devra, I have made this dish—which is essentially a crustless zucchini quiche—several times already. I love the interplay of crispy breadcrumbs and tender zucchini, and the fluffy texture the Greek yogurt adds. It is incredibly easy to make and delicious served either warm or at room temperature. It would make an excellent addition to a Shavuot spread or any summery picnic. For all of the other incredible dishes Devra mentioned in her interview, grab a copy of  The Jewish Holiday Table.

Serves 6 to 8

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons Panko-style or regular dry breadcrumbs, plus more for the pan 

1 large onion (about 10 ounces/280 g), finely chopped 

1 to 1¼ pounds (450 to 560 g) zucchini (2 to 3 medium), sliced into thin rounds

Kosher salt 

3 large eggs

¾ cup (190 g) plain whole-milk Greek yogurt 

½ cup (50 g) plus 2 tablespoons finely grated hard cheese, such as Parmesan, kasseri, or kashkaval

¼ cup (60 ml) whole milk 

¼ cup (30 g) all-purpose flour

Freshly ground black pepper

2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh dill or flat-leaf parsley, or a mix 

1. Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9-inch (22.5 cm) pie pan with olive oil. Dust the pan with breadcrumbs and tap out any excess crumbs.

2. In a large skillet, heat 3 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until very soft and fragrant, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the onion to a large plate or tray and set aside. 

3. Increase the heat to medium-high, and if the pan seems dry, add another ½ tablespoon olive oil. Add the zucchini, sprinkle with salt, and sauté until the zucchini slices have softened a bit but are not completely cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer the zucchini to the plate with the onions and let cool for about 10 minutes. 

4. In a large bowl, stir together the eggs, yogurt, the ½ cup (50 g) grated cheese, and the milk until smooth. Stir in the flour and season the mixture with 1 teaspoon salt and a few twists of black pepper. Fold in the dill, onion, and zucchini, mixing well. 

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie pan, smoothing the surface so the zucchini slices lie flat. Sprinkle with the 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs and the remaining 2 tablespoons cheese. 

6. Bake the pashtida until firm and golden brown, 55 to 65 minutes. If you like, turn on the broiler and cook for a few more minutes for a crispy golden-brown surface. Remove from the oven. 

7. Let the pashtida cool for a few minutes before serving warm, or let cool completely and serve at room temperature.

This recipe was excerpted from The Jewish Holiday Table by Naama Shefi and the Jewish Food Society (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2024.

Every year I feel like Passover sneaks up on me. This year, with the holiday arriving so late in the spring, there’s really no excuse for my shock—and yet somehow I feel even less prepared than usual. By which I mean: the first seder is a week from yesterday and my family has neither 1. cleaned out our kitchen of chametz 2. purchased anything Passover-y. (Deep breaths. Deep breaths.)

I know everything will get done in time—it always does. Plus, we are spending the first two nights at my in-laws’, which means I don’t have the joyful burden of seder prep. But it still. feels. like. a. lot.

If your freezer is already stocked with matzo lasagna, matzo ball soup, and chocolate marzipan balls, then I salute you. Or if you are one of my readers who does not observe Passover, then happy Tuesday! But if you are a fellow last-minute Passover scrambler, I promise you are not alone.

To get you started, I am sharing a gorgeous recipe for Chicken with Clementines, Dates, and Capers from the new cookbook, Hot Sheet: Sweet and Savory Sheet Pan Recipes for Every Day and Celebrations by Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine. It is an absolute showstopper of a dish (I mean, just *look* at it), filled with texture, color, and flavor that will wow your seder guests…or yourself as a weeknight meal during the holiday. And it is made entirely on a sheet pan.

Below the recipe, you can find The Four Questions Interview with Olga and Sanaë. It was a lovely and information-packed conversation, so don’t miss it!

For more Passover inspiration, I’ve shared some seder resources below the interview, because we need them more than ever this year. And don’t forget to check The Jewish Table’s Passover recipe archive for more ideas.

Chicken with Clementines, Dates, and Capers

Passover recipe notes: If you don’t use mustard or fennel seeds on Passover (which are both considered kitniyot), you can omit them. The dish will still have plenty of flavor! And if you can’t find kosher for Passover-certified capers, substitute the best quality green olives you can find.

Serves 4 to 6

1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh orange juice (from 1 orange)

1/4 cup (60 ml) extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 cup (60 ml) dry white wine (or half fresh orange juice and half fresh lemon juice)

3 tablespoons silan (date syrup)

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (from 1 lemon)

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 pounds (1.4 kg) bone-in, skin-on chicken (thighs, drumsticks, or a whole chicken cut up)

1 pound (453 g) cauliflower, cut into bite-size florets (optional)

4 small clementines, unpeeled and sliced 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick

1 fennel bulb, trimmed but core left intact, and cut into wedges 1/4 inch thick

1 medium red onion, trimmed but root left intact, and cut into wedges 1/4 inch thick

7 Medjool dates, pitted and halved

2 tablespoons capers, drained

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried

2 teaspoons fennel seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, for serving

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the orange juice, oil, wine, silan, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and pepper until combined. Add the chicken, cauliflower (if using), clementines, fresh fennel, onion, dates, capers, thyme, fennel seeds, and coriander seeds and stir with your hands to ensure the chicken and vegetables are well coated in the marinade. Set aside while you preheat the oven. (For more flavor, and if you have time, cover, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to overnight.)

2. When ready to roast, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 450°F (230°C). Transfer the chicken, vegetables, and any accumulated juices, to one or two half-sheet pans (see Hot Tip! below) and arrange in a single layer. (Make sure the chicken is facing skin side up.)

3. Roast for about 35 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through (and registers 165°F/75°C on an instant-read thermometer) and the vegetables are tender and starting to caramelize in places.

4. You can serve the chicken as is, with the pan juices, or opt to reduce the sauce. To do so, transfer the chicken to a serving platter, cover, and keep warm. Strain the sauce into a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Lower the heat so the sauce is at a lively simmer and cook until reduced by one-third, about 1/2 cup (120 ml). Pour the sauce over the chicken, garnish with parsley, and serve.

HOT TIP! If you have too much stuff to fit on a single half-sheet pan without steaming, divide the chicken and vegetables between two half-sheet pans and position two racks in the middle and lower third of the oven. Or simply keep the cauliflower separate from the outset, toss it with olive oil and a little salt and pepper, and roast on the lower rack. While roasting, switch racks and rotate the sheet pans front to back to ensure even cooking throughout.

This recipe is from Hot Sheet, by Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine, 2024. Reprinted by permission of Harvest, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Get 20% Off The Jewish Table

The Four Questions Interview: Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Olga Massov and Sanaë Lemoine, co-authors of Hot Sheet: Sweet and Savory Sheet Pan Recipes for Every Day and Celebrations. (“Hot Sheet” is my current favorite cookbook title—and quite possibly my favorite cookbook title of all time.)

Olga is a Washington DC-based editor and contributor at The Washington Post’s Food section, and the co-author of several cookbooks. Sanaë is a Brooklyn-based novelist (The Margot Affair) and former cookbook editor. They are two of the most eloquent and elegantly chic people I know. And they are incredible editors, recipe-developers, and writers, both. I absolutely love that they wrote a sheet pan cookbook that expand’s the fashionable cooking method’s relevance beyond weeknight dinners (though many of the book’s recipes are simple enough for everyday) and onto the holiday/celebratory table.

Olga and Sanaë spoke about the process of co-writing a cookbook (virtually!), shared their favorite sheet pan-cooking tricks (including one that I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of), and mused on their connections to Jewish food. The depth of their friendship—and their shared love for food and cooking—shines through in every word.

1. What drew you both to sheet pan cooking? And what do you hope Hot Sheet adds to the conversation?

Olga Massov: The idea germinated at the beginning of the pandemic. That first year we were bouncing ideas around at the Post about how to do holidays that year—when there were no vaccines yet and nobody was going anywhere. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I was feeling grumpy about not having a big, full table. After stewing for a bit, I ended up saying, “You know what? I’m just going to roast a duck and some potatoes on a sheet pan for my family. It will be beautiful and special even without a crowd—because no one is going to take that away from me.”

I brought the idea up to the team, and they thought it would be great to do a whole sheet pan Thanksgiving issue. It felt really natural, and we ended up helping readers celebrate without cooking a million courses. It got me thinking about what else I could do on a sheet pan—not just for a low-lift weeknight dinner, but for the holidays. I thought, surely there’s a cookbook like that out there. But I couldn’t find one that shifted the conversation away from weeknights.

I started talking with Sanaë about it, and she sent me so many fantastic ideas that I thought, “We have to do this together.” I have a Russian American Jewish cultural food background and Sanaë is French and Japanese—so combined, we have all these different angles and viewpoints to bring to the table. We also love each other’s food and talk about food for hours. It was a natural collaboration.

Sanaë Lemoine: I feel like I fell into this book! We’d been friends for a year and a half after meeting at Phaidon as cookbook editors. As Olga was saying, we had this symbiotic relationship when it comes to food. When we talk about a recipe, we are always on the same page. At a restaurant, we usually want to order the same thing.

I was deep in fiction writing, and never thought about writing a cookbook. But one day Olga came to me, and I immediately loved the idea. She shared a spreadsheet, so I started commenting on her ideas and adding my own. When she asked me to co-write it, I said at first, “You’re so silly, you don’t need me.” I also know how difficult it can be to sell a cookbook. I thought it was a brilliant idea, but what were the odds that it would get picked up by a publisher? I was shocked that the book we were envisioning did not exist. And I’m so glad she persisted.

2. Tell me about the process of writing a cookbook together. Feel free to spill: Was there any drama?

OM: There was absolutely no drama! 

SL: What was really helpful was the fact that we both have similar professional backgrounds in terms of cookbook editing. We may have grown up with different backgrounds and eating different cuisines, but we have similar skill sets. We are both perfectionists and eagle-eyed about everything. We ended up being on the same page in terms of structure and what to include and dividing up roles. The creation of the book was so seamless, which is rare!

OM: Both of us were very conscious about having the book be a true partnership. We were really careful about having roughly the same number of recipes that came from me or Sanaë. There were times during the process where we were collectively pulling our hair out, but this book was like our baby that we nurtured. We wanted it to shine.

SL: It takes so much work to write a cookbook! It felt like a gift to have a partner that was invested in it as much as I was.

3. What are one or two killer sheet pan techniques you learned during the cookbook writing process?

SL: Covering a sheet pan with another sheet pan! There are a couple of recipes in the book where you cover a sheet pan with a second inverted sheet pan. It fits perfectly and creates a little lid that allows things like rice to steam. It is so obvious, but it was something I had never previously thought of doing.

OM: One trick I learned from watching Ina Garten. When she roasts something on a sheet pan, she drizzles the pan with oil, spreads it around, and then sprinkles it lightly with salt. Then she adds whatever she is roasting to the sheet pan and repeats the process. That way things get consistently seasoned on the bottom without having to toss the ingredients or get your hands dirty.

4. Tell me a bit about your relationship to Jewish food, and how has it evolved over time? 

OM: Most Friday nights, my family has Shabbat dinner. It’s very simple—sometimes it’s a sheet pan quesadilla, sometimes it’s roast chicken. Fridays after a long week can be a hot mess. And I usually don’t want to cook, but Shabbat dinner is such a cozy way to bookend a week—and my son Avi really likes it. Making things on a sheet pan I can get everything done in an hour, which makes the process more palatable. Then we can focus on the comfort of the routine, the traditions, and the time spent together as a family

SL: Your challah is so delicious, Olga! I can’t wait to have it again some day. My dad is French and my mom is Japanese, but we moved to Australia when I was four. Our neighbors were Jewish and they adopted us into their home. Every Friday night we’d go to their place for dinner.

My mom was very strict about food when I was growing up—no sugar, no refined or processed foods, no dairy. I was macrobiotic for much of my childhood. But Shabbat dinner was an exception because we were guests. That was my introduction to Jewish food. I have such vivid and warm memories of those Friday night dinners. I’d overeat and feel so full in every way.

2024 Seder Resources

Each year on Passover, we ask the question, “How is this night different than all other nights?” But that question takes on a different layer of meaning in 2024—a year that is wildly different than other years in recent memory.

If you are feeling anxiety around how to lead or navigate a seder in light of the continuing/escalating horrors in the Middle East…or if you are looking for inspiration for how to show up to your family’s seder with your heart full of both righteous anger and/or fear, but also compassion and empathy, here are a few resources that I hope will help. Please feel free to share other resources in the comments.

How to Host a Seder When Everyone is Talking Past Each Other and Strongly Disagrees About the War — By: Rabbi Jay Michaelson (Source: Forward)

How to Talk About the Elephant in the Room at This Year’s Seder — By: Rabbi Amy Eilberg (Source: J: The Jewish News of Northern California)

The Passover Seder Reminds Us that a Better World is Possible — by Rabbi Steven Philp (Source: Hey Alma)

Get 20% Off The Jewish Table

Subscribe now

I feel fortunate to say that I have no shortage of great borscht in my life. Living in the same city as B&H Dairy—the iconic, 86-year old kosher restaurant in the East Village—a bowl of hot beet borscht brimming with carrots and cabbage is never far away. I am also partial to my own borscht creations, especially the Borscht with Butter Beans recipe I shared two winters ago amidst a frustrating Covid outbreak in my home.

But I am a firm believer that there is *always* room for more borscht. And this week’s newsletter recipe for Fennel and Beet Borscht, which comes from the forthcoming cookbook Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine by Micah Siva is a winner. (More about Micah below!)

Borscht is one of many examples of a dish that took on Jewish significance because of immigration. The tart and tangy, ruby-hued, beet-based soup is considered the national dish of Ukraine, and has been enjoyed by non-Jewish and Jewish Ukrainians alike for generations. When Jews fled Ukraine (and other parts of Eastern Europe where borscht was eaten) for America and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they brought their beloved soup recipes with them. Here, on Jewish holiday tables and in restaurants like the aforementioned B&H Dairy, the soup became regarded as an Ashkenazi-American Jewish staple.

Micah’s borscht recipe includes a few creative tweaks that set it apart. Her addition of fennel is brilliant, lending an extra touch of sweetness and complexity to the broth that perfectly compliments the beets, cabbage, and carrots. She also stirs in some white miso for added depth and umami…and now I might never make borscht without miso again.

Scanning through my copy of Nosh, I flagged a ton of recipes I am excited to try. Cheesy Jumbo Stuffed Kasha and Shells? Celeriac “Pastrami” Sandwiches? Crispy Tahdig Rice “Latkes?” Yesssss please. With a crowd of hungry friends coming over for Shabbat dinner last Friday night and a blustery evening forecasted, the Fennel and Beet Borscht won out as my first recipe to try. But after rave reviews from my guests, I know I will be cooking from Nosh a lot in the coming years!

The Four Questions Interview: Micah Siva

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m excited to be joined by Micah Siva, a Canadian-born, San Francisco-based chef, dietitian, recipe writer, and food photographer who specializes in modern Jewish cuisine.

Micah is a relatively new friend who feels like an old friend. I first discovered her on Instagram, and instantly felt a kinship to her fresh, vibrant, global approach to Jewish cooking. We met in person this past November, when I was in San Francisco for a Portico event. Micah, her husband Josh, and their adorable dog Buckwheat graciously let me crash at their apartment, and Micah and I filmed a reel together that confirmed we are indeed simpatico in the kitchen!

Since then, she has given birth (literally) to a beautiful baby boy, Ari, and is about to give birth (metaphorically) to her first cookbook, Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine. (The book hits the stores March 5, but is available for pre-order.) Even as a lapsed vegetarian myself, I deeply identify with and appreciate the book’s assertion that plant-based Jewish dishes can be every bit as delicious and tied to tradition as their meat-and-root veggie counterparts. Micah and I chatted about her connection with Jewish food, how she transitioned from being a registered dietician to a full-time recipe developer and food writer, and her excitement to share challah, bagels, and matzo balls with Ari…just as soon as he’s old enough.

1. How would you define your relationship to Jewish food, and how has it evolved?

It feels so much more personal to me than it ever did. Growing up, Jewish food was what we ate on the holidays, but not something I thought about eating any other day. Day-to-day we had things like tuna and cream of mushroom soup casserole—as one does! Holidays were mostly at my grandma’s house, and many dishes came with a story about where they came from. But they weren’t our generation’s stories—Jewish food was always talked about in the past tense.

Now I feel like Jewish food is something I want to help define for our generation, so it isn’t limited to recipes from Norene Gilletz’s Pleasures of Your Food Processor Cookbook, with my grandma’s notes scribbled in the margins. (When my grandma passed away, that cookbook was the one thing I requested. It was so influential in her kitchen!)

Jewish cooking to me means exploring ingredients and dishes that connect Jewish food to everyday life—like having matzo and butter even when it isn’t Passover. (This combo was one of my pregnancy cravings!) Or matzo with cream cheese and everything bagel spice. Or snacking on halvah. Or always having the ends of a challah in the freezer to pull out when I’m having soup. Or making quick pickles when I have too many cucumbers. Or rubbing harissa on tofu. Or sprinkling a shawarma spice blend on anything savory. I’m talking about anything that makes you feel connected to tradition without necessarily having to prepare a full Shabbat dinner.

2. What was your journey to food writing and recipe development?

When I first started at university I was in the nursing program. But I realized I hated it after the first semester. I have a fear of hospitals, so that didn’t go well! I ended up going to culinary school in New York, and then fell into the world of dietetics and nutrition. After culinary school, I couldn’t stay in the United States, and my parents offered to help pay for a nutrition degree if I came back to Canada to study. I thought it was food related enough, but you lose some magic when talking about vitamins and minerals, rather than recipes. Throughout school, I had a small catering side business to keep me grounded with the culinary side of things.

In 2018, my husband and I moved to London for his work, and I could not find a job in the nutrition field. I started a food blog (mostly for me and my mom to be excited about!) while applying to jobs. But they were either very low paying, or located in a hospital, or 3 month contracts. So I started focusing more heavily on writing. I worked for Buzzfeed UK making pastry videos, and started to realize I could make a living out of this work. So I kept at it when we moved back to the States in 2020, and haven’t looked back.

3. What was your inspiration for writing Nosh?

I want Nosh to be the vegetarian, plant-forward Jewish cookbook I always wanted, but never had access to growing up. I felt guilty when my bubby couldn’t cook for me on holidays anymore, or when I couldn’t participate in some food aspects of Judaism, which for my family were the biggest parts.

I hope Nosh opens up the world of Jewish food to people who want to try something different. Jewish food is so diverse and can be so exciting! What was missing were recipes for people in the plant-based space. I hope the book reaches vegetarians and Jewish cooks and eaters who want to feel included at the seders or other holiday meals, or parents with vegetarian kids who want to make new traditions together while still connecting with their heritage. And because I look at food through the lens of a dietitian, I make sure that dishes are nutritionally well-rounded and have enough vegetarian protein. So if you’re going to a Rosh Hashanah family dinner, you can contribute a filling and nutritious salad with seitan or beans or tofu, and not be stuck filling your plate with a sad iceberg salad with bottled Italian dressing.

4. As a brand new parent who works in food, what do you hope to pass down to your son and the next generation?

I can’t wait for my son to get his little hands dirty in the kitchen! I hope we make challah together. I literally cannot wait for the moment he can eat a matzo ball. Hamantaschen are one of my favorite desserts ever, so I am excited for him to try those too. One of my most beloved food traditions from growing up was making stamp out sugar cookies on Hanukkah. Of course there is nothing “Jewish” about a sugar cookie other than maybe using blue sprinkles instead of red and green. But I hope we develop a ritual of baking together on the holidays. Maybe one day soon we can go to the bagel place and enjoy a bagel together. How cute will that be?

The official publication date for Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine is March 5. PRE-ORDER your copy today!

Fennel and Beet Borscht

Recipe adapted just a bit from Nosh: Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine by Micah Siva. My adaptations are listed in parentheses throughout the recipe.

Serves 8

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (I used 3 tablespoons.)

1 medium yellow onion, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

2 fennel bulbs, quartered, cored, and roughly chopped (I used 1 large bulb.)

2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped (I used 4 cloves)

1 pound baby potatoes, quartered

2 large beets, peeled and grated (I cut the beets into 1/2-inch pieces because my box grater was trapped in a running dishwasher, lol! Either option is delish.)

1/2 medium green cabbage, finely chopped

6 cups vegetable broth (I used more like 7.5 cups, because I prefer slightly brothier soups.)

1 bay leaf

1/2 teaspoon sea salt, plus more as needed

1/4 teaspoon black pepper, plus more as needed

1 teaspoon lemon zest

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon white or yellow miso paste

1/2 cup chopped fresh dill, plus more for serving

1/2 cup canned coconut milk, for serving (I omitted the coconut milk.)

1. In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to soften, 6 to 8 minutes.

2. Add the fennel, carrots, garlic, and potatoes and cook until the vegetables soften slightly, 5 to 6 minutes. (I added the beets in this step because I chopped rather than grated them. If grating, follow the recipe as written)

3. Add the grated beets, chopped cabbage, vegetable broth, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. Bring the mixture to a boil then decrease the heat to medium-low and simmer until the vegetables soften, 15 to 20 minutes.

4. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, miso paste, and dill, and stir to combine. Taste and add more salt or pepper, if needed.

5. Serve in bowls, drizzled with about 1 tablespoon of coconut milk per bowl, and sprinkled with additional dill.

Meet Micah in NYC, March 5!

Join Micah (in conversation with me) on March 5 at Gertie in Brooklyn. There will be copious Jewish food talk! There will be great food! There will be a silent auction benefiting food rescue initiatives! It’s going to be delicious fun. The ticket price includes a signed copy of Nosh, all drinks and food.

Tickets + Info

Hello The Jewish Table Readers!

This week, I am excited to share an interview with food writer Anya von Bremzen, and talk about her latest book National Dish: Around The World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home, which came out late last month. National Dish explores how certain foods become linked to specific places (think ramen and Japan, pizza and Italy, or mole and Mexico), and how the true story of a food’s connection to place is often not nearly as straightforward as we assume.

But before we get to that, I offer you a decidedly cross-cultural recipe for Grilled Halloumi, Peach, and Watermelon Skewers. We have officially entered the season of low-fuss, produce-forward cooking where we can lean on the vibrant flavors of fresh ingredients (rather than technique or other kitchen sorcery) to do the heavy lifting. Here, halloumi—the squeaky, briny, heat-resistant Cypriot cheese—is paired with fresh watermelon and peaches for a quick dance on the grill (or grill pan), transforming into an edible distillation of summer.

All of my watermelon-feta salad lovers already know the magic of combining the juicy summer melon with salty cheese. But the grill takes the experience to new heights. The watermelon pieces caramelize along the edges of the grill marks, adding sweetness and singe. The halloumi turns molten and tender. And the peach adds a welcome touch of tang to the sweetness. They are wonderful straight off the grill, but I like to gild the lily with a lemony mint oil drizzled over top.

Let me know if you make them, and how you make them your own!

Grilled Halloumi, Peach, and Watermelon Skewers

Serves: Flexible (scale up or down as needed for the crowd you’re feeding)

For the Mint Drizzle:

Finely chop 1/2 packed cup of fresh mint leaves and add them to a small bowl along with 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, the zest of 1/2 a lemon, 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, 1/8 teaspoon of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Whisk to combine. Taste and add more salt / pepper / lemon juice as needed.

For the Skewers:

Cut halloumi, watermelon, and peaches into 1-inch cubes. (Approximate as best as you can with the peach, but aim to have everything as close to the same size as possible.) Thread the cheese and fruit onto skewers, then brush lightly with olive oil. Grill over a medium-high grill, or in a grill pan on the stove, turning every 1-2 minutes, until charred on all sides. Serve immediately, topped with the mint drizzle.

Subscribe now

The Four Questions Interview: Anya von Bremzen

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m thrilled to be joined by Anya von Bremzen, a James Beard Award-winning food writer and author of six cookbooks, including her most recent National Dish: Around The World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home.

Anya has a way of taking wildly complex and nuanced subjects—like the intersection of food and national identity—and bringing them to life in a way that is both easily digestible (but not dumbed down) and can’t-put-the-book-down compelling. In National Dish she explores our '“compulsion to tie food to place,” and how the rise of globalization has made our connection to place feel “both more obsolete and more vital and relevant than ever.”

Anya travelled to France (for pot-au-feu), Naples (for pizza and pasta pomodoro), Tokyo (for ramen and rice), Seville (for tapas), Oaxaca (for maize, mole, and mezcal), and Istanbul (for mezze) to dig into how and why these dishes/ingredients became edible symbols of their locales—and why those might not be as strong or as ancient as we think. And in the book’s epilogue, she tackles borscht (or rather borsch because, as she explains, the “t” is a Yiddish addition)—a dish she grew up eating as a Russian immigrant in America, and which took on an entirely different meaning in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Read on for Anya’s thoughts on the role industry has played in shaping our idea of national cuisine, how social media connects our palates across distance, . And for a summer read that is at once enlightening, informative, and an absolute delight to read, I enthusiastically recommend National Dish. (And for what it’s worth, her memoir Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is also an all-time favorite.)

1. Where do you think our desire to define our food identities comes from?

We live in such a globalized world where it can be easy to lose a sense of who you are. Food is such a perfect subject to infuse with whatever you want to, including identity, and I think it feels reassuring to have a connection to tradition. As I was writing my book, I was shocked to see how much of this kind of craving for nostalgia and regionalism goes back to the neoliberalism of the 1990s. That’s when big companies got involved in turning identities into commodities in a serious way. A lot of the foods that we think of as “traditional” are not nearly as old as we think they are. But we are still part of the narrative. If those foods are meaningful today, who is to say that they aren’t important?

2. How did you settle on which countries/dishes you wanted to focus on in National Dish? And what surprised you most about the places you focused on?

My original plan was a lot more ambitious—I originally had 12 chapters in mind. But my travels were limited by the pandemic, and I ended up focusing on the cultures I was more familiar with. I wanted to be able to bring some prior knowledge to my research, but also question that knowledge.

I was honestly surprised by everything. Like with pizza Margherita from Naples. The common origin story is that it was created in honor of Queen Margherita around the unification of Italy. That story is found in scholarly work. But digging deeper you realize it is complete “fake-lore.” And for something like ramen in Japan, the dish is still actively being invented. The idea of ramen as a national dish of Japan is intertwined with the development of regional tourism in the country. Starting in the 1980s, all of these iconic regional varieties of ramen began popping up and local authorities promoted them for tourism.

3. You write about the impact that influential cookbooks have had in codifying cuisines in France and elsewhere. Now that we are in the social media era, what impact do you think it will have on defining or blurring the national cuisine boundaries?

Cookbooks are very important documents because food is ephemeral and they capture a moment in time. But for most of history cookbooks were meant for certain classes and not reflective of the whole picture of how people cooked and ate. Now things are much more inclusive. And social media is interesting because it makes national cuisines transnational. Anyone can access dishes and techniques from an Indian food writer or Mongolian cook on social media. You don’t have to be able to speak or read the language, you can watch it. I think there is a good chance it will begin to change the idea of what is considered national.

4. How do you personally define “Jewish food”? And how has your relationship to it changed/evolved over time? 

We were secular Jews in the Soviet Union. My mother’s mother gave up any sense of Jewishness to become a good socialist. But Jewishness in the Soviet Union was defined in ethnic, not religious terms. I had no idea until I was older that Judaism meant something more than a stamp on the fifth line of your passport. Although we did have a sense of being “the other” and faced a lot of antisemitism when we left in the 1970s.

The first time I celebrated Passover was in the United States. Today, a lot of my Jewish identity still comes from food. We are not practicing Jews, but we celebrate the holidays, my mom especially. She loves to cook Jewish dishes like gefilte fish and learned from trial and error. Because I live in Turkey for part of the year, I am also into Sephardi cuisine. That is more food I would cook for myself because I just like it.

Subscribe now

Bonus Kid Camp Content!

Thank you so much for your kind and supportive comments and notes after last week’s emotional newsletter about sending Max off to sleep away camp. Thanks to the magic of digital photography, we have been able to get a few candid glimpses of his experience swimming, rock climbing, walking the camp’s goats (ah hippie Jewish summer camp!) and playing ukulele. I’m hopeful he’s soaking up the moments, and looking forward to hearing more when he gets home on Sunday.

Bea, meanwhile, is very much enjoying her time as a temporary only child. And also living her best summer life at day camp. Here she is stirring up some concoction that she described as “yucky but fun.”

Subscribe now

In this week’s newsletter, I have an easy-to-make, supremely delicious recipe for Frangipane Cheesecake Spirals for your Shavuot or springtime tables. And I’m excited to welcome cookbook author and food stylist-extraordinaire, Susan Spungen, to this week’s The Four Questions interview. Susan also graciously shared a recipe for Cheese Blintzes with Sour Cherry Compote from her new book Veg Forward.

Before we get to all that excitement, a quick reminder that The Jewish Table newsletter is supported by paid subscribers. I don’t want to get all “NPR pledge drive” on you. But if you enjoy The Jewish Table and have the means to upgrade to a paid subscription, it really makes a difference. You will receive both recipes and stories (weekly) and gratitude (undying). Thank you!

Subscribe now

Okay, about those Frangipane Cheesecake Spirals!

Shavuot is coming up this week, which means it is time to embrace all. the. dairy. foods. If you want a refresher about why this holiday—which celebrates the Israelites receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai—is also the Jewish calendar’s largest dairy fest, check out last year’s newsletter.

From cheese blintzes and dairy noodle kugels, to an obsession with topping everything from latkes to borscht with hefty dollops of sour cream, there are innumerable expressions of dairy love in Ashkenazi cuisine. (There’s also a high prevalence of lactose intolerance amongst Ashkenazi Jews so…that’s awkward).

One of the purest expressions of that love is cheesecake, in all of its creamy, dreamy, dense-as-fudge glory. I enjoy cheesecake in moderation, especially on Shavuot when it often stars on the dessert table. But after a bite or two, all that cream cheese and sour cream masquerading as cake gets a little overwhelming. (Do you feel that way too? Or are you in the gimme-all-the-cheesecake-all-the-time camp?)

Do you know what never gets overwhelming to me? Almond croissants. Like cheesecake they are also decadent, but the contrast of textures (flaky croissant + creamy almond filling) makes them infinitely more eatable.

So for this week’s recipe I created a mashup of the two confections. Almond croissants are typically filled with frangipane, a soft and spreadable cream made from butter, sugar, egg, and almond flour. I swapped the butter with cream cheese, amped up the flavor with vanilla and almond extracts, and folded in cinnamon and lemon zest and WOW. Spread between puff pastry, sliced and formed into spirals, they bake up into crunchy, creamy, slightly tangy, and just sweet-enough pastries that tick all the boxes for Shavuot and, honestly, just for life.

Let me know if you make them. And wishing you a joyful Shavuot and spring!

Frangipane Cheesecake Spirals

Makes about 30 spirals

4 ounces (113 g) cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup (65 g) plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, divided

3 large eggs, divided

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 3/4 cups (155 g) almond flour

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

1/8 teaspoon kosher salt

2 sheets puff pastry, thawed

Confectioner’s sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 375˚F, and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or using a handheld electric mixer,) beat together the cream cheese, 1/3 cup (65 g) granulated sugar, 2 of the eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract, and lemon zest at medium speed until smooth. Add the almond flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and salt and beat on low to form a soft, spreadable paste.

3. Working with one sheet of puff pastry at a time (keep the other one wrapped), roll the dough into a large rectangle (about 9 x 14 inches), trimming any ragged edges. With one of the short sides facing you, spread half of the filling across the bottom lower half of the dough, then fold the other half over the filled side.

4. Using a sharp knife, cut the pastry into long, 3/4-inch wide strips. Transfer the strips to one of the baking sheets, twisting the ends of each strip in the opposite direction to create a spiral along the length, and exposing some of the filling. Repeat process with the second sheet of puff pastry and the remaining filling and baking sheet.

5. In a small bowl, stir together the remaining tablespoon of sugar with the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Beat the remaining egg with a smidge of water and lightly brush the spirals with the egg wash, then sprinkle evenly with the cinnamon-sugar. Bake until puffy and golden, 18 to 22 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool. Just before serving, lightly dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Other Shavuot-friendly recipes from The Jewish Table

• Oven Roasted Fish and Chips

• Jeweled Roasted Salmon with Herbs

• Onion Sour Cream Tart (Zwiebelkuchen)

• Creamy Spinach Soup

• Cacio e Pepe Dandelion Greens

• Lemon Poppy Seed Kugel

• Cinnamon Almond Rugelach

• 3 Ingredient Sweet Cherry Ice Cream

Subscribe now

The Four Questions Interview: Susan Spungen

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m excited to be joined by Susan Spungen, a cookbook author and food stylist whose resume includes being a regular contributor to New York Times Cooking (!) the founding food editor of Martha Steward Living Omnimedia (!!), and the culinary consultant on the films Eat Pray Love and Julie & Julia (!!!) She also writes her own wonderful newsletter on Substack called Susanality.

Spungen’s new book Veg Forward, which comes out next week (but is available for preorder now) celebrates the joys of putting seasonal vegetables at the center of the plate. There are, of course, plenty of other vegetable-focused cookbooks, but this one stands out. I honestly can’t remember the last time I looked through a book and thought, “I want to cook THAT now!” about so many of the recipes. Actually, I do remember, lol. It was Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean cookbook. But I truly think Veg Forward’s recipes—Poblano Corn Chowder, Butter Steamed Potatoes, and Roasted Honeynut Squash with Quinoa Crunch— are even *more* enticing.

Susan took some time to talk about her own formative memories with seasonal produce, what it was like to find her voice as a recipe developer, and her Ukrainian grandmother who made the very best kreplach. She also generously shared the recipe for Cheese Blintzes with Sour Cherry Compote from Veg Forward. Check out the recipe below the interview and make them for Shavuot, or a springy brunch.

1. Can you share a formative “vegetable memory” from your life that set you on the path to vegetable obsession?

I was always pretty passionate about seasonality and fresh produce. I grew up in Philly, and my family would drive down to the Jersey Shore in the summers to stay with my aunt. There were always farm stands along the way selling zucchini and tomatoes. My mother would talk about them so reverently, like “Can you believe these Jersey tomatoes?” And now I still have that same reaction. If I am upstate and we drive by a farm stand selling blueberries or corn, I will screech to a halt. I love getting that just-picked flavor and always want to taste the terroir of wherever I am.

Another memory I have, which came up recently when I was talking to my husband, is this restaurant in Philadelphia called In Season. It is long gone, but when I was an art student in college, I would sometimes go there by myself for lunch. This was very much the Alice Waters era where someone from Philly probably went to Chez Panisse in Berkeley and thought, “I’m going to do that.” I don’t remember anything in specific that I ate there, but it opened my eyes to the concept of embracing seasonal cooking when it was still a fairly new idea.

2. Has your approach to cooking vegetables changed or evolved over time?

When I worked at Martha, we did these single subject stories about fruits, vegetables, grains, or other ingredients. No one else was doing deep dives like that—learning more about the plants themselves and visiting growers to take beautiful pictures. My job as the food editor was to think about all the things you could do with a mushroom or with rice or with brassicas or alliums. That helped inspire my interest in the beauty of every vegetable as an object to be pondered.

What has changed is that I have been able to get my work to more closely mirror how I cook in my own kitchen. That took a long time. In my first book, which was published in 2005, I am standing on the cover looking like Martha Stewart—which makes sense. My job at Martha was to do things like she would. It took time to find my voice after I went freelance, but I found a lot of freedom in not having to answer to anyone else. Now the brand is me and I have more room to play. My recipe style and my recipes in general are simpler. I tend towards the ”low effort, high impact” approach to cooking.

3. What surprised you most while working on Veg Forward? 

I was surprised by how much I truly love these recipes! This might sound strange, but as a cookbook author sometimes you include recipes in a book for things you don’t actually make at home. Or at least don’t make often. But there isn’t one thing in Veg Forward that I don’t want to cook again and again.

4. How would you describe your relationship to Jewish food?

I grew up thinking that Jewish food mostly wasn’t very good. But I had one grandmother who came from Ukraine, and moved to the United States as a 17-year old. She really cooked Jewish food, and I tasted a lot of great things in her kitchen—blintzes, poppy seed cookies, and beautiful kreplach that floated in her chicken soup. They lived in a small apartment, and the kitchen was the nexus of their home.

I embrace a lot of foods that taste “Jewish” to me—barley, kasha, beets, dill, a good boiled chicken. There are a couple of Jewishly-inspired recipes in Veg Forward, like the blintzes (see below) and a borscht-inspired salad with kasha, beets, and horseradish. Those flavors are in my bones.

Subscribe now

Cheese Blintzes with Sour Cherry Compote

Susan: Blintzes are traditional for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, but they are perfect anytime—for breakfast, brunch, lunch, or even dinner. The word blintz refers to the pancake itself, which is like a sturdy French crepe, but slightly thicker and more eggy. The cheese filling has a lemony tang. For the compote that’s served over top, sour cherries are delicious. (They’re in season for about a minute in the Northeast.) Unlike sweet cherries, which are larger and fleshier, sour cherries are tart and juicy. Every year, I pit and freeze as many as I have time to do, freezing them in a single layer on a sheet pan, and storing them in zip-top bags to use later. If you can’t get them, berries are the next best choice.

Makes 8 blintzes

For the pancakes:

3 large eggs

1 cup/128 g all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

3/4 cup whole milk

1/4 cup cold water

Butter for cooking the blintzes

For the compote:

1 tablespoon cornstarch

3 tablespoons cold water

2 cups fresh or frozen pitted sour cherries

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

For the Filling:

2 cups ricotta, preferably fresh

1/2 cup whipped cream cheese

1 large egg yolk

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Butter for browning the blintzes

Confectioners’ sugar (optional)

1. To make the blintzes: Whisk together eggs, flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl until smooth. Combine milk and water and slowly whisk in until smooth (or you can do this in a blender). The batter can sit in the refrigerator for up to 1 day.

2. Slowly heat a medium nonstick skillet or crepe pan over medium heat. Add a small knob (about 1/2 teaspoon) of butter and swirl it around to coat the pan. Add a ladleful (about 1/4 cup) of batter to the pan, tilting the pan to coat completely. If you add too much batter, tilt the excess batter back into the bowl. You want just enough to coat the pan and not more.

3. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes on the first side, until the blintz looks dry in the center and is browning around the edges. Carefully flip and cook on the other side for about 1 minute. If the blintz seems fragile, cook it a little longer.

4. Slide the blintz onto a dinner plate. Repeat the process, adding a bit of butter to the pan each time until all the batter is used, stacking the blintzes directly on top of one another. At this point the blintzes can be wrapped and refrigerated for a day or two. Let the blintzes warm up at room temperature for a bit or for 20 seconds in the micro- wave to help them separate more easily.

5. To make the compote: Combine the cornstarch with water in a small dish. Stir together the cornstarch mixture, cherries, sugar, and lemon juice in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, until the cherries release their juices and the mixture thickens, about 5 minutes. Keep warm.

6. To make the filling: Combine the ricotta, cream cheese, egg yolk, sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a small bowl. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

7. Lay a blintz on a work surface with the browner side up. Spoon 2 to 3 tablespoons of the filling in the center and roll up like a burrito, folding the lower half of the pancake over the filling, folding in the sides, and rolling up to enclose the filling in a neat package. If you don’t want to cook the blintzes right away, store them on a plate seam side down in the refrigerator for up to 1 day.

8. Melt 1 teaspoon butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add 4 blintzes to the pan, seam side down. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Wipe out the pan, add another teaspoon butter, and repeat.

9. Serve with some of the cherry compote spooned over top and dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.

This recipe is reprinted, with permission, from Veg Forward: Super-Delicious Recipes That Put Produce at the Center of Your Plate) by Susan Spungen (Harper Collins, 2023)

Subscribe now

Sometimes the simplest dishes are the most memorable, don’t you think? From Persian jeweled rice and Bukharian beef and carrot plov, to Ashkenazi rice kugel, global Jewish cuisine has no shortage of festive rice dishes. But one of my favorites, and the one I make most frequently, is Sephardi Tomato Rice (Arroz con Tomat).

Don’t let the short list of ingredients fool you. A simple blend of aromatics and tomato elevates plain white rice into a dish that simultaneously stands out at the table while playing well with just about any main you set next to it.

According to Olive Trees and Honey by Gil Marks, tomato rice “developed among Sephardim living in the Ottoman Empire following the arrival of the tomato in the sixteenth century.” It is particularly beloved within Jewish communities hailing from Turkey and Rhodes. Yellow rice, made with precious saffron, was typically served for Shabbat and other special occasions, while red rice became more of a weekday dish.

Today, tomato rice remains a staple amongst Sephardi families. (A similar Sephardi dish, called fideos tostados, or “toasted noodles” softens small pieces of browned vermicelli in broth and tomato sauce.) There are many variations, some with onion and others without, and using either tomato sauce, tomato paste, diced tomatoes, or a combination of each. Some cooks call it pink rice, rather than red. I’ve even seen contemporary American versions where ketchup stands in for tomato sauce. Honestly? That sounds delicious.

The Sephardi Tomato Rice dish I’m sharing here is a little different. Instead of using dried rice grains, I started with two cups of already cooked, leftover rice. (See my interview with Tamar Adler below for the inspiration.)

My son Max’s favorite meal is pan-fried chicken breasts, roasted broccoli, and rice, which means we regularly have leftover cooked rice to use up. So while I love more traditional recipes for Sephardi Tomato Rice (and included one in The Jewish Cookbook), it is hard to argue with a dish that transforms stale cooked rice into something truly delicious.

To be clear: this recipe is not intended to be served on Shabbat. It only calls for 2 cups of cooked rice (which is usually about what we have leftover), so it is not enough to serve guests. But on a weeknight, when you open the fridge and find that life has given you leftovers, it is quick and deeply satisfying. You might just find yourself purposely making more rice than you think you can eat in one sitting in anticipation of its leftover potential!

Sephardi Tomato Rice (Arroz con Tomat)

Serves 2-4

3 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 small yellow onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

1/4 teaspoon sugar (optional)

2 cups (260 g) leftover cooked white rice (I used basmati, but any long grain rice works)

2/3 cup (160 ml) tomato purée (passata) or diced tomatoes

1 tablespoon water

1. Heat the oil in a medium frying pan set over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and lightly browned, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the garlic, salt, and sugar, if using, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

2. Add the cooked rice and sauté, stirring often, until lightly toasted, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the tomato purée and water, cover the pan, and cook until the rice is plumped and warmed through, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand, still covered, for another 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt, if needed. Serve hot or warm.

Sephardi Tomato Rice (Arroz con Tomat) is delicious as-it, but also fun to dress up. Here are a few ideas:

• Mix in 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil, parsley, or dill right before serving

• Stir in about 1/2 teaspoon of grated lemon zest along with the garlic

• Garnish with toasted pine nuts or almonds, or fried onions (homemade or these)

• Top with grated parmesan or another hard, salty cheese

The Four Questions Interview: Tamar Adler

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m excited to be joined by Tamar Adler—a former chef (at Prune and Chez Panisse, among other places), James Beard award-winning author, and bona fide leftover queen.

I first became smitten with Adler’s work after she published An Everlasting Meal in 2012—a practical and eminently readable treatise on cooking and eating. I loved how the book embraced making mistakes in the kitchen, defined triumphant cooking as an exercise in frugality rather than ego, and suggested that leftovers were the beginning, not an end of the story.

Her new book The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z (Scribner), which was published last month, is the perfect follow up to the original. Organized like a reference book of leftover ingredients (though with a significantly more engaging and lyrical presentation than a typical reference book), Adler shares ideas for repurposing any and every leftover ingredient you might find in your fridge. Asparagus bottoms, citrus peels, and carrot tops? The last dollops of yogurt or peanut butter in a jar? That to-go container of mozzarella sticks from last night’s dinner out, or a half full box of stale donuts? The Everlasting Meal Cookbook covers them all.

As a long time, devoted composter (I usually either haul food scraps to our weekly farmer’s market or drop them into the Lomi), I sometimes get a little complacent about repurposing food. But while turning mushroom stems and onion peels into soil is undoubtedly a good thing, turning them into mushroom stock to make a future pot of miso can be even more rewarding!

Adler took some time to speak with me about dishes that lend themselves particularly well to “cleaning out the fridge,” the technique her father used to teach kids about food waste at Jewish summer camp, the potential benefits of using Chat GPT while writing a reference book, and the surprising way she recently repurposed boiled baby carrots on television.

You can follow Tamar on Instagram here. And read previous The Four Questions interviews with Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, Ori Zohar from Burlap and Barrel, and many others, here.

1. Mainstream American food culture tends to skew anti-leftover, and has conditioned home cooks to throw away food if it has the slightest speck of mold. How do you help people get over any ingrained “ick factor” they might have learned?"

I don’t think I am super attuned to that ambivalence, which is good. I can write passionately about using all of something, or finding ways to use a food past its prime. That’s my super power—to be able to write about cooking with leftovers as practical, delicious, and necessary. But my editor was very helpful with pointing out places where maybe I needed to coax or coach people a little more. To let them know things like it’s okay to assess a piece of cheese, cut off the part that makes you feel queasy, and carry on with the rest.

2. For people who are just beginning their journey with this approach to home cooking, what types of dishes offer a good place to start?

One is the frittata-ization of anything! In The Everlasting Meal Cookbook, I have a basic frittata recipe where you can take whatever you have to use up, mix it with beaten eggs, pour it into a hot pan, and stick it into the oven for 12 minutes. It is transformational.

I also eat some version of fried rice all the time. We serve a lot of rice at dinner, which means there’s always cold, hard rice in the fridge. But that makes the best fried rice. To make great fried rice, there are a few techniques that matter. You need a large and hot enough pan with enough fat to make sure the grains fry. Then anything you add should be added from driest to wettest so you optimize for fry-ability. If you have a little sauce to pour in, do it at the very end. Following those basic instructions, you can put almost anything into fried rice and have it turn out great. It is very empowering.

3. How did you go about coming up with entries to include in the book, and how did you organize it?

Well I was completely unrealistic at first—I wanted to put in everything. I hired a woman named Amanda Kingsley, who is a florist and forager, to help me make ingredient spreadsheets for every letter of the alphabet. The idea was to identify every food you could possibly have as a leftover. And then I fine-tuned the list a bit—but having two brains working on it together definitely made the list more comprehensive. If Chat GPT existed then, we could’ve asked it. I wouldn’t want to write a fellowship application with it, but its list-making capabilities would have been very helpful!

After I settled on a final list, I cooked through it and tried to put in all the recipes in an A-Z way. But a friend who read through the manuscript commented that it made for some infelicitous pairings, like apple peels next to anchovy oil. So I ended up grouping the ingredients by category instead to make the search more pleasurable. So now, if you are looking up what to do with oil from an anchovy tin, the entry is surrounded by other fishy things.

4. What surprised you most while working on this book?

I was delighted to find something I could do with my son’s sandwich crusts! I made a variation of upma, which is a South Indian dish. A lot of the kid-focused stuff felt very useful and relevant. I did a demo on The Drew Barrymore Show with leftover boiled baby carrots. Once they are boiled and your kid has eaten one of them, they can be hard to transform into a different context. But we made an “any vegetable mash,” where you combine a bunch of boiled baby carrots with cream, and its super delicious.

5. BONUS QUESTION: Has your Jewish heritage informed your approach to cooking in any meaningful way?

Growing up my family was quite observant. One of the reasons I am so focused on time at the table is because I spent so much time at the table when I was a kid. I couldn’t go out on Friday night or Saturday, so we always had friends over and entertained.

There also was a sense of tikkun olam [the Jewish concept of “repairing” or improving the world] in my upbringing. My father was ahead of his time as an anti-waste advocate. He ran a Jewish summer camp, and had all of the food waste bags from the dining hall brought to our Shabbat service to let the campers see how much we threw away. So that sense of environmental stewardship and not taking things for granted was tied to our Judaism.

Subscribe to The Jewish Table

SAVOR: A Sephardic Food and Music Experience

On the subject of Sephardi cuisine, I was honored to recently play a small part in an incredible project, which combines Sephardi music and recipes.

Spearheaded by Sarah Aroeste, a musician specializing in Ladino (the Jewish-Spanish dialect) music, and food writer Susan Barocas, Savor invited chefs and food writers to create recipes inspired by traditional Ladino songs about food. (Turns out there are many.) As the only fully Ashkenazi contributor to the project—I shared the pan de calabaza/Sephardi pumpkin bread from The Jewish Cookbook—I feel a little bit like an interloper. But mostly I felt honored to be included.

Here’s a tiny taste of the project. All the chef bios/music/recipes can be accessed at savorexperience.com

Subscribe to The Jewish Table

I love almost everything about sufganiyot - aka Hanukkah jelly doughnuts.

I love that they hail from Poland, where Polish Jews called them ponchik, even though everyone around them called them paczki, and fried them in oil rather than lard to keep them kosher. (Polish Jewish immigrants brought their beloved ponchik to Israel, where the pastries were renamed sufganiyot and became immensely popular around Hanukkah.)

I love sufganiyot’s soft, bouncy texture. (It is no wonder that the name means “spongy dough” in Hebrew). And I love their burst of sweet filling.

I love them simple with strawberry jam and a snow cap of powdered sugar. And I love them extravagantly filled with pistachio cream, lemon curd, or dulce de leche, and crowned with a Technicolor array of glazes and toppings. They are every bit as festive and sparkly a treat as the holiday deserves.

But you know what? I don’t really love making sufganiyot. It’s not that they are particularly fussy - if you’ve made challah or babka (and even if you haven’t!), you can make sufganiyot. But they do take a significant amount of both time and oil.

Early on in my food writing career - back when I made some very foolish decisions in pursuit of story clips - I fried close to 200 doughnuts in my tiny, poorly ventilated apartment kitchen while developing a package of sufganiyot recipes for the food website Chow (now defunct, along with the recipes). I really wanted to wow my editors with my creativity and air-tight testing, but it was too much. And no, I was not paid nearly enough.

The saving grace of the situation was when a friend-of-a-friend agreed to take the many quarts of used cooking oil I used in the process of frying to power his bio-diesel car!

After the story was published, I didn’t want to make sufganiyot for a very long time. And honestly, I usually still don’t. I am lucky enough to live in New York City, which has plenty of bakeries selling top notch sufganiyot. (I’m particular to the ones from Breads’ Bakery.) But for anyone who does not live in or near a jelly doughnut hub - and wants to do way better than Dunkin Donuts to fill their Hanukkah table - I offer you this Easy (As Possible) Sufganiyot recipe.

I’m not going to promise that they take 20 minutes. And I’m not about to offer some dumbed down recipe that produces a bogus simulacrum of the real thing. These are proper sufganiyot. But I’ve streamlined the ingredients and instructions as much as possible to maximize the impact you get for your effort. Will you be using yeast? Yes. Do you have to heat up a pot of oil? Yes. But the process is straightforward and leads to abundant joy.

Wishing you all a happy and joyous Hanukkah and holiday season!

Subscribe now

Easy (As Possible) Sufganiyot

Adapted slightly from The Jewish Cookbook. I’ll be back very soon with brand new recipes, promise! But Covid is still running rampant in my home, and we are somehow also moving apartments tomorrow. So for this week, I am happy to have this delicious and simple (as possible) sufganiyot recipe to share from my cookbook archives.

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup (50 g) plus 1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup (120 ml) warm water

2 1/2 cups (350 g) all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 egg yolks

1/3 cup (80 ml) milk or non-dairy milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons unsalted butter or non-hydrogenated margarine, cut into pieces, at room temp

Vegetable oil, for frying (I like sunflower or grapeseed)

Strawberry or raspberry jam (or Nutella, lemon curd - whatever you’ve got), for filling

Confectioner’s sugar, for dusting

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the yeast, 1 teaspoon of the sugar, and the warm water. Let sit until the mixture is bubbling and foaming, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the flour and salt.

2. Add the remaining 1⁄4 cup (50 g) sugar, the egg yolks, milk, and vanilla to the yeast mixture and whisk to combine. Pour the wet mixture into the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough comes together and begins to form a ball.

   Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface. Scatter the butter pieces over the dough and knead, sprinkling with additional flour as necessary, until the butter is fully incorporated and the dough is smooth, shiny, and elastic, about 8 minutes. (The kneading can also be done in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, 5–7 minutes.) Grease a large bowl with a little vegetable oil, form the dough into a ball and place in the bowl, turning to coat. Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 1½ to 2 hours.

3. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Fit a wire cooling rack inside a large sheet pan. Set aside.

4. Gently deflate the dough and transfer it to a lightly floured work surface. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a ¼-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round biscuit or cookie cutter, stamp out as many dough rounds as possible and place them on the lined baking sheet. Gather the scraps, re-roll, and cut out more rounds. Cover the dough rounds loosely with a damp towel and let rise in a warm place until puffed, about 30 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, heat about 2 inches of oil in a medium Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot set over medium heat and bring to 350˚F on a deep-fry thermometer. Working in batches of 4, gently add the dough rounds to the hot oil and fry, flipping once, until golden brown on both sides and cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to the wire rack in the sheet pan and let cool slightly.

6. Use a small knife to puncture the side of each doughnut to form a pocket, then use a spoon (or piping bag if you have one) to fill with jam. Place the filled doughnuts back on the wire rack and dust tops with confectioner’s sugar. Serve immediately.

Gift The Jewish Table for Hanukkah!

The Four Questions: with Ori Zohar

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m excited to be joined by Ori Zohar of Burlap & Barrel - a single origin spice company that partners with sustainable spice farmers around the globe.

I met Ori in 2019 while I was on tour for The Jewish Cookbook in San Francisco. Burlap & Barrel generously donated some spices for that night’s event, and Ori came to represent the company. We only chatted for a few minutes, but I remember being impressed by the company’s products (particularly their dusky, Turkish blue poppy seeds) and also by Ori’s obvious passion for spices and sustainable agriculture.

Over the last few years, people have begun to catch on to Burlap & Barrel’s magic. Ori and his business partner, Ethan Frisch, work with small, sustainable farmers from around the globe to source ginger and cinnamon from Vietnam, vanilla beans from Tanzania, caraway from Egypt, and cumin from the mountains of Afghanistan - among many others. The spices are incredibly fresh and flavorful. And meanwhile, the farmers are paid fair wages for their work, and supported with opportunities for business growth and development. (Here’s more about Burlap & Barrel’s work with partner-farmers.)

In this week’s The Four Questions interview, Ori talks about continuing in the “travel and trade” tradition of his Jewish ancestors, walking through the cloud forests of Guatemala in search of cardamom, and his mad genius approach to making potato latkes.

Read on, then head over to Burlap & Barrel to bring your spice cabinet to the next level. The Jewish Table readers can use the code TOWELTIME to get free Burlap & Barrel kitchen towels with any $25+ order. (Add the spices and kitchen towels to your cart, then enter the code at checkout.)

[Oh, and Ori - remember to always cover your brisket!]

How would you describe your relationship with Jewish food, and how has it changed over the years?

My family moved from Tel Aviv to suburban Baltimore when I was 5 years old, and that move defined my relationship with Jewish food. We didn't have extended family around, so we expanded our definition of family. We'd cobble together holiday celebrations with all the other people who were away from home, just like us. Our meals involved a rotating cast of dad's PhD students, friends and family coming to visit, our classmates and co-workers and all of their +1s. They were all invited into our home, to our traditions, and whenever we were their guests, we were treated with the same warmth. 

A big change in my relationship with Jewish food happened this year when I hosted my family for a Rosh Hashanah dinner. There are first times for everything, and here I was, serving my parents the same dishes they've cooked all of my life. I served them matzo ball soup, chicken livers seared on a hot pan and sprinkled with salt crystals and aged balsamic vinegar served over deeply caramelized onions, and jerky-style brisket (whoops!). I don't know what I got wrong with the brisket - maybe I forgot to cover it? Or to uncover it? I'm not sure, but I'll ask Leah after I finish writing this. Plus, a good friend shipped us homemade challah, while my partner made a beautiful honey apple crumble.

We ate, we welcomed in the new year, everyone helped clear the table, and, as we cut into the apple crumble and made a carafe of mint tea, it dawned on me that we had just entered a new chapter in my relationship to Jewish food: from guest to host.

In what way did your Jewish food heritage influence or inspire your work with Burlap & Barrel?

Our people have always been travelers and traders. Even as a kid, our family spent the year traveling back and forth between Israel and America, and I couldn't wait to visit a place with new foods. This makes me sound like an old man, but what the hell. As a kid, we didn't even have personal screens in airplanes, usually just a lame movie projected for the whole plane. That meant that the flight to Israel from Baltimore was, best case, 10-12 hours with no hope for real entertainment. It drove me mad, but the family and food waiting for us after we landed were well worth it.

I am still a traveler and a trader. I get to work with our partner farmers in 23 countries around the world. We get to build a social enterprise that creates healthy, mutually-beneficial trade relationships that help improve the livelihoods of our partner farmers. Growing and trading spices is maybe the oldest profession in the world, and we get to create what comes next.

Last October, we went on a sourcing trip to Hungary (where our Szegedi 178 Hot Paprika and Noble Sweet Paprika come from), which has a special connection for me. Our best efforts to track my family's lineage tell us that on my dad's side, his family was moved to Senta in Serbia sometime in the 1600s from the city of Zohor in present-day Slovakia, which also how we got our last name. As a kid, my grandfather would take a boat to Szeged, the big city in the area, to go to the Szeged Synagogue for the high holidays, which I got to visit at the tail end of our sourcing trip. A multi-generational circle was closed for me standing in that synagogue where cloves, ginger flowers, and peppercorn vines are built into the stained glass panels on both sides of the main atrium.

What has surprised you most about partnering with spice farmers from all over the world?

The best part of the work is spending time with our partner farmers. So much of running our business is done by email, in spreadsheets, and over Google Meet, so when we get to spend a few days in the cloud forests of Guatemala, trudging through the steep slopes and 100% humidity that cardamom enjoys, it's magical. 

Our partner farmers are impressive entrepreneurs in their own right. We're building a different kind of supply chain - one that sets up farmers to directly export the spices that they grow. The farmer becomes responsible for not just growing and harvesting the spices, but also cleaning, drying, in some cases grinding and blending, before preparing for shipping to the US. That's one of the ways that our supply chain gives farmers more control over their crops and lets us offer a premium way above the commodity prices. That means that, on top of being able to grow incredible spices, the ideal partner must be creative and ambitious, ready to help evolve the spice trade. It's been such a great surprise to get to know this group of exceptional entrepreneurial farmers around the world and work on building our businesses together.

If you could sit down to your perfect "Jewish" meal (however you define that), what would be on the table - and who would be around it?

Hanukkah has long been my favorite Jewish holiday. Eight days of fried food, fire, and song? Absolutely. Since it's just about time to start lighting the candles, I'm really looking forward to a perfect version of a classic Hanukkah dish: the latke.

I've been experimenting with what I'm convinced is a revolutionary way to make my ideal latkes: low effort, big flavor. A lightly salted crispy carrier for both savory and sweet toppings. And what if I told you you could have all of this with no more grating potatoes until you accidentally sacrifice one of the edges of my fingers or knuckles? Let me introduce you to juicer latkes.

I recently received a juicer as a gift, and that's when the experiments began. I juiced cantaloupes and watermelons. I juiced tomatoes and chayote - anything I could get my hands on. It was my own version of the "Will It Blend" series, but with a juicer. It didn't take long to start thinking about what to do with the pulp, but the light bulb went off with the next idea: What if we juiced something specifically for the pulp? And that's how juicer latkes were born. Two potatoes plus one onion later, and I was frying up some delicious latkes in my cast iron pan. I used a paper towel to soak up the excess oil, then topped them with some yogurt and spicy mango chutney as I served them.

Since latkes are for sharing, the people that I'd love to have around the table are all family. I want to share this love language of cooking up a good meal that I learned from them. I have a 95-year-old grandma in Israel, as well as uncles, cousins…an entire extended family. I've always been a guest at their table, and I'd love to host them. To create that feeling of home, even when we're all so far away from it.

Bonus Reading (and Wearing)

• Want to learn even more about Burlap & Barrel? Check out this article I wrote about them back in 2020.

• My friend Kristin Miglore recently published Food 52’s Simply Genius Cookbook - the third cookbook in her Genius Recipes series. And guys, it’s really stunning. As promised, the recipes are simple, but they coax maximum flavor out of every ingredient combination. (I recently made a farro salad recipe that I couldn’t stop eating.) The book also includes a teeny tiny recipe of mine - let me know if you spot it! If you have a novice cook in your life, or know someone who could benefit from straightforward recipes with serious wow-factor, this is the book for them (and you! and me!)

• Gefilteria, a company that is focused on reimagining Jewish food, is turning 10 this year! I’ve been a fan and friend of Gefilteria’s since their very earliest days, and was thrilled to learn about their 10th anniversary, limited edition Carp in the Bathtub hat. (IYKYK - and if you don’t know: read here.) I can think of no better way to celebrate Jewish food tradition and innovation, while looking very stylish in the process. Order a Carp in the Bathtub hat here!

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Mandelbrot are one of the unsung heroes of the Jewish pastry cannon. While they aren’t flashy like babka or decadent like cheesecake, they have a humble, everyday appeal that makes them irresistible.

A direct descendant of Italian biscotti, mandelbrot are twice baked, yielding a crunchy cookie that pairs very well with coffee and tea. Mandelbrot were originally flavored with almonds, which is how they got their name. (“Mandel” = almond and “brot” = bread in German/Yiddish.) But as they spread from Central to Eastern Europe, and then made their way to America, home cooks began filling the snappy cookies with everything from walnuts and dried fruit to chocolate chips.

My go-to mandelbrot recipe is based off of the one my mom, Carol, made when I was growing up. They were crisp, nutty, and generously blanketed with cinnamon-sugar. I absolutely adored them, and still do. My mom got the recipe from her friend, Dr. Minnie Frank, who was something of a surrogate grandmother to me. (My own bubbe, Bessie Sparber, passed away before I was born, so we spent a lot of Jewish holidays around Minnie’s table.) Where Minnie got the recipe…who knows? But I like to think that I’m at least the third generation of mandelbrot makers in this particular lineage.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I decided to mash up mandelbrot with the gourd-based star of the Thanksgiving dessert table: pumpkin pie. I swapped some of the butter (use non-hydrogenated margarine if you are keeping them dairy-free) with pumpkin puree, which gives them a wonderfully autumnal flavor. I also added ginger, cloves, and allspice to the more traditional cinnamon, and swapped chopped almonds for pecans in a nod to Thanksgiving’s other iconic pie.

Thanks to the added moisture the pumpkin puree adds to the batter, these mandelbrot have a relatively soft, tender bite with pockets of crunch a shimmery cinnamon-sugar cap. Did I consider calling them Pumpkin Spice Mandelbrot? I sure did - but only briefly.

I’m planning on serving these Pumpkin Pie Mandelbrot as part of a larger cookie platter for Thanksgiving. And the leftovers? Let’s just say they will be great dipped into last week’s recipe for Mulled Pomegranate Cider. Let me know if you make them - and happy Thanksgiving!

Pumpkin Pie Mandelbrot

Dress up these Pumpkin Pie Mandelbrot with generous handfuls of chocolate chips and/or roughly chopped dried cranberries. Or melt some semisweet baking chocolate and dip the ends in, then let the chocolate set in the fridge. You can also just leave them as is, which is what I usually do!

One note, if you have never made mandelbrot before: the batter is very soft - closer to cake batter than cookie dough. Use a sturdy spoon to scoop the batter onto the baking sheets, then use an offset spatula or butter knife to spread it out. If the batter is sticking, dip the spatula/knife into a little warm water and proceed.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies

3 cups (420 g) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 stick (1/2 cup/113 g) unsalted butter or non-hydrogenated margarine, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups (250 g) granulated sugar, divided

1/2 cup (120 g) pumpkin puree

4 large eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups (160 g) pecan halves*, finely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F, and line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, the ginger, cloves, allspice, and salt.

2. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a handheld electric mixer), beat the butter and 1 cup (200 g) of the sugar at medium speed until pale and creamy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the pumpkin puree, eggs, and vanilla extract and beat, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until fully incorporated. (The mixture will look curdled at this stage, that’s okay.)

3. Add the flour mixture in two additions, beating on low until just combined. With a rubber spatula, fold in the chopped pecans. The batter should be soft and spreadable.

4. Divide the batter into roughly four equal sections. Starting with two sections, scoop them out onto one of the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches of space in between each. Using a butter knife or offset spatula, spread each section of batter into a long, flat rectangle that is about 9x4 inches and no more than 1/2-inch thick. Repeat with the remaining batter and baking sheet. Bake until puffed and lightly browned, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for about 2 minutes. Meanwhile, stir together the remaining 1/4 cup (50 g) of sugar and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon in a small bowl.

5. Slice the rectangles, while still on the baking sheet, crosswise into 3/4-inch pieces, then turn the pieces onto their sides and sprinkle with about half of the cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake for 10 minutes more, then remove from the oven, flip the cookies to the other side, and sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon-sugar. Bake until firm, about 10 minutes.

6. Remove from the oven and set the baking sheets on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes, then transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely.

*Sending a quick thank you to my fellow Substacker, Anne Byrn, for turning me on to the pecans by Schermer Pecans - a family-run nut farm in Georgia. You can make these mandelbrot with any pecan, of course, but I really noticed the pecan flavor coming through in a big way!

The Four Questions: with Jenny Rosenstrach

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m beyond excited to be joined by Jenny Rosenstrach from Dinner: A Love Story.

Back in 1998, Jenny began chronicling what she ate for dinner. Every night, she would jot down a quick note of the meal in her notebook…and then she never stopped! In 2010, she transformed this obsession with dinner (as well as her adventures in feeding her two daughters) into the blog Dinner: A Love Story. Since then, she has written multiple cookbooks, most recently The Weekday Vegetarians (which is so good!), and started her own Substack newsletter, also called Dinner: A Love Story. I look forward to her newsletters every week. Jenny is also the regular food columnist for *another* of my all-time favorite websites, Cup of Jo.

I have been a fan of Jenny’s work for more than a decade. Even before I had kids of my own, I connected with her relatable approach to cooking, eating, and hosting others. When Modern Jewish Cooking came out, she posted about it on Dinner: A Love Story - and I’m telling you, I nearly fainted. Jenny Rosenstrach cooked my recipes?! And enjoyed them? A dream.

I’m honored that Jenny took the time to join us for this week’s The Four Questions interview. Read below to learn more about her connection to Jewish food (and her ideal Jewish meal), her recent transition to cooking as an “empty nester,” and how she and her family shifted their dinner habits away from always having meat at the center of the table.

1. How would you describe your relationship with Jewish food, and how has it changed over the years?

My relationship with Jewish food is so different from my relationship with other kinds of foods, because in like 90% of the cases, someone else is cooking it for me instead of the other way around. My father is Jewish and my mother is not, so when I was growing up all of our Jewish celebrations happened outside our home - at my aunt’s house or my uncle’s house. I never grew up organically absorbing the culinary traditions in my own kitchen.

Now my sister mostly hosts all the holidays and while, I always bring a dish, it’s different. This does not mean I don’t love Jewish food. Quite the opposite, I love it and seek it out when I can. But because I’m never the one hosting, I don’t feel like I have my One Kugel recipe or my One Brisket recipe or my One Latke recipe, the way I do with a lot of my other dishes. I do have my One Challah, thanks to a second cousin, and thanks to you, Leah, my One Matzoh Ball Soup with the fennel-spiked broth — no reason for me to look any further than that one.

2. What has surprised you most over the years about your Dinner a Love Story journey?

Well, for starters, the fact that any one person can love dinner this much for so long! Seriously, though. When I started writing the blog in 2010, meat anchored our dinner almost every night. I think the person writing back then would be pretty shocked to hear that her family has now become Weekday Vegetarians, dialing back the meat whenever possible. I think I would’ve also been surprised to hear that cooking plant-based wasn’t as hard as everyone made it out to be. Once I trained myself to use the vehicle as my starting point (am I in the mood for tacos? Pizza? Salad? Pasta?) instead of a piece of animal protein (I have a piece of chicken, what should I surround it with?) it was like the angels began to sing. 

3. What is one thing you love about "empty nester" cooking, and one thing you miss about cooking for four on a regular basis?

It was fortuitous that I named this whole enterprise Dinner A Love Story — it truly is a story with many different chapters because the ritual itself is constantly evolving. Before I sent my kids off to college, I worried about what would happen to our dinner ritual — but in a lot of ways, it’s become even more important to me. When you’re cooking for kids, no matter how old they are and no matter how much you love to cook, it can still feel stressful. You have to cater to their unpredictable tastes and schedules. Just in terms of sheer volume, you have to produce a lot of food. It’s obviously incredibly rewarding, but now, when I’m cooking for two, I look forward to dinner more than I ever did. Mostly, I feel that it’s a little gift I can give myself every day. I don’t really see that ever changing at this point.

4. If you could sit down to your perfect "Jewish" meal (however you define that), what would be on the table - and who would be around it?

I don’t think there’s anything more perfect than a New York bagel spread with all the fixings — cream cheese, lox, minced onions, capers, tomatoes, lemon wedges. (Breakfast at Russ & Daughters cafe on the Lower East Side is my idea of heaven.) As for who is around that table, I’d like it to be my grandparents — on both my father’s Jewish side and my mom’s Presbyterian side. I never knew any of them because they all died before I was born, and I have so many questions, staring with: What is your go-to kugel?

Bonus Thanksgiving Content

Here are a few articles I’ve written over the years that explore the intersection of Jewish tradition and Thanksgiving. The green bean casserole is a personal fave - what a crazy and unexpected history!

To Brine or Not To Brine: Cooking Kosher Turkey for Thanksgiving (read)

Green Bean Casserole’s Jewish Pedigree (read)

How Cranberries Found a Place at the Jewish Table (read)

Upcoming Event, Sunday, Dec 11 @ 10:15am

I’m looking forward to being a part of this fun conversation at the New York Jewish Book Festival on Sunday, Dec 11. Here’s the link to register - I would love to see you there!

Rosh Hashanah doesn’t begin until Sunday night (Sept 25), but I’ve already got my mind on leftovers. Every year, after Thanksgiving, there is endless chatter in magazines and online about how to upcycle leftover turkey into soup, chili, pot pie, and really great sandwiches. But brisket doesn’t get the same consideration. I’d like to change that.

I know that you might not be ready to think about brisket leftovers just yet. Totally get it! If not, just file this newsletter away for the day or two after Rosh Hashanah when you find yourself staring into the fridge and need a little inspiration.

Last year, I posted a recipe for Brisket Hand Pies, which tucked chopped brisket into pockets of puff pastry. I whole heartedly stand by that suggestion, and have also been eyeing recipes online for brisket fried rice, and brisket hash (I would sub vegetable oil for the butter to keep it kosher).

But while I love anything served inside golden, flaky pastry, this year I want to keep things super simple. After all the prep that goes into making Rosh Hashanah dinner, we deserve a 30 minute, fridge-to-table leftovers situation!

Enter: Leftover Brisket Tacos. Think of the recipe below as more of a general suggestion, rather than set-in-stone guidelines. Start with some warm tortillas and some reheated (shredded or chopped) leftover brisket, then add a mix of crunch, creaminess, sweetness, spice, and acidic brightness with whatever you have on hand.

With Yom Kippur and Sukkot coming right up, the season of Jewish holiday cooking has just begun. Think of these tacos as a delicious, mid-holiday respite from the marathon.

Leftover Brisket Tacos

Serves: Flexible

Warm flour or corn tortillas

Leftover braised brisket, chopped or shredded and warmed

Quick cabbage slaw (see recipe below)

Sliced or chopped avocado

Spicy mayo (Mayo mixed with hot sauce in whatever ratio you like. You can also mix in a little smoked paprika for smoky flavor if you want.)

Whatever else you like: (rice, salsa or chopped tomato, thinly sliced radishes, corn kernels, etc.

1. Top the tortillas with a layer of brisket, followed by a layer of cabbage slaw. Garnish with avocado, a dollop of spicy mayo, and whatever else you like.

Quick Cabbage Slaw

1/2 small head of red cabbage, cored and very thinly sliced

1/4 medium red onion, very thinly sliced

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more if needed

1 jalapeño, seeds removed if desired, and thinly sliced

1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon honey

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Add the cabbage, onion, and salt to a large bowl and gently mix and squeeze the cabbage and onions with your hands to wilt them a bit.

2. Add the jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, honey, and black pepper, and toss well to combine. Taste and add more salt, if needed. Let sit at least 20 minutes to allow flavors to meld, or refrigerate up to overnight.

   The Jewish Table is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

   ---

Rooftop Honey in Manhattan at Breads Bakery

If you know anything about Breads Bakery - Manhattan’s Israeli/Middle Eastern inspired bakery - you know about their chocolate babka. With its exceptionally flaky, butter-laminated dough, and swirls of chocolate hazelnut spread and chocolate chips, Breads’ babka is a category defining favorite for Jewish pastry lovers worldwide.

What you maybe *haven’t* heard about is Breads’ honey - particularly the honey that comes from their own rooftop bees. For the past couple of years, Breads has partnered with the folks at Andrew’s Honey to maintain hives on their roof in Union Square. I had the good fortune of trying some, and it has a bright and floral sweetness that I can’t wait to pair with crisp farmer’s market apples on Rosh Hashanah. I’ve posted some photos of Breads’ rooftop hives at the bottom of this newsletter in case you want to see what real estate looks like for NYC’s busiest bees. And if you want to taste it yourself, you can order a Breads Bakery package that includes marzipan honey here.

The Four Questions: with Mosheh Oinounou and Alexandra Sall

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Mosheh Oinounou and Alexandra Sall.

Mosh and Al don’t work directly in the food world. He’s an award-winning news producer and journalist and founder of Mo News, which offers curated, verified, balanced news via Instagram (I’m low-key obsessed with his Instagram account!), and his podcast and newsletter. She’s the founder of ALSALL Studio, which helps female entrepreneurs build their digital and social presence.

And yet, food is at the center of their love story and relationship. (They even had their first date at an event hosted by the Jewish Food Society.) They’ve traveled extensively together, including recent trips to Israel and Egypt, and another to visit Mosheh’s father’s home country of Morocco. On all of these trips, eating, cooking, and exploring local cuisines always takes center stage. Mosh and Al are honestly the cutest, and I loved chatting with them about their families’ Jewish food backgrounds (he’s Moroccan, she’s Ashkenazi), which Jewish foods they think are overrated, and how they started giving food-focused history tours in NYC together.

1. Can you share a formative Jewish food memory that sticks with you to this day?

Al Sall: My mom made a point of getting challah every Friday, and made signature Ashkenazi dishes for the holidays. When I went to college, I would bring back her brisket and kugel and freeze it so I could eat it throughout the semester! She always added dollops of apricot jam to her egg noodle kugel, and to this day I’m obsessed with apricot jam.

Mosh Oinounou: My dad is from Marrakech, Morocco and my mom is from Chicago with roots in Poland and Germany. My dad had five sisters, and my Ashkenazi mom was put through Moroccan food boot camp by all of them! She became a great Moroccan cook. Every Friday night we had Shabbat dinner with couscous and lamb, spicy fish patties, carrot salad, matbucha, and several other salads. Whenever I went to friends’ houses growing up, I always thought, “This is all you eat?”

My favorite Moroccan soup that my mom made is called harira. Like with Al’s mom, my mom would freeze it and I’d fly back to DC with it for college. TSA would always be like, “What the heck is in these containers?!” And whenever I come home to Chicago, she makes it. I feel so privileged to have grown up with this food.

2. How would you describe the role that Jewish food plays in your relationship?

MO: The first date I invited Al to was an event with the Jewish Food Society. I happened to get tickets for it and invited her - I was so excited to go together! So our whole relationship literally started in thanks to Jewish food.

AS: During the early part of Covid, we made challah together every Friday. It was such a beautiful ritual during a dark and scary time. Mosh never really baked before, but this got us away from our desks and into the kitchen working together.

These days, I cook a ton and we also love to go out in NYC. A lot of our favorites are places that serve Middle Eastern and Israeli food like Shukette, Sami & Susu, Reunion, Lamalo, 12 Chairs, and Sofreh.

MO: Food is really at the foundation of our relationship. What roll doesn’t it play? It’s everything.

3. Are there any Jewish foods that you think are underrated or misunderstood? And/or, any that are overrated? 

MO: I have to say, I don’t really understand the appeal of whitefish salad, chopped liver, and gefilte fish. I’m great with bagels and lox, but I’ve never been a huge fan of those three Ashkenazi dishes.

AS: Did you like the pickled herring you tried?

MO: No. I try to be an open minded eater. My mother made a great noodle kugel and matzo brei but…

AS: I’ve never been a big gefilte fish eater either, so I agree with you there. Maybe I haven’t had the right one. I do love the horseradish that goes with it though.

To me, there is no better food than tahini - I put it on everything. I love Seed & Mill tahini, and on our trip to Israel we discovered a brand called Har Bracha. It is widely available in Israel, but not so much here so I brought home boat loads of it!

4. What was the inspiration behind your leading food history tours together?

AS: We love exploring together and going to different neighborhoods in the city. Whenever we go places, we will notice buildings and start Googling them. And since this is New York, almost every building has had something interesting that happened in it. One day I said to Mosh, “You have such an incredible community on Instagram, would you want to do a food tour together where we take people to different spots in the city with our favorite food?” And before he could say yes, I built a website!”

MO: We came up with a route through Greenwich Village and the West Village that explores the history of the Native Americans who lived here, early Dutch history, and goes through the modern age. We talk about the political and cultural history of NYC and stop at various restaurants and markets along the way. There’s so much history in the neighborhood - the home where Barbara Streisand lived and Jimi Hendrix’s recording studio, the house where John Wilkes Booth plotted to kidnap Abraham Lincoln, former speakeasies…

AS: As we go, we’ll point out restaurants like Via Carota, which is right near where the Stonewall riots started. Or we will stop at Mah Ze Dahr for old fashioned doughnuts or Mamoun’s for falafel.

MO: We don’t do public tours very often. I give so much credit to people who lead tours - they take an incredible amount of work and energy! But when we do book one, we usually have about 50 people sign up, plus a waiting list. So they are fun.

Keep an eye on Mosh and Al’s Instagram accounts for updates on their food adventures (and general adorableness!) and announcements about any upcoming tours.

Subscribe now

More Photos of Breads Bakery’s Beehives

All of these photos were shared by Breads Bakery. You can order a pastry package that includes marzipan honey here.

Wow! Wow, wow. Earlier this week, I received an email letting me know that The Jewish Table was included as a featured newsletter on the Substack app and homepage, and let’s just say there are a LOT of new faces around here. I am honored and truly delighted to have you all - welcome!

I have plenty of summery deliciousness to share with you this week, including a 15 Minute Gazpacho with Crunchy Sumac Croutons, and an interview with the inimitable Leetal Arazi of NY Shuk. But before that, I thought I’d take a few sentences to introduce myself and this newsletter to new readers. (Long time readers, feel free to skip ahead!)

My name is Leah Koenig, and I am a food writer focused on all things related to global Jewish cuisine. I’ve written 6 cookbooks, including Modern Jewish Cooking and, most recently, The Jewish Cookbook. And I am currently working on my seventh book (out in Fall, 2023!), which will be focused on Rome’s historic Jewish community and cuisine. I live in Brooklyn with my husband, Yoshie, and our two kids, Max and Bea.

This newsletter, The Jewish Table, is a clearing house for Jewish recipes, history, and stories that don’t fit neatly into my articles or books. It is also a place where I get personal (particularly about parenting two young kids, and sometimes about politics), and a place for folks who love, or are curious about, Jewish food to connect with one another.

Paid subscribers receive a newsletter every week, plus have access to the full recipe archive, a weekly chat thread, and special offers. Unpaid subscribers receive a newsletter about once/month. I love all my subscribers! But if you are interested in and able to upgrade to a paid subscription, you are directly contributing to keeping this newsletter going. (Thank you!)

Subscribe now

Okay, on to the good stuff:

In last week’s Friday Kibbitz chat thread, readers shared their thoughts, ideas, and tips about what they like to make when it is too darn hot to cook. (My personal favorite is this Peach and Plum Kuchen Toast that takes 3 minutes, and tastes like cake for breakfast.) There were a bunch of great suggestions and, not surprisingly, gazpacho came up more than once!

As someone with a fondness for chilled soups like borscht and schav, I also love gazpacho. The traditional Spanish soup isn’t a “Jewish” recipe. But it has become a part of my family’s regular Shabbat dinner rotation, especially during the steamy summer months.

The gazpacho I grew up eating in the 1980s and 90s was on the chunky end of the spectrum - essentially cold tomato juice with chopped up cucumber and red onion swimming in it. From a flavor perspective it was tasty, but it always felt a bit like eating a bowl of pico de gallo rather than a true soup. In more recent years, I discovered the magic of creamy gazpacho, which is enriched with olive oil (and sometimes day-old bread), and blended until thick and silky.

This week, inspired by newsletter readers and my interview with Leetal Arazi from NY Shuk (see below), I amped up my usual gazpacho recipe with a bit of sumac, the brick red spice beloved across Middle Eastern cuisine. There’s sumac in the soup itself, lending an extra hint of tart, lemony flavor. And I topped each bowl with crunchy pita croutons sprinkled with more sumac. For a deep dive on sumac, check out my friend Rachel Phipps’ newsletter, ingredient. And see my interview with Leetal below for a discount code to purchase NY Shuk’s incredible ground sumac!

This gazpacho recipe takes about 15 minutes to put together, plus a couple of hours of hands-off chilling time, and could not be simpler. Many gazpacho recipes ask you to blanch and peel the tomatoes, which is tedious and involves heating up a large pot of water. (In this heat? No thank you!) But in this case, a high-powered blender does the majority of the chopping for you, and a quick pass through a mesh sieve results in an effortlessly creamy consistency.

Drizzle the punchy, refreshing soup with a little more olive oil. Yoshie brought me a bottle of basil-infused olive oil from a recent trip to France, and it made a perfect garnish. But you can also use a little more of whichever oil you used to make the soup.

Yum yum, and with nary a stovetop in sight.

15 Minute Gazpacho with Crunchy Sumac Croutons

Serves 4 to 6

For the Gazpacho:

2 pounds ripe, red tomatoes (Don’t use smaller varieties like cherry or grape, since they have a high skin-to-pulp ratio), cored and roughly chopped

1/2 medium red onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 large cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped

1 garlic clove, peeled and roughly chopped

1 teaspoon sweet paprika (or hot paprika, if you want a little kick)

1 teaspoon ground sumac

2 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more as needed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground back pepper

1/2 cup best-quality extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

For the Croutons:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 white or whole wheat pitas, ripped into bite-size pieces

Ground sumac and kosher salt, for sprinkling

1. Make the gazpacho: Add the tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, garlic, paprika, sumac, vinegar, salt, and black pepper to a high speed blender, and blend on medium until smooth. (If the vegetables don’t fit all at once, add them in batches.)

2. With the motor running on low, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Re-cover the blender and blend on high until the soup is creamy and emulsified. Taste and add a little more salt, if desired.

3. Pass the soup through a sieve set over a large bowl, using a spatula to press it through. Discard any solids, then refrigerate the soup until very cold, at least 2 hours.

4. Shortly before serving, make the croutons: Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan set over medium heat. Line a large plate with paper towels and set aside.

5. Add the pita pieces and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp and golden, 5 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle with a little sumac and kosher salt and stir for another 10 seconds, then transfer the pita pieces to the plate to cool and continue crisping up.

6. Divide the gazpacho into bowls (it’s rich, so a little goes a long way!). Drizzle each bowl with olive oil, and top with the croutons.

   Subscribe now

   ---

The Four Questions: with Leetal Arazi of NY Shuk

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Leetal Arazi, the co-founder (along with her husband Ron Arazi) of the Brooklyn-based, Middle Eastern pantry staples company, NY Shuk.

I’ve only shared a handful of meals with Ron and Leetal over the past decade, but they feel like family. I first met them in 2014, while writing an article about their company. I thought it was so cool how these two Israel-to-Brooklyn transplants were finding ways to share their families’ favorite foods (Leetal’s family is Turkish and Eastern European, Ron’s is Moroccan and Lebanese) and stories with an American audience.

Within minutes of entering their apartment, not long after Ron handed me a cup of tea made from fresh sage and rosemary leaves, I realized that I had met two kindred spirits.

Over the years, I have marveled as NY Shuk has grown, turning out one delicious product after another. Their harissa is next-level delicious. Their preserved lemon paste is literally sunshine in a jar. Their matbucha (a Moroccan tomato condiment) magically transforms everything it touches. Their line of Middle Eastern spices and spice blends are all first rate. It is fair to say that I rarely go a week without using one, if not more, of their products.

In this interview, Leetal talked about the challenges and rewards of starting a food business, the importance of preserving cultural heritage through food, and how she and Ron are raising their kids to love Jewish food in America. She also generously shared a discount code for NY Shuk’s products. Enter the code LKFRIENDS15% at checkout for 15 precent off any order from their website.

How would you describe your relationship to Jewish food, and how has it evolved?

As with many things in life, the perspective of time and place completely shifted my relationship with Jewish food.

Growing up in Israel and immersed in Jewish food on a daily basis, it was something that I didn't think much about. When Ron and I moved to the States, all of a sudden Jewish food felt very different - mostly Eastern European (bagels, lox, pastrami). It became our mission to share more about Jewish food as we know it, the Moroccan couscous, the Turkish bourekas, the Iraqi kubbe, the Lebanese za’atar flatbread, and things like that.

Our hope is to be able to bottle, share, educate and further explore the many unique family recipes that surround us, and make sure we preserve them for future generations. 

What has surprised you most over the years of running NY Shuk?

Without a doubt, it’s the sheer determination that is required to keep the lights on! And the fight against all odds to make things work, no matter what is thrown at us every single day.

When you begin the journey of starting a business, you think, “Once I get ‘here,’ it will be easier.” And then ‘here’ arrives, the stakes get higher and higher, and the responsibilities become bigger. While it’s a very exhausting cycle, our mission is not just what we do for a living, it is embedded in who we are, how we see the world and in our family life.

Why did you recently decide to add matbucha (a Moroccan tomato condiment) to your repertoire of products, and what are your favorite things to make with it?

As we work to build the Middle Eastern pantry of our dreams, matbucha was bound to enter sooner rather than later. Matbucha is one of our favorite dishes. We make it at home often, and it is the foundational flavor of many other dishes we make. It is important for us to be true to how and what we actually use in our day-to-day lives.

Educating consumers to the wonders of matbucha is no easy feat, especially as there no other products like it on the market, and people are very unfamiliar with it. But we believe the flavors of this condiment are worth celebrating, and part of our mission is to share the beautiful culinary heritage we grew up in as a way to preserve it for the future. So while not an easy task, it's a task we full-heartedly believe in.

My favorite way to use matbucha is as a condiment. No matter what we eating, one dollop of matbucha on the plate automatically upgrades the dish with a burst of flavor. It literally turns the dullest meal into a flavor party!

As parents of two young kids, what Jewish food values do you try to pass along?

Ron and I were able to take for granted that we grew up surrounded by Jewish food. But we understand that we need to be more active if we want Jewish food to be a part of our kids’ lives here in America - whether that means culinary customs for Jewish holidays, Shabbat cooking, or the comfort of Jewish foods on the daily.

We try to involve our daughter Lily (4.5 years old) in the kitchen as much as possible, both in the work we do for NY Shuk, and just in our daily activities, so that one day she will have the knowledge and tools to find her path within the world of Jewish food.

Bonus: Take a (Lemonade) Stand

This past weekend, my family held a Take a (Lemonade) Stand outside of our apartment. It was a hot day that required some cold, homemade lemonade. And with every cup sold, we raised funds for two great organizations: March for Our Lives and the Abortion Access Fund.

Because here’s the thing: I want to raise kids who are pro life. And by pro life I mean:

• Pro trusting women/people/families to make their own critical healthcare decisions

• Pro affordable health care

• Pro safe and equitable prenatal care

• Pro paid family & medical leave

• Pro universal childcare

• Pro education funding

• Pro common sense gun laws that keep kids safe from harm

The anti abortion movement may have coopted the term. But these values of compassion and equity are what being “pro life” is really about.

I wish we could send a glass of lemonade to all of you, but that would be a messy endeavor! If you feel inspired to participate virtually in our lemonade stand, please consider donating to either/both of these organizations. Thank you!

In this week’s newsletter, I have a super simple, high impact recipe for Crispy, Lemony Sheet Pan Salmon for your Shavuot (or early summer) tables. I’m also thrilled to feature food writer Rachel Phipps in this week’s The Four Questions interview.

But before we dive in: it has been *busy* here at The Jewish Table! If you aren’t yet subscribed to the weekly newsletter, here is everything you missed last month:

• Cinnamon Almond Rugelach that are essentially tiny, perfect almond croissants. Plus: That time my 7-year old, Max, schooled me on pastry knowledge.

• A Creamy Spinach Soup that tastes like distilled springtime. Plus: the latest installment of my “Adventures in Cooking my Cookbook Collection” series.

• Black & White Banana Bread Cookies aka the iconic Jewish cookie-quick bread hybrid you definitely need in your life!

• Ruth Reichl’s Matzo Brei recipe vs. my matzo brei recipe. Break out your leftover Passover matzo to decide which one you like best.

I also introduced a new feature: The Friday Kibbitz, where paid subscribers get to weigh in about their signature dishes, their favorite cookbooks, their secret ingredients, and more. It’s been incredible to hear from *you* and see folks from this newsletter community interact and share ideas - and there’s lots more in store!

Here’s the bottom line: Writing this newsletter every week is a joy. But it is also part of my job, and I rely on paid subscribers to keep it going. If you have been on the fence about hopping over to a paid subscription, now is a great time! For the next 2 days (until Friday, June 3), you can get 20% off an annual or weekly subscription to The Jewish Table. Don’t miss out on this special offer: subscribe to the weekly newsletter here!

Shavuot Sale (20% off The Jewish Table!)

Shavuot Recipe: Crispy, Lemony Sheet Pan Salmon

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot is coming up this weekend and, to be honest, that didn’t always mean very much to me. Despite it being a “kind of a big deal” holiday (it commemorates the story of God revealing the Torah to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, and is also an ancient pilgrimage festival that marks the beginning of the wheat harvest in ancient Israel), I didn’t really grow up celebrating it. My family went hard on the Passover traditions, but Shavuot must have gotten lost in the early summer shuffle.

Over the years I have come to love Shavuot, especially the mystical practice my husband’s family taught me of going outside right at midnight because, for the briefest of moments, the sky splits open and one can make direct appeals to the heavens.

And, of course, I love that Shavuot’s menu is focused around cheesecake, sweet cheese blintzes, cheesy noodle kugels, all things dairy-related. There are various theories about why Jews celebrate Shavuot with dairy foods, but my favorite is that Mount Sinai’s alternative name, Har Gav’nunim (“mountain of majestic peaks”) sounds similar to the Hebrew word for cheese, gevinah. Is the connection a little far fetched? Sure - but I’m not arguing.

This time of year, the Jewish corners of social media light up with recipes for cheesecake and blintzes. So I figured I’d do something a little different and offer a festive salmon dish to serve with all that cheesy goodness.

Like all sheet pan dishes, this roasted salmon is simple to make and quick to clean up. But from the caramelized cauliflower and golden potatoes, to the crunchy, buttery, lemony, herby (I could go on) bread crumb topping coating the fish, it is a knockout. Serve it for Shavuot if you celebrate, or for your inaugural “summer dinner on the back porch” if you don’t!

Crispy, Lemony Sheet Pan Salmon

Serves 4 

Read more

In this week’s newsletter, I have a recipe for Chocolate and Fig Hamantaschen for you (they are so good!), and a chance to participate in an incredible challah-related art installation. I’m also excited to feature one of my Jewish writing heroes, Jason Diamond, in this week’s The Four Questions Interview.

But before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at The Jewish Table from the past month. For folks who aren’t subscribed to the weekly newsletter yet, here’s what you missed:

• Sabich Pizza with Green Tahini, plus a little history behind the beloved Iraqi-Israeli street food.

• Maple Buckwheat Granola. (Who knew buckwheat could make homemade granola even more addictive?) Plus, an exploration into the notion of Yidishn tam - foods that just *feel* quintessentially Jewish.

• Walnut and Pistachio Stuffed Dates, and a dispatch from my trip to London, where I spent a dreamy afternoon with the one-and-only Claudia Roden.

• Syrniki (Curd Cheese Pancakes), and some thoughts on what to say/do when the world feels impossibly hard, and you have no answers.

Never miss a recipe or story (and get access to the full recipe archive) by subscribing to The Jewish Table’s weekly newsletter.

Subscribe now

Bake Challah, Make Art

Have you ever noticed the gorgeous braid imprints that form on parchment paper when you bake challah? (If not, see above!) So has Rob Shostak, a Canadian artist and creator of the Parchment Project - an art installation he is launching in collaboration with the Fentster Gallery in Toronto.

The installation will feature a series of imprinted parchment paper sheets that elevate the practice of baking challah into something visually and emotionally powerful. And he is looking for submissions - from YOU! Whether you are a weekly challah baker, or a yeast dough novice, you can bake challah and send in your parchment by March 25 - with a little luck, your creation might just be included in the installation.

Check out the Parchment Project for more info about how to submit your challah parchment. And follow the project on Instagram for all the updates.

Chocolate and Fig Hamantaschen

“Hamantaschen symbolize resilience in the face of flagrant wickedness.”

When I read those words in a caption Russ & Daughters posted on Instagram earlier this week, my eyes welled up with tears. The sentiment is so spot on. Yes, hamantaschen are a delicious, triangle-shaped cookie. But Purim’s beloved pastry is also designed to represent the pocket (or the hat, or the ear, depending on whom you ask) of Haman - the cruel-hearted advisor to the ancient Persian king Ahasuerus.

Haman’s plot to kill all of the Jews in the Persian empire was thwarted by the heroic acts of Queen Esther. And in an act of sweet revenge (quite literally), Ashkenazi Jews bake hamantaschen on Purim to symbolize the triumph over Haman’s evil, and celebrate Esther’s resilience and bravery in spite of great danger.

In that spirit, bakers around the world have been making and sharing #hamantaschen_for_ukraine, while raising funds in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, who are currently showing unimaginable bravery despite Putin’s flagrant and unrelenting wicknedness.

Another Purim custom, matanot la’evyonim, obliges people to give to charity during the holiday, as a way of spreading the joy and hope of the season. If you feel inspired and are able, please consider making a donation to the humanitarian organization, HIAS. For more than 140 years, HIAS has helped support and resettle refugees fleeing hostile situations - first Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1880s, and today refugees from all walks of life and hailing from all around the globe - including those leaving Ukraine right now.

Chocolate and Fig Hamantaschen

There are two tricks for making hamantaschen that don’t pop open and leak jam all over the baking sheet. 1. Fold your triangles before you pinch them! (See the recipe for instructions). Some folks also suggest refrigerating the filled triangles for 10 minutes before baking. I never do it, but if you have the patience, it can’t hurt! 2. Use a thick jam or other filling that will stay put inside the cookie better than a watery jelly. I like to pulse the jam with nuts, for extra flavor and staying-power.

Makes about 30 cookies

For the Dough:

2 1/2 cups (350 g) all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup (60 ml) vegetable oil

2 large eggs

1/2 cup (100 g) sugar

1 tablespoon water, plus more if needed

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 teaspoon almond extract, optional

For the Filling:

3/4 cup (175 g) fig jam

1 cup (145 g) whole, unsalted almonds

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup (80 g) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

2. In a stand mixer (or using a handheld electric mixer and a large bowl), beat together the oil, eggs, sugar, water, vanilla extract, and almond extract, if using, until well combined. Add the flour mixture in two additions, beating on low after each, and scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary, until a firm but pliable dough comes together. If the dough looks too wet or dry, add flour or water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until the desired consistency is reached.

3. Gently knead the dough a few times in the bowl, then gather and form it into two flat disks. Wrap each disk tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or up to overnight.

4. Meanwhile, make the filling: Add the jam, almonds, lemon zest, and cinnamon to a food processor and pulse until a thick, sticky paste forms. Transfer mixture to a medium bowl and fold in the chocolate chips.

5. Preheat the oven to 350F (180C), and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

6. Working with one half of the dough at a time (keep the other half wrapped in the fridge), roll it out on a lightly floured surface into 1/4-inch thickness. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter (or a 3-inch glass), stamp out as many rounds as possible and carefully transfer them to the prepared baking sheets. Gather the scraps and reroll if desired.

7. Spoon 1 heaping teaspoon of the filling into the center of each dough round. Fold the left side over on an angle, followed by the right side. Fold the bottom flap up, tucking one end under the side flap to make a triangular pocket. Pinch the corners gently to seal.

8. Bake, rotating the baking sheets back-to-front and top-to-bottom halfway through baking, until lightly golden and browned at the corners, 15-18 minutes. Transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool.

Subscribe now

The Four Questions: With Jason Diamond

Welcome to the latest installment of The Four Questions, The Jewish Table’s semi-regular interview segment featuring Jewish food luminaries. This week I’m delighted to be joined by Jason Diamond.

Jason is one of my favorite writers - and not simply because he is also a Jewish geriatric millennial, and a Chicago suburbs-to-New York City transplant. Jason’s writing on culture, which can be found in GQ, Town & Country, and a million other publications, covers everything from Boyz II Men’s pioneering preppy style and why Elliott Gould is an icon, to the glories of the Chicago hot dog. He is also one of the few people I actually enjoy following on Twitter.

Jason’s sweet spot exists somewhere between the smoked fish counter at Zabar’s and this photo of Simon & Garfunkel hanging out in front of FAO Schwarz. It makes me so happy that, in a world increasingly dominated by social media influencers and “content creators,” Jason has managed to stake out a meaningful career writing thought-provoking cultural criticism about the things that make him (and by extension me and so many other readers!) happy.

While Jason isn’t exclusively a food writer, he has written some very compelling articles about the state of Jewish food in America. (Like this one. And this one.) In our conversation, he shared some thoughts on his favorite shuttered New York Jewish eateries, why too much nostalgia can be a bad thing, and how the scent of fresh dill *almost* brings tears to his eyes.

What is your relationship to Jewish food?

As I’ve gotten older, it has become more of an emotional thing than I would have expected. To me it is very sensory - like when I smell or touch dill, a Proustian response takes over. Dill is used in so many cultures, but to me it is a quintessential Jewish thing. When I go to my CSA and pick up dill, I will literally sniff it like it’s a flower. I get this overwhelming feeling - I’m not on the verge of tears, that sounds like a lot. But I feel this rush of happiness that I’m sure a scientist would link to a boost in serotonin.

To me it is just like, that’s my grandma who died when I was three, or that’s going to my in-laws and having dill sprinkled on top of my mother-in-law’s chicken soup. It all comes rushing back.

Your writing explores this fascinating niche of nostalgia for mid to late 20th-century America. It’s a time you didn’t personally experience - at least not as an adult. What is it that pulls you toward that time, and does it extend to food?

I have always lived by the Brian Wilson song, “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” Nostalgia is a tricky thing. If you are too nostalgic, you turn on blinders to the realities of the present. But I use nostalgia as a way of understanding the world in which I live, and the things that I enjoy. And maybe even in a sense my own personal history, because I had a weird childhood. I missed out on a lot of things. Building up an understanding of the past helps me cope.

With Jewish food, particularly Ashkenazi Jewish food, I feel like we have sort of forgotten about our culture. We have really let it slide too much into the realm of nostalgia. I am incredibly proud of my heritage, and am drawn to a fatty piece of brisket or a plate of latkes. But I also know there is more to Jewish food than that. I want to make sure we are paying tribute to the past - not just some idealized picture of it - and also looking to the future.

Which New York Jewish food establishments do you miss the most?

My first thought is that I was very upset by Barnum & Bagel closing in Skokie. I partly grew up in Chicago, and we had three things people think about when they think of Skokie: Nazis trying to march downtown, the dude from the heavy metal band Disturbed, and Barnum & Bagel. It was the quintessential old Jewish diner - it was a real nice thing.

In New York, honestly, I had a weird appreciation for Carnegie Deli and Cafe Edison, which were both tied to broadway and New York Jewish life. Cafe Edison was actually pretty good! And I like thinking that some of the Tin Pan Alley people showed up there. When I was a kid everyone talked about Carnegie like it was the Taj Mahal. New York got a lot sadder when it went away.

If you were going to name a deli sandwich after Elliott Gould, what would be in it?

I could see prime Elliott, circa 1973, eating a fried bologna sandwich not unlike the one you'd get at Wilensky's in Montreal. But his is on rye bread, and he has an egg cream after because he's a Brooklyn guy.

Subscribe now