Fig, Pear, and Onion Flatbread
Plus: Should You Apologize for Something You Said on Social Media?
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Hi The Jewish Table Readers,
This week’s recipe came to me like a vision. I was driving home from Delaware after a delightful Portico book tour event and my mind drifted to a bowl of Bosc pears sitting on the kitchen counter at home. I had bought far too many on a whim at the farmer’s market (They were so pretty! All mottled gold, brown, and green like fallen leaves!), forgetting that Yoshie is the only person in our family who enjoys eating pears out of hand. So despite his best efforts, there were still a few in the bowl that needed attention.
What about a pear flatbread I thought? By the time I reached my exit off the New Jersey turnpike, this recipe was fully formed in my head: Sautéed onions + thinly sliced pears + jammy dried figs + fresh thyme sitting atop a crisp and chewy, golden flatbread.
Now, a bowl of ripening pears is hardly the stuff of high drama—if you’re stifling a yawn while you read, I get it. But the flatbread those pears inspired is worthy of your full attention.
Flavor-wise, this recipe takes its cues from one of my all time favorite Joan Nathan dishes—the Alsatian Pear Kugel with Prunes in her lovely French-Jewish book, Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous. That kugel, which Joan writes is, “a very old Alsatian Sabbath kugel,” transforms stale bread and fruit into a tender bread pudding. The kugel also includes caramelized onions alongside pears and prunes, for a sweet-savory flavor profile that feels at once surprising and homey.
My recipe is also inspired by another old Ashkenazi dish, which I feature in Modern Jewish Cooking: pletzels (or pletzlach). The classic Eastern European-Jewish flatbread comes topped, bialy style, with caramelized onions and poppy seeds. There’s no fruit in the mix, but the onions add their own hint of sweetness.
If you married the Alsatian Pear Kugel with Pletzlach, you would end up with this Fig, Pear, and Onion Flatbread. I just finished off the leftovers today for lunch, and can confirm that they did that bowl of ripe pears proud.
I’ve shared the recipe for Fig, Pear, and Onion Flatbread below with paid readers of The Jewish Table. The next free newsletter + recipe will come in a couple of weeks. But if you’re able to upgrade to a paid subscription, you can start cooking this flatbread (or any recipe from the archive) right now. Plus you’ll have my undying gratitude.
Should You Apologize for Something You Said on Social Media?
Like so many of us, I am still glued to the news coming out of Israel and Gaza. There have been a few tiny glimmers of hope. Like four of the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas that have been released. (Not nearly enough.) And the humanitarian aid that has started to trickle into Gaza. (Also not nearly enough.)
But for the most part, the situation remains a complete horror show of escalating violence and hate, with ripple effects spreading across the region, around the world, and into our battered hearts. A recent newsletter by fellow Substacker, Bess Kalb, sums up the chaos in my head almost perfectly. It is painful to feel so out of control. Yes, we can call our Congressperson or show up to a rally—but the sense of helplessness remains.
One place where I think we do have some agency, however limited, is on social media. During times of great stress, our worst impulses are magnified there. Social media is a place where we can quickly unload the grief, confusion, and anger crowding inside our heads. And too often, we unload those huge feelings on complete (or almost complete) strangers. It might feel like a temporary relief, but 9 times out of 10 times, it does so much more harm than good. 9 times out of 10, we forget that we are talking to another human being on the other side of the screen.
In the week or so following October 7, I unfollowed or muted dozens of people I otherwise respect because their rhetoric or the memes they were sharing felt completely void of any nuance. I engaged in drawn-out, heated message threads with people I don’t personally know where we mostly talked over and past one another. I tried to keep a cool head and stay respectful, but I know I failed at times.
It has me wondering, Should we apologize for the hurtful things we’ve said over social media? I don’t mean reaching out with our tails between our legs to someone who spewed vile hate or threats at us. And I don’t mean changing our positions, though there is also beauty in softening our hearts just enough to understand where someone we profoundly disagree with might be coming from.
What I wonder is: What good might we do and what repair might we initiate, if we were to return to a particularly vitriolic thread and say: “We disagree, but I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way?” What if we remembered that, regardless of which “side” we stand on, we are all coming to this moment with broken hearts? What if, before we engaged in future hard conversations—on social media and in real life—we took a moment to consider those shared broken hearts with tenderness? Would it make a difference? I have a feeling, in some small way, it could.
PORTICO TOUR - this week and beyond
I’m excited to head to the West Coast with Portico this week! I’ll be speaking at the JCCSF in San Francisco this Thursday (Oct 26), and hosting a Roman Jewish Shabbat dinner at the Lawrence Family JCC in San Diego on Friday (Oct 27).
There are still tickets available to both events, so if you haven’t registered, now’s the time!
Coming up in November, I’ll be making tour stops in: Chicago, Ann Arbor, Philly, Denver and Boulder, and finishing things up with a Hanukkah party in NYC. Check the full tour schedule to register.
Fig, Pear, and Onion Flatbread
To save time, you can use two rounds of store bought pizza dough instead of making your own. Follow the thawing instructions on the package. If desired, you can also add crumbled feta or goat cheese to the flatbread along with the figs and pears.
Serves 6-8
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