By Paola Gavin
Carciofi alla giudia—“artichokes Jewish-style”—is probably the most famous dish of Rome’s Jewish cuisine. The crispy artichokes, fried in olive oil, were created in the ghetto in the sixteenth century and are traditionally served to break the fast of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Unfortunately, it is one of those dishes that can taste sublime or like a piece of old leather, depending on the skill and knowledge of the chef and the variety of artichoke used. In Rome, it is always made with cimaroli—violet-tinged artichokes that are very tender, with no fuzzy chokes and, most important, leaves without thorns. My advice is, if you cannot get ahold of cimaroli or similar tender artichokes, don’t waste your time. Having said that, according to the Talmud, “one may trim the artichoke and akivrot [cardoons] on a festival”—so Jews have been enjoying artichokes for millennia, no matter how difficult they are to prepare.
Carciofi alla Giudia
Serves 4 to 6 as an appetizer
3 lemons: 2 cut in half, 1 cut into wedges
2 pounds (10 kilograms) baby artichokes (about 16)
Olive oil, for frying
Salt
Fill a large bowl with water. Squeeze the 2 halved lemons into the water and add the spent halves to the bowl, too. Set the bowl near your work area.
Clean the artichokes by removing their tough dark outer leaves. When you get to the light-colored interior leaves, trim the stems of whatever tough bits there may be and trim about ½ inch (1.5 centimeters) off the tip. Drop each cleaned artichoke into the prepared lemon water.
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over high heat. Fill a large bowl with ice and water and set it nearby. Add the artichokes to the boiling water and blanch for 15 seconds, then dunk them into the bowl of ice water and let cool.
Remove the cooled artichokes from the bowl and shake off excess water. Using a paring knife, cut down the middle of each artichoke from the top along the length of the artichoke. When you get through the leaves to the base, stop. Rotate the artichoke and make a similar cut perpendicular to the first cut, making an X. You should now have four quadrants of leaves.
Pry the leaves open, creating a flower-like shape. Place the artichokes stem-side up on a paper towel–lined work surface or baking sheet to keep the leaves open. Allow to dry for at least 20 minutes or up to 2 hours.
When ready to cook, heat 2 inches (5 centimeters) of olive oil in a medium pot over medium-high heat to 350ºF (177ºC). Using tongs, place an artichoke in the hot oil, stem-side up, holding it against the bottom of the pot for several seconds to fry the leaves open in place. Release the artichoke, then repeat with 4 to 5 additional artichokes, taking care not to overcrowd the pot. Fry the artichokes for about 2 minutes more, moving them around in the pot and rotating them onto their sides to cook evenly. Transfer the fried artichokes to a paper towel–lined baking sheet and season with salt. Repeat to fry the remaining artichokes.
Serve with the lemon wedges alongside.
Challah and Other Sabbath Breads
By Leah Koenig
The Sabbath dinner table carries a hefty symbolic weight on top of its four legs and freshly pressed tablecloth. After the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the rabbis transferred many of the rites once performed there—lighting candles, blessing wine, washing hands—to the home table. At the center of this domestic altar is bread: loaves meant to represent the “showbread” that was once placed on the altar as a divine offering. So each Friday night, as people lift and bless their bread before tucking into the festive meal, they are—knowingly or not—reenacting an ancient priestly ritual.
Traditionally, Sabbath tables are graced with at least two loaves of bread (lechem mishneh), which symbolizes the double portion of manna the Israelites gathered before the Sabbath while wandering in the wilderness. Today, lechem mishneh most widely refers to challah—eggy loaves that are wound into thick braids and baked until tender and bronzed. Challah’s twisted shape dates back to fifteenth-century Austria and southern Germany. Before then, Sabbath bread was typically made from fine white flour but did not have a specific shape or name. It is there, Gil Marks writes in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, that Jews adopted the shape of a Teutonic solstice bread, braided to resemble the “long, matted hair” of a malevolent demon called Berchta or Frau Holle. “Although European Jews certainly did not worship or even to a large extent know anything about [her], they assimilated the attractive bread,” Marks writes. That Jews bless a bread originally modeled after a pagan witch is irony at its most delicious.
Challah is closely related to berches (also called water challah), a braided loaf enriched with mashed potato instead of eggs, which German Jews bless on Shabbat. In other parts of the world, Sabbath bread takes on other forms. Ethiopian Jews prefer dabo, a soft, honey-sweetened loaf spiced with turmeric and nigella. Tunisian Jews, meanwhile, eat bejma, a yeasted bread formed into doughy triangles, and Moroccan and Syrian Jews traditionally decorate their Sabbath tables with whole wheat flatbreads called khubz ’adi.
Egg challah has transcended the Sabbath table and also the Jewish community. Its plush texture makes it the ideal bread for French toast, a quality that delis and diners across America have capitalized on. But at its core, it’s a bread with serious soul.
by Einat Admony
Makes 4 loaves
2½ cups (600 milliliters) whole milk or water
8⅔ cups (1.16 kilograms) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1½ tablespoons (12 grams) active dry yeast
¾ cup (180 milliliters) honey or (150 grams) sugar
¼ cup (60 milliliters) canola oil, plus more for the bowl
3 large eggs
1½ tablespoons (23 grams) kosher salt
White sesame or nigella seeds, for sprinkling
Heat the milk in a small saucepan over low heat until it’s just warm to the touch.
Dump the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center. Add the yeast to the well along with a few drops of the honey and ½ cup (120 milliliters) or so of the warm milk. Let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes.
In a separate bowl, combine the remaining milk and honey, the canola oil, and 2 of the eggs. Stir together. Add the salt and stir again. Gradually stir the liquid mixture into the flour, about ½ cup (120 milliliters) at a time. When the dough becomes sticky and difficult to stir, dump it onto a floured surface and knead it by hand, adding a little more flour if necessary to keep it from sticking, until smooth and elastic.
Knead the dough into a ball. Grease a large bowl with oil, add the dough, and turn the dough to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let stand in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size, 1 to 1½ hours.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Gently punch the dough down and turn it out onto a floured surface. Divide the dough into four equal portions, working with one portion at a time and keeping the rest covered with a damp cloth. Divide one portion of dough into 3 equal pieces and roll into ropes about 12 inches (30 centimeters) long and slightly tapered.
Line the ropes up on a baking sheet and braid, pinching the ends to seal and tucking them underneath. Repeat with the remaining dough to make 4 braided loaves. Cover with a damp cloth and let stand until nearly doubled in size, 25 minutes or so.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (177ºC).
Lightly beat the remaining egg and brush it over the loaves. Sprinkle with seeds. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes.
By MaNishtana
Passover is the most celebrated Jewish holiday in the world, reaching across the ever-widening denominational aisles to unite Jews in a shared sense of culture and history. For African American Jews, Passover feels ever more real, tangible. For us, the Seder plate isn’t something symbolic of an event that happened to “ancestors” a long, long time ago in a country far, far away. It’s about experiences that happened to family—our grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents—of whom we have photographs and maybe even had the privilege of actually knowing, in the country we actually live in.
When it comes to culture and history, no food merges the two as deftly as the chunky concoction known as charoset—representing the mortar from which the Jews formed their bricks in Egypt. Gibraltarian recipes use real ground bricks, and Persian ones include forty different ingredients for each year the Jews spent in the desert, while the charoset of African American Jews consists of the slave crops of pecans, cocoa powder, figs, and sugarcane. No matter what recipe you use, charoset pays homage to our ancestral story of slavery while representing a unique expression of Jewish Diasporic experiences anywhere across the globe.
Charoset
Serves 6 to 8
3 large, crisp apples such as Gala, McIntosh, or Fuji, peeled, cored, and diced
10 dried figs, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup/177 grams)
¼ cup (60 milliliters) honey
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon (15 milliliters) fresh lemon juice
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
⅔ cup (160 milliliters) sweet red wine, such as Manischewitz
1 cup (100 grams) walnuts, toasted, cooled, and coarsely chopped
Place two-thirds of the diced apples in a large skillet. Add the figs, honey, lemon zest, lemon juice, cinnamon, and wine. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until the apples and figs have softened and absorbed the wine, 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes, until the mixture is no longer boiling hot.
Place the cooked fruit in the bowl of a food processor. Add the walnuts and pulse until the mixture is thick and fairly smooth—it’s OK if there are still some crunchy walnut bits. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and fold in the remaining raw apples.
To serve the charoset in the shape of a pyramid, mound it into the center of a large plate or serving platter. Working from the top, use an offset spatula or butter knife to sculpt the charoset into four triangular sides with a square base that meet at a point at the top. Work until each side is smooth and equal in size. Decorate if desired.
going global
Unlike many Jewish foods, which unintentionally resemble stuff hefty enough to spackle together pyramids, this quality is charoset’s raison d’être. It’s mortar by design, a sweet and spiced mishmash of fruit, nuts, and wine that plays an essential role in the Passover Seder.
While the Ashkenazi mélange of apples, wine, walnuts, and cinnamon might be most familiar to Americans, there’s more than one way to make paste. For Sephardim and Mizrahim, dates are the foundation of charoset. In Georgia, you’ll likely detect pears. In Curaçao, peanuts and cashews may be in play. The recipes vary from culture to culture, country to country, and interpretation to interpretation.
While charoset is a stand-in for mortar, it’s not all about mud. The ingredients themselves are symbolic. The inclusion of fruit and acid, for instance, alludes to a verse in the Song of Songs that mentions tapuach, a disputed fruit (the translation could be quince or etrog, but the word means “apple” in Hebrew) that has come to denote hope in times of despair. The addition of long spices, meanwhile, such as cinnamon or ginger, symbolizes the straw used by Jewish slaves in Egypt to make bricks.
The opportunities for riffing are vast. Some cultures use dried fruit, such as dates, figs, apricots, and raisins, to form the body of their charoset. Others mix fresh and dried fruit together. The types of nuts, wine, spices, and sweeteners are also subject to change. One recipe for Afghan charoset lists sixteen ingredients, including bananas, strawberries, and black pepper. In Italy, chestnuts are a common addition. A Persian charoset brings cardamom into the mix, along with coriander, cloves, and cinnamon. A recipe from Surinam features seven dried fruits, including coconut, plus cherry jam.
The flavor profile is consistently sweet, and the possibilities are endless.
By Daphne Merkin
This silky-smooth baked confection, creaminess masquerading as a cake, sets my salivary glands dripping. Best served on Shabbos morning as padding for the several hours of shul-going ahead, or at a Shavuot dinner, cheesecake is a shout-out to the magnificence of all things light and sweet: cream cheese, eggs, sugar. For people raised on Jewish cuisine, the unalloyed milchigness of cheesecake comes as something of a relief, a counterpoint to the dominant melody of cholent and brisket. If it isn’t a quintessentially Jewish dessert, it should be legislated as one—proof that sometimes simplicity wins out, even for a people who have God on the brain.
Cheesecake with Cherries
Makes one 9-inch (23-centimeter) cheesecake; serves 12
For the Crust
4 tablespoons (½ stick/60 grams) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing
1¾ cups (215 grams) graham cracker crumbs (from 14 graham crackers)
¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
For the Cheesecake
3½ (8-ounce/225-gram) packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1¼ cups (250 grams) sugar
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1¼ cups (300 milliliters) sour cream
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Boiling water, as needed
For the Cherry Topping
1 (10-ounce/284-gram) package frozen pitted sour cherries or sweet cherries
½ cup (100 grams) sugar (if using sweet cherries, reduce to ¼ cup/50 grams)
2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon (8 grams) cornstarch
3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) water
Make the crust: Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350ºF (177ºC). Grease a 9-inch (23-centimeter) springform pan with butter. Wrap the bottom of the pan with enough aluminum foil to protect the cake from the water bath.
Stir together the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and salt in a large bowl until combined. Pour in the melted butter and stir until all the dry ingredients are uniformly moist and the mixture resembles wet sand. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan and, using your fingers, pat it into an even layer over the bottom of the pan.
Place the pan on a baking sheet and bake until the crust is lightly brown, about 10 minutes. Transfer the springform pan to a wire rack. Reduce the oven temperature to 325ºF (163ºC).
Make the cheesecake: In the bowl of the stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese on medium speed for about 4 minutes, until soft and creamy. With the mixer running, add the sugar and salt and beat for 4 minutes more, until the cheese is light. Beat in the vanilla, then add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the sour cream and lemon zest. Beat until combined.
Place the springform pan in a roasting pan large enough to hold the pan with some space around it. Give the cheesecake batter a few stirs to make sure that the bottom doesn’t have any unmixed bits, then scrape the batter into the springform pan over the crust. The batter should reach the rim of the pan. Place the roasting pan in the oven and pour enough boiling water into the roasting pan to come halfway up the sides of the springform pan.
Bake the cheesecake for 1½ hours, until the top is brown and maybe cracked. Turn off the oven and open the oven door just a smidge (you can keep it ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon). Let the cheesecake sit in the oven for 1 hour more.
Carefully pull the roasting pan out of the oven and lift the springform pan out and onto a rack. Carefully remove the foil from around the springform pan. Let the cheesecake cool in the pan.
When the cake is cool, cover the top loosely and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to overnight (overnight is better, as it allows the flavors to settle).
Make the topping: Combine the cherries, sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch, and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, reduce the heat to low, and cook, stirring frequently, until the cherries are soft and the sauce has thickened, 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from the heat, transfer to a jar, cover, and let cool completely before serving.
When ready to serve, unmold the cheesecake by carefully unclasping the sides of the springform pan. If the cheesecake is sticking to the sides, run an offset spatula between the pan and the cheesecake to loosen it. Transfer the cheesecake to a serving platter, top with the cherries, and serve immediately.
why jews eat cheesecake on shavuot
As you probably know, it’s traditional to eat dairy foods on Shavuot. What’s less clear is why. Because the holiday is simultaneously a harvest festival and a commemoration of the Israelites receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, the first and most obvious guess is that we’re celebrating “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). Some lesser-known theories include a kabbalistic one, noting that the Hebrew word halav (milk) has a numerological value of 40 (het = 8, lamed = 30, vet = 2), which is also the same number of days Moses spent on Mount Sinai before returning with the Ten Commandments (did I just blow your mind?). Another wordplay-oriented theory—the Jews love wordplay—notes that Mount Sinai is called Gavunim (“multiple peaks”) in the Book of Psalms (68:15), and gavunim shares a root with, or at least the same Hebrew letters as, g’vinah, which means “cheese.” Of course it does.
Marjorie Ingall
By Wayne Hoffman
“Jews and chicken,” said Grace Adler on the 2006 finale of the now resurrected Will & Grace. “It’s deep, and it’s real.”
There’s no debating that Jewish cuisine would wither without chicken. No chicken means no schmaltz, which means half the delicious things your grandmother used to make suddenly become half as delicious. No chicken means Shabbat dinners with a giant empty spot on your plate, a hole that no meat loaf or risotto or tofu scramble can fill. No chicken means matzo ball soup with kneidlach floating in—what? Beef bouillon? Hearty vegetable? Mushroom barley? Hot water? Come on.
But what explains Jews’ connection to chicken, as opposed to, say, beef or lamb? Simple. As anyone who’s ever eaten both kosher and nonkosher meat can attest, kosher red meat is second-rate. (Yes, yes, I’m sure your butcher is a magician, and your preparation is perfection, and your roast is top-notch. But please. Try treyf beef, just once. Seriously.) Kosher substitutes for pork products like bacon and sausage are best left undiscussed—and uneaten. As for fish, what’s kosher is perfectly lovely, but leaving shellfish off the menu altogether is like listening to a symphony without the woodwinds; what’s there may sound wonderful, but everyone can tell something’s missing.
Chicken, on the other hand, is the one place where the Jews got it right in the flavor department. Kosher chicken is so vastly superior to any treyf bird—bigger, juicier, more flavorful—that they’re barely birds of a feather. Perdue’s legendary Oven Stuffer roasters look like sparrows next to an average kosher chicken; Tyson’s scrawny and pale (so pale!) birdlets can’t compete, either. Have you ever seen a treyf drumstick? More like a matchstick.
So of course Jews love chicken. It’s the only place on a kosher menu where they don’t have to settle for second best.
Roast Chicken Stuffed with Lemon and Herbs
by Joan Nathan
Serves 4 to 6
1 (4- to 5-pound/1.8- to 2.25-kilogram) chicken
5 garlic cloves: 4 left whole, 1 cut in half
4 tablespoons (60 milliliters) olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 lemons
2 sprigs rosemary
2 sprigs thyme
2 sprigs sage
2 medium yellow onions, quartered
2 celery stalks, cut into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces
2 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces
3 medium beets, quartered
1 medium fennel bulb, quartered
1 medium celery root, cut into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces
1 pound (455 grams) potatoes, cut into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces
1 cup (240 milliliters) dry white wine
2 tablespoons (6 grams) chopped fresh parsley, for garnish
Rinse and thoroughly dry the chicken. (A wet chicken will steam rather than roast, so be diligent.) Put the chicken in a large roasting pan. Rub the skin with the cut sides of the halved garlic clove (reserve the garlic clove).
Brush 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over the chicken and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Halve one of the lemons and insert it into the cavity of the chicken, followed by the reserved halved garlic clove, the rosemary, thyme, and sage.
Scatter the remaining 4 garlic cloves, the onions, celery, carrots, beets, fennel, celery root, and potatoes around the chicken, nestling them together if necessary. Thinly slice the remaining lemon and scatter it on top. Drizzle with the remaining 2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) olive oil and sprinkle with more salt and pepper. Pour the wine over the vegetables.
Put the pan in a cold oven. Turn on the oven to 375ºF (190ºC) and roast the chicken, basting it occasionally with the pan juices, until golden and cooked through, 1½ to 2 hours.
Remove the lemon from the cavity and let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes.
In the meantime, spoon the vegetables onto a serving platter, leaving space in the middle for the chicken. Chop up the lemon from the cavity and scatter it over the vegetables, along with the parsley. Set the chicken in the center and serve.
By Joan Nathan
Let’s start with a hard truth: Chicken soup actually predates Judaism. It was, in fact, the Chinese who brought the chicken and its soup to the West. Ever since chickens were domesticated—between seven thousand and ten thousand years ago—the bird, bathed in water in a clay pot with a few vegetables to form a soup, has been a special dish in China.
But our own history with the dish begins illustriously and keeps on going. In the twelfth century, the great doctor and philosopher Maimonides learned from Chinese and Greek texts about chicken soup’s medicinal qualities. Indeed, the idea of chicken soup as the “Jewish penicillin” derives from his treatise On the Causes of Symptoms, in which he recommends “chicken soup be used as a cure for whatever might ail you.” Maimonides also prescribed a soup or stew made with an old hen or cock as a panacea for the common cold and other ailments.
The flavors of this once simple soup, made with water, chicken, onions, carrots, celery, dill, parsley, and an occasional parsnip, have evolved with the times. Years ago, when I lived in Israel, I tasted Yemenite chicken soup with garlic, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, and Persian abgoosht seasoning, which is flavored with cardamom and turmeric. And with the increase of immigration to the United States, we are discovering tasty recipes from the great Jewish Diaspora and beyond, introducing unexpected flavors and continually transforming this perennial comfort food. Over the years, we have treated our taste buds to Azerbaijani, Uzbek, and Colombian Jewish chicken soups laced with cumin, turmeric, ginger, and other ancient yet modern healing spices. And today, when I’m sick, I long for another alternative—Vietnamese pho with chicken.
Still, it’s hard to separate oneself from the classic, and the role it has played in our lives, individually and communally—and anyway, who would want to?
Jewish Penicillin: Fact or myth?
In an experiment in 2000, a scientist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center proved what your mother has been saying for years: Chicken soup cures the common cold. The study, performed by Dr. Stephen Rennard, found that chicken soup inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis in vitro. (In plain English: “We found chicken soup might have some anti-inflammatory value” and “may ease the symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections.”)
Chicken Soup
Serves 6
1 (4-pound/1.8-kilogram) chicken, cut into 8 pieces, backbone reserved
2 large yellow onions, unpeeled, quartered
3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
1 small head garlic, halved through the equator
Handful of flat-leaf parsley sprigs, plus more for serving
Handful of dill sprigs
1 tablespoon (15 grams) whole white or black peppercorns
1 tablespoon (15 grams) kosher salt, plus more as needed
10 medium carrots (1½ pounds/680 grams), cut into 2-inch (5-centimeter) pieces
1 large parsnip (½ pound/227 grams), peeled and cut into 2-inch (5-centimeter) pieces
3½ quarts (3.5 liters) water
Combine the chicken pieces and backbone, onions, celery, garlic, parsley, dill, peppercorns, and salt in a large pot. Add half the carrots and the parsnip to the pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat so the liquid is at a simmer. Cook, skimming off and discarding any gray scum that rises to the top, until the chicken breasts are cooked through and firm to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the chicken breasts to a bowl and cover so they don’t dry out, then cook the stock for about 3 hours more, stirring it here and there (once an hour or so). Be sure to skim any gray scum that floats to the top. At this point, the stock should be a rich yellow-gold color and the remaining chicken pieces and vegetables should be mushy and spent.
Strain the stock through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a large bowl and return it to the pot. Discard the solids in the sieve. Bring the stock back to a lively simmer over medium-high heat and add salt to taste.
While the stock is simmering, discard the chicken breast skin and bones and shred the meat. Set aside.
Add the remaining carrots to the soup, reduce the heat to low, and cook at a gentle simmer until the carrots are tender, about 15 minutes. Add the shredded chicken breast meat to the soup and let it warm up, 2 to 3 minutes. Ladle the soup into bowls and top each with some parsley. Serve immediately.
By Action Bronson
In New York City, Chinese food is as Jewish as matzo ball soup. For Jews, eating Chinese food is like getting taken to the Taj Mahal, for real—it’s a big deal. Every New York Jew loves Chinese food. They can be Jewish, but they’ll still eat that Chinese rib. They’ll still eat that roast pork. They’ll still eat that fried rice. Lo mein is heavy-duty in the Jewish community.
One of the biggest staples in my Jewish household was the egg foo young my mother would purchase. I don’t fuck with it, but my mother would always get it with that sauce—that’s old-school shit. For years, I would get chicken and broccoli, until I started getting sesame chicken, and then General Tso’s or kung pao. But always with an egg roll—and always hot mustard. There were so many little cups of that mustard in my house, I never even had to ask for them. There were times when I had Chinese food six times a week. I had Chinese food yesterday: I had kung pao chicken, beef with rice noodles, and Szechuan cucumbers.
Chinese food is not a phase. This is forever, this is a lifestyle—a Jewish lifestyle.
why jews eat chinese food on christmas
The Hebrew year is 5779 and the Chinese year is 4717. That must mean, the joke goes, that against all odds, the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,062 years. In fact, Jewish love for Chinese food is neither hallucinated nor arbitrary. It is very real and very determined, and it originated roughly a century ago, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
The predominant groups in the area were Eastern European Jews, Italians, and Chinese. According to Matthew Goodman, author of Jewish Food: The World at Table, Italian cuisine and especially Italian restaurants, with their Christian iconography, held little appeal for Jews. But the Chinese restaurants had no Virgin Marys. And they prepared their food in the Cantonese culinary style, which utilized a sweet-and-sour flavor profile, overcooked vegetables, and heaps of garlic and onions. Sound familiar?
Additionally, argued Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine in a 1992 academic paper titled “Safe Treyf,” Chinese food featured the sort of unkosher dishes you could take home to your mother, or at least eat in front of her. For one thing, there is no mixing of dairy and meat, for the simple reason that there is no dairy. (Think about it!) Of course, there is treyf aplenty, chiefly pork and shellfish. But it is always either chopped and minced and served in the middle of innocuous vegetables all covered in a common sauce, or wrapped up in wontons and egg rolls—where you can’t see it. Goodman notes that the proprietors of Chinese restaurants eventually picked up on this: “They would advertise wonton soup as chicken soup with kreplach.”
The final part of this story is the one you already know: Most Chinese people are not Christian. Therefore, on Christmas, Chinese restaurants are open.
OK, you say, but since the Lower East Side’s glory years, and even since the baby boomers’ halcyon suburbia, many more options have cropped up—Indian, Korean, Thai. But still, as Rabbi Joshua Plaut, author of A Kosher Christmas, says, “For Jews, the decision to go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas is conscious and intended.”
“It’s a love affair and a sacred tradition to partake of Peking duck,” Plaut quips. He argues that to eat Chinese on Christmas is a ritual, not unlike the rituals that traditional Judaism—which has always valued observance where Christianity has valued faith—requires. For some, the Chinese-on-Christmas experience is a replacement for traditional rituals: a prayer you can eat.
Marc Tracy
By Shalom Auslander
People talk to me about cholent.
I don’t know why, but they do.
At parties, at book festivals, at coffee shops.
They really shouldn’t.
“You should come over!” they say. “I’ll make cholent!”
It’s like running into Oliver Twist forty years after he left the workhouse and inviting him over for a nice bowl of gruel. I hate cholent. I hate the sound of the word, I hate even typing it, and I’m going to have to shower as soon as I’m done writing this. It reminds me of everything I hate about my history. It’s a steaming-hot bowl of childhood, and just for the record, I’m severely cholent-intolerant.
“C’mon, Oliver! Gruel! You remember gruel!”
Assholes.
It’s not cholent’s fault. What’s to hate, after all? A stew made of beans, meat, potatoes, and bones—it’s delicious. But the whole is more grating than the sum of its parts. Ostensibly, it was a way around the prohibition of cooking on Shabbos (the only thing rabbis love more than cholent is a good loophole), but my mother was unable to bring the bowl out to the table without reminding us that Jews were poor and miserable—“They were peasants!”—and so the poor and miserable Jews had nothing to eat but this poor and miserable peasant stew, no doubt while fleeing Somewhere for Somewhere Else, from which they would soon flee again. The smell alone is enough to make me depressed.
“My mother made it with chickpeas!” people tell me.
Really? Mine made it with guilt and bile.
I prefer the jelly doughnuts on Hanukkah. They’re white and bright and sweet and sugary; in hindsight, I’m surprised I wasn’t taught that the jelly represents the blood of my poor and miserable ancestors, the powdered sugar their tears. When I die and no doubt go to hell (you will, too, trust me; we all do), God will meet me at the gates with a steaming bowl of that loathsome too-Jew stew in His hands, an evil grin on His old bastard face.
“C’mon, Shalom! Cholent! You remember cholent!”
Asshole.
Cholent
Serves 8 to 10
3 medium yellow onions, quartered
3 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) chunks
8 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 pounds (1 kilogram) chuck roast, stew meat, or brisket
1½ cups (300 grams) dried beans, such as kidney, pinto, or cannellini, or a mixture
1 cup (210 grams) pearl barley
1½ pounds (680 grams) Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 quarts (2 liters) chicken stock or water, plus more as needed
¼ cup (60 milliliters) pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons (45 milliliters) tomato paste
2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) soy sauce
2 tablespoons (36 grams) garlic powder
1 tablespoon (15 grams) kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 200ºF (93ºC).
Put the onions, carrots, and garlic in a large Dutch oven, followed by the meat. Scatter the beans and barley on top, followed by the potatoes.
Stir together the stock, maple syrup, tomato paste, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt, paprika, cumin, and pepper in a large bowl. Pour the liquid over the contents of the pot and stir once or twice to combine. Place a large piece of parchment paper on top of the pot, cover with a lid, and transfer the pot to the oven.
Cook for about 12 hours, checking now and then to make sure it has enough liquid to just cover. Add small amounts of stock or water as needed. Do not stir the cholent while it cooks; stirring will break up the chunks of potatoes. (If the cholent looks dry after it’s finished cooking, add stock or water, 2 cups/480 milliliters at a time, and stir gently to incorporate. Place the pot over low heat on the stovetop and warm until the liquid is gently simmering. You want the stew to be fairly generous in sauce.)
Serve the cholent hot or warm. If not eating right away, let cool, cover, and refrigerate for up to 1 week, or transfer to an airtight container and freeze for up to 3 months.
Slow Cooker Method: To make the cholent in a slow cooker, follow the steps above but place the ingredients in the slow cooker. Cover and cook on Low for 10 to 12 hours.
By Edward Lee
When I was a kid in Canarsie, one of our neighbors—an elderly Jewish woman who lived below us—would watch me when my parents worked late. I can remember with such vividness sitting in her kitchen eating egg noodles, kugels, latkes, and, my personal favorite, chopped-liver sandwiches.
The beauty of a chopped-liver sandwich is that it is the most delicious thing that looks the least appetizing. Its gray-brown color made it seem inedible. My neighbor would spread it thick on rye bread and put a pickle spear on the side. It was textureless and drab. And it would literally melt in my mouth. I loved the rich, buttery flavor with the aftertaste of bitter iron. It was only much later, at a deli, that I realized all those sandwiches I ate as a kid were actually made of chopped liver. What I love about the chopped-liver sandwich is that it is emblematic of all the best Jewish food—frugal, unadorned, nourishing—and it comes with a tinge of guilt if you don’t finish every bite on the plate.
As I devoured each bite, I would listen to my neighbor admonish me about my grades and implore me to keep up my piano lessons. Funny thing is, she never told me what I was eating. She would just tell me she was going to make me a sandwich—as if there were no other version of a sandwich that existed on Earth. Maybe there shouldn’t be.
Serves 8 as an appetizer
1 pound (455 grams) chicken livers
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
4 tablespoons (60 milliliters) schmaltz or olive oil
2 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced (about 1¾ cups/400 grams)
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
4 large eggs, hard-boiled and cut into ½-inch (1.5-centimeter) chunks
2 tablespoons (6 grams) finely chopped fresh parsley
Lettuce leaves, for serving
Wash the chicken livers in cold water, drain well, and blot dry with paper towels. Season with ½ teaspoon of the salt.
Warm 2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) of the schmaltz in a large skillet over medium heat, until it coats the bottom of the pan when you swirl it, then add the chicken livers. Cook until the livers are cooked on the underside, about 5 minutes. Flip the livers and cook until the other side is cooked, about 5 minutes more. To check for doneness, cut a slit in the middle of a liver with a sharp knife. If the liver is still bloody, cook a bit longer, until it is slightly pink in the middle. Transfer the livers to a bowl and set aside.
In the same skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons (30 milliliters) schmaltz over medium heat. Add the onions, season with the remaining ½ teaspoon salt, and cook until they are soft and caramelized, 30 to 35 minutes.
Place the chicken liver, sautéed onions, and pepper in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 4 or 5 times to break the liver into smaller pieces. Add the eggs and parsley and pulse a few more times to make a fairly smooth mixture that still has some texture and visible pieces of egg.
Taste and adjust the seasoning, if needed. Serve on a bed of lettuce, if you like, or smeared on bialys or sliced challah with sour pickle spears (Half-Sour Pickles and Full-Sour Pickles).
The chopped liver will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days or in the freezer for up to 4 months.
By Shyrla Pakula
As I was making what is probably the five hundredth pot of compote I have cooked since I was a newlywed, it occurred to me that as far as the classic Jewish comfort foods go, compote is pretty much neck and neck with chicken soup. Sure, it doesn’t get the same kudos—it’s not a cure-all, it’s not “Jewish penicillin”—but it’s certainly a lot easier to make, and no animal has to be sacrificed for it.
It’s just peeled and cored apples and pears and, if you want to get fancy, maybe strawberries or a cinnamon stick thrown in. No sugar needed. A dash of water, some gentle simmering, and then the decision: to blend smooth, or to leave chunky? My mother-in-law favors smooth, especially since she tends to use strawberries, so the result is a pink puree that just slides down. My mother, God rest her soul—who was what we now call a good, plain cook and sure couldn’t afford such a luxury as strawberries cooked into compote—left the fruit with a bit of texture. It is this style that I prefer, except when the compote is intended for either the very young or the very old. I’ve never known a baby to refuse compote, and I know babies. They sit there with their little mouths open, like baby birds, and just scoff it down. Even the most hardened self-feeder relents in the presence of a spoonful of compote—they splash around in it for a bit, perhaps, but eventually, the spoon wins.
Now that I am older and I think of my parents more than ever, I remember my father during his final illness, at home with us for his last weeks, becoming frailer by the day but still clinging to the desire to live. And to eat is to live. But the illness meant he couldn’t tolerate lumpy food. Enter my mother-in-law, who has a gift for visiting and nursing the sick, with her smooth, cool compote. Such a simple food, and so delicious. I’ve got a couple of quarts in my fridge right now—and more in the freezer, for a rainy day.
Serves 4 to 6
2 medium quince
6 cups (1.5 liters) water
¾ cup (150 grams) sugar
¼ cup (60 milliliters) honey
2 strips lemon zest, peeled with a vegetable peeler
Juice of 1 lemon
1 large apple or pear, peeled, quartered, cored, and quarters cut into thirds
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
1 whole clove (optional)
20 dried apricots: 10 left whole, 10 cut in half
Fill a medium bowl with water. Peel the quince, cut them into quarters, remove the hard cores, and cut each quarter into thirds, dropping the prepared pieces into the bowl of water as you work.
Drain the quince and transfer to a medium saucepan. Add the water, ⅓ cup (65 grams) of the sugar, the honey, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 1 hour.
Remove the lid and cook until the liquid has reduced by nearly half, about 40 minutes, adding the remaining sugar intermittently, every 10 to 12 minutes (this allows for the slow caramelization of the sugar to transform the quince into a deep, rosy color).
When the quince has noticeably darkened from cooking and caramelization, add the apple, cinnamon stick and clove (if using), and apricots. Add a bit of water if the compote syrup has greatly reduced—it should come about halfway up the fruit in the pot. Cook for about 30 minutes, until the apples have softened and the apricots have plumped but are not falling apart.
Remove the cinnamon stick and clove (if using) and serve warm or at room temperature, with yogurt or spooned over sponge cake, or on its own with a crisp cookie. To store, transfer to a freezer bag or an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 3 weeks, or freeze for up to 3 months.
By Rosie Schaap
For a period that may have lasted just a few weeks, during a summer my family spent on Fire Island in the late 1970s, I’d march off to temple for Shabbat—alone and, in keeping with local custom, barefoot. My mother was suspicious of my sudden, newfound piety but figured it was my way of dealing with my parents’ separation. I was no more than eight, and I already understood two things about myself, or at least about my future self: I was a hippie, and I was a Drinker with a capital D.
Sure, I liked the whole friendly, beach-casual, liberal-Jew vibe of the place, the guitars and folk songs and earnest long-haired older kids who paid attention to me—all so different from the stuffy Manhattan synagogues I was occasionally dragged to on High Holidays. But the biggest thrill was that I thought I was getting one over: I was sure I was drinking wine out of those little Dixie cups. It was, of course, Concord grape juice.
We have the distinctly not-Jewish-sounding Ephraim Wales Bull, who grew the seedling from which the Vitis labrusca hybrid was propagated, to thank for the Concord grape. There is, at least, a soupçon of Old Testament pathos in Bull’s story. “His discovery enriched others,” John Mariani wrote in The Dictionary of American Food and Drink, “but not himself: his gravestone reads, ‘He sowed, but others reaped.’”
Many of the kosher wines served at the Seders of my youth were made from Concord grapes and were unpleasantly sweet. I say this even as an unrepentant wino: Where the juice of the Concord grape is concerned, I still prefer it unfermented. Such is the power of faith—or at least of a child’s capacity for magical thinking—that I got pretty drunk off the stuff anyway, and still do.
By Gabriella Gershenson
The iconic version, served in a hollowed-out cantaloupe at your local diner, is supposedly the option for people who make sacrifices for their waistlines. But whoever designated cottage cheese as such is clearly not Jewish, because we choose our appetites over our waistlines every time. To us, cottage cheese isn’t diet food. It’s the New World version of pot cheese, curd cheese, or tvorog, as my Soviet Jewish immigrant family calls it. It’s richer, tangier, more arid, and denser than the drippy, lumpy American stuff. After emigrating from Russia to Massachusetts, my paternal grandfather still made his fresh, the whey in his fridge proof that the curds were his own. My mother’s mother, from Riga, Latvia, would often eat store-bought cottage cheese on bread for lunch (the original ricotta toast?), a version of a meal that has sustained Latvians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, for generations. If you think cottage cheese is starting to sound more Eastern European than Jewish, try making kugel without it.
By Gabriella Gershenson
You can’t stuff a cheese blintz without it. It’s the vital ingredient in rugelach dough. It inspires allegiances (see the cult classic Temp Tee) as well as mutiny (ugh, tofu cream cheese). It’s a natural mate for lox, the ultimate Ashkenazi delicacy. When slathered on a bagel, it’s what much of the world, for better or worse, thinks of as Jewish food. Though cream cheese is an American invention, it was put to best culinary use by Jewish immigrants, who, according to food historian Gil Marks, swapped in the thick, tangy dairy product for pot cheese in traditional Eastern European recipes. But since Breakstone’s and Philadelphia were not the curd cheese of the old country, cream cheese was also the catalyst for some key Jewish American innovations, most notably the New York–style cheesecake. Like the enterprising Jews who raised the ingredient to lofty heights, it’s eminently adaptable—maybe even too adaptable, as anyone who’s ever grimaced at Oreo or jalapeño cream cheese knows.
Cream Cheese
Makes 4 to 4½ cups (600 to 675 grams)
4 cups (1 liter) heavy cream
4 cups (1 liter) whole milk, ideally raw
¼ teaspoon mesophilic cheese culture (can be purchased online)
4 drops liquid vegetable rennet (can be purchased at specialty grocers or online), diluted in 2 tablespoons water
½ teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste
Pour the heavy cream and milk into a large pot and heat over medium-high heat to 75ºF (24ºC).
Turn off the heat and sprinkle the cheese culture on top. Allow it to sit, undisturbed, for 5 minutes; the culture is activated by the heat. Add the rennet-water solution and stir gently up and down and side to side—no more than four to six gentle stirs—to disperse the culture and the rennet.
Loosely cover the pot with a clean kitchen towel or a couple layers of cheesecloth and let sit for 12 to 14 hours, until it has thickened; when you gently shift the pot back and forth, the mixture should look like very loose panna cotta. How long this takes will depend on the temperature of your kitchen—the cooler the kitchen, the longer it will take. Conversely, the warmer the kitchen, the faster it will occur. Gently stir in the salt.
Line a strainer with a couple layers of fine cheesecloth and set it over a bowl to catch the whey. Carefully pour the cream mixture into the strainer. It may look more watery than you expect it to, but that is OK. Strain the cheese, without pressing it through the strainer, for about 5 hours, until the paste looks drier and much more like cream cheese—the portion of cheese on the periphery, closer to the cloth and strainer, should be drier, and the center, wetter. If it is particularly warm in your kitchen and the cheese seems too liquid, refrigerate the cheese for several hours or up to overnight to help it set before continuing.
To further strain the cheese, gather the ends of the cheesecloth, tie them to make a bundle, and hang the bundle—either from an upper cabinet with a bowl below to catch the excess whey or by placing a wooden spoon across the opening of a carafe and hanging the sack of cream cheese from the spoon so it drains into the carafe. Either way, you want to utilize gravity to help extract the remaining fluid from the cheese. Strain for 5 to 6 hours more, until the cream is stiffer and no longer loose and runny.
You’ll find that the layer of cheese closest to the fabric will strain before the more interior parts. Aid the straining of whey by gently turning and stirring the cheese within the cloth so that wetter parts of the cheese can also strain.
When your cream cheese is at the right consistency for your schmearing preferences, taste it and season with additional salt, if needed.
The cream cheese will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. Spread it on bialys or bagels, and serve alongside home-cured gravlax.
