Katherine Romanow

Prolific is the word that comes to mind when I think about cookbooks these days. There are hundreds lining the shelves of bookstores or on your computer screen--depending on how you choose to do your shopping. Either way there are a lot of cookbooks to be had, and with new ones published on a regular basis, it can be hard to know which are actually worth purchasing.

There have been many excellent cookbooks published this past year, and Jerusalem is without a doubt at the top of that list. I remember my excitement when I read the news about its publication, and when I finally received my copy, I wasn’t disappointed. It’s one of those cookbooks that elicits exclamations of “I have to make this!” with almost every turn of the page.

Although Hanukkah is known as the festival of lights, I think a more fitting name would be the festival of fried foods. It’s the time of year during which people expect and want to find deep fried food on their plates and I’m more than happy to oblige. Although, as much as I love eating latkes and sufganiyot, there are moments where I need a break from all the fried foods. Yet in the spirit of the holiday I still want to eat a dish in which oil is a central component.

It's about yogurt, too!

Reading through my copy of the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food by Gil Marks, I learned that artichokes are a common feature on the Passover tables of Italians and other Sephardim, since they usually first appear in early spring. I immediately knew that I wanted make this culinary tradition part of my own Passover celebrations. Yet, I have to admit that artichokes are one ingredient that intimidate me with their spiny outer leaves and inner choke that can be gag-inducing if not removed properly. Until I overcome my fear of artichokes (and for convenience's sake), I used using jarred or canned artichoke hearts.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret of mine: I actually like those tinned coconut macaroons that come out for Passover each year.

I pride myself on constantly using and experimenting with a variety of ingredients when I cook. However, fava beans were one of those things that hadn’t made it into my culinary repertoire.

You're probably thinking that prunes don’t belong in the same sentence as dessert, let alone anywhere near the sweet finish of a meal.

Passover cooking is certainly defined by the dietary restriction of abstaining from chametz, or leavened grain.

Hamantaschen are the signature food of Purim, and I definitely look forward to this time of year knowing that I’ll get to eat my fill of those delicious cookies.

Valentine's Day is not a Jewish holiday. These days it's a secular holiday associated with flowers, candy hearts, and, best of all, chocolate.

It may seem a little contradictory to celebrate the New Year for trees in North America during the winter, and yet it offers a reminder of the renewal that will soon come with spring (although it may seem far away!).

It’s that time of year again when food blogs and websites are filled with recipes for latkes and other fried delicacies for Hanukkah, and kitchens (along with the cooks!) begin to smell of all things deep fried. As my thoughts turned to the latkes I was going to make for Eating Jewish, I knew I wanted to do something different.

I have an affinity for baked goods, both savory and sweet, that runs deep.

Due to the proliferation of food blogs and cooking websites with thousands of recipes at our fingertips, some folks question the need for cookbooks at all. I am not one of them.

As far as underrated vegetables go, cabbage is near the top of the list. People generally don't rhapsodize over cabbage like they do for fresh sweet corn or a juicy red tomato.

For most of us, the break fast meal following Yom Kippur evokes images of bagels and cream cheese, coffee cake, blintzes and noodle kugel.

Even before Rosh Hashanah was over this year, my mind turned to what I should make for Yom Kippur.

Apples are a central component on Rosh Hashanah tables, from the honey dipped apples eaten at the beginning of the evening meal in the hope that they will help bring about a good and sweet new year, to the apple cake eaten at the end of a meal. Thinking about all the apple-eating that happens on this holiday, I couldn’t help but notice that more often than not apples are used in the dishes that grace the dessert table. However, while flipping through Joan Nathan’s latest cookbook Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous (I think this is definitely one of my favorite cookbooks at the moment) my assumptions about apples and desserts were dispelled when I saw the recipe for Rosh Hashanah Chicken with Cinnamon and Apples from Metz. I got extremely excited about this dish and I knew that I had to make it seeing as apples don’t often make it into the savory dishes that I cook.

Feasting is a central component to the celebrations of many, if not most, of the holidays on the Jewish calendar.

Not only is it almost the beginning of a new year, but the weather is beginning to change and the tomatoes, zucchini and corn that have been so plentiful over the summer are being replaced by squash, apples, pears, figs and a multitude of other autumn fruits and vegetables. The availability of all this fantastic produce has made the High Holidays one of my favorite times on the Jewish calendar to be cooking. This is especially true for Rosh Hashanah, when the food symbolism of the holiday necessitates the use of seasonal fruits and vegetables.

The idea for this post came as I was reading Jane Ziegelman’s fascinating book 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.

I wanted to write an Eating Jewish post about Tisha b’Av, yet as I started looking through my various cookbooks, I noticed that most of them had no mention of the holiday. It was often missing from the index and even recipes containing ingredients that would usually be included in a dish prepared on Tisha b'Av had no mention of it. I did find mention of Tisha b’Av in Gil Marks' Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, which devotes an entry to it (there’s a reason I’m constantly referring to this book) as well as in his cookbook The World of Jewish Food.

When I think of Shabbat dinner, one of the first things that comes to mind is the sweet, dense challah that I love so much. It has become so popular that it can be purchased in bakeries all week long, and like many of the iconic Jewish foods of North America (bagels, knishes, pastrami, and smoked meat, to name a few) it was introduced by members of the European Jewish community.

It was a busy weekend here for me in Montreal.

When you ask people to think of Israeli food, more often than not, images of crispy brown falafel will dance before their eyes. Yet, when speaking of quintessential Israeli dishes, falafel does not stand alone. Another dish that is central to the culinary landscape of Israel is schnitzel.

The way in which people choose to break Passover varies enormously and that first taste of chametz can be the non-traditional, but ever popular sushi, or something more rooted in Jewish culinary history like bagels. However, the Moroccan Jewish community ends Passover with a distinctive celebration known as the Mimouna.

When Passover rolls around, many people bemoan having to eat matzah with only a minority of people actually professing to liking it.

Gefilte fish, these two words make a lot of people turn their noses up in disgust while it can make others salivate.

Although most, if not all, Jewish holiday meals use certain foods and dishes to symbolize various elements of the celebration, the seder meal does so in a way that is integral to the ritual of the meal itself. From the maror to the zeroah, each has its place in the structure of the seder. Of all these symbolic foods, charoset is definitely my favorite and I have to agree with Gil Marks when he says in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food that it “is unquestionably the most flavorful and arguably everyone’s favorite of the seder foods.”

Earlier this month, The Jew and the Carrot published an article by Leah Koenig entitled “Jewish Dishes We Miss: A Top-10 List of Ashkenazi Foods To Bring Back.” Prior to publishing this list, readers were asked to write in with their own suggestions as to which dishes should go on this list and in the end it was made up of the following ten dishes: schmaltz (rendered poultry fat), gribenes (poultry skin cracklings), schav (sorrel and sorrel soup), tongue, mamaliga (cornmeal porridge), russel (fermented beets), eyerlekh (unhatched eggs), belly lox, p’tcha (jellied calf’s foot), and aranygaluska (pull apart cake). I could write blog posts about each of these dishes (admittedly some are more appealing than others) but the one that caught my attention was aranygaluska. The name wasn’t familiar but as soon as I started reading its description I immediately realized that I knew this dessert of cinnamon and sugar covered yeast dough balls, under the guise of monkey bread. This revelation immediately sent me to my stacks of cookbooks and to the Internet to find out why I knew this Hungarian Jewish dessert under another name.

There are many Purim sweets that are modeled after Haman's anatomy or clothing.

With preparation for Purim in full swing, there is no doubt that many people are thinking about Hamantaschen, which has become synonymous with this holiday in North America.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us are pretty sick of winter at this point and if you’re lucky enough to live in a place where you don’t really experience winter, I envy you. This time of year is the one I like the least because despite knowing that spring is almost here, it just can’t come soon enough. We got a small taste of spring in Montreal last week but that was just a tease and we have since fallen back into cold winter weather. Yet, the one good thing about this time of year is the abundance of citrus that’s available.

The debate over the smoked meat of Montreal and the pastrami of New York continues to elicit strong opinions, with ardent supporters on each side. A quick search on Google reveals numerous magazine articles and blog posts comparing the two. However, I should mention from the outset that I’m not here to do that or say which one is better. I’ve never eaten pastrami (I do intend to rectify that on my next visit to New York) so a comparison of the two isn’t possible.

When you choose to purchase a jar of peanut butter with a hecksher on it or kosher chicken, you become one of the final elements in the long journey that the particular foodstuff undertook in order to be certified as kosher. It can be easy to take this process for granted when you are receiving these things in their final form, yet Kosher Nation by Sue Fishkoff highlights this process and provides an in depth look at the modern kosher food industry in the United States.

Although there are no specific dishes that have traditionally been prepared for Tu B’Shevat, the custom of serving dishes that contain fruits and nuts has emerged.

My inspiration for the dishes I write about on Eating Jewish come from a variety of places that range from the numerous cookbooks that I have around my apartment, articles concerning Jewish food in newspapers and magazines, or simply the ingredients that I happen to have on hand at the moment. However, for this dish my inspiration came from my own academic work concerning the Moroccan Jewish community of Montreal.

A quick read through the food sections of many newspapers and you’ll find a multitude of articles suggesting what to make for holiday (read, Christmas) meals. On the other hand, a read through Jewish newspapers, magazines and blogs leads one to find articles discussing the relationship between Jews and Chinese food that has long defined Christmas for many in the community.

Once you’ve read this post, get to the kitchen and make this recipe because these leek patties are delicious. I even think that these might be one of my favorite recipes I’ve made for the blog so far. They’re satisfying and comforting, in the way that dishes with potatoes in them usually are, and the perfect thing to eat at his time of year when it’s getting colder outside. They are ideal Hanukkah fare but I also know that this recipe will make a recurring appearance in my kitchen throughout the rest of the year as well.

As an academic of Jewish food, I’m always on the lookout for new publications on the topic. It is a burgeoning area in which new research is being done all the time and a multitude of books and cookbooks are consistently being published. Despite wanting to buy all these books (especially the cookbooks), it is simply impossible, both financially and due to the fact that I can’t spend every waking hour reading about Jewish food (despite the fact that it would appear that’s what I do to the people close to me).