jerusalem (ap) | As Passover claims its place on the year’s calendar, it’s a timely occasion for cooks as well as general readers to dig into recent books which offer varied insights into the role of food in Jewish life. Here’s a sampling of titles:
• “Jewish Food: The World At Table” by Matthew Goodman (416 pages, Harper Collins, $29.95).
This is more than a collection of recipes, although it’s certainly that, too. There are at least 170 of them, ranging from appetizers through main dishes to spices and condiments, from Hungarian fruit soup to Moroccan roast chicken, from Bombay cumin rice to Italian pastries.
Goodman writes that he wants to present food at its most deeply meaningful, including “as object of sensory pleasure, medium of culinary artistry, and useful window into Jewish history and culture.” He says that in researching this book he found Jewish food more vibrant, diverse and exciting than he’d even suspected. The history of the Jews is the history of diaspora, of exile, he says, and while this may have been the people’s tragedy and hardship, “it is also the food’s triumph.”
• “Olive Trees and Honey” by Gil Marks (416 pages, Wiley, $29.95).
The book is subtitled “A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes From Jewish Communities Around the World.” The 300 recipes Marks features explore a wide variety of dishes within vegetarian definitions, and include the use of dairy foods and eggs.
Marks, a rabbi, sets his recipes in a wide context, with comments on religious holiday meals and traditions, and background history that includes maps showing the origins and spread of foods. In the light of history, he says, it’s not surprising that most of the dishes in his selection derive from the vegetable-loving Mediterranean area and southern Asia, although other cultural communities are also represented, from the steppes of Uzbekistan to Alsace to the west.
n “A Wandering Feast: A Journey Through the Jewish Culture of Eastern Europe” by Yale Strom with Elizabeth Schwartz (272 pages, Jossey-Bass, $24.95).
The couple are multitalented filmmakers and musicians whose attention took in the whole range of experiences offered during their travels in eastern Europe, including food.
The cultural feasting goes on at many levels the book contains music, excerpts of songs, black-and-white photos, as well as the travelers’ tales and a generous sampling of recipes, many of which Schwartz says were handed down by her mother and grandmother. They’ve been adapted for today’s home cooks, and include such hints as telling when you can use the microwave to speed up a process.
• “Classic Italian Jewish Cooking” by Edda Servi Machlin (432 pages, Harper Collins, $29.95).
The rich savor of combined traditions flavors this book. Machlin offers recipes and menus for all sorts of holiday occasions, not only from her native Tuscan Jewish village of Pitigliano, but from her mother’s Roman-Jewish tradition, and from Jewish friends in Venice, Bologna and throughout Italy. Many of the dishes are uniquely Italian-Jewish and do not appear in Italian cookbooks.
Most Italian Jews are of Sephardic origin, so their dishes differ from the familiar Ashkenazi food of central and eastern Europe. In certain cases, Sephardic kosher laws vary from the Ashkenazi, and Machlin defines and explains those variations. Antipasti, soups and pastas, meat, vegetables and salads, and breads and desserts are represented in one volume compiled from Machlin’s three acclaimed but hard-to-find earlier books.