Jewish Cooking
Level: Basic |
Jewish cooking is a unique synthesis of cooking styles from the many places
that Jews have lived throughout the centuries. Jewish cooking shows the influence
of Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Spanish, German and Eastern European styles
of cooking, all influenced by the unique dietary constraints of
kashrut and other Jewish laws.
Many of the foods that we think of as Jewish are not unique to Jewish culture.
Stuffed cabbage, a traditional Jewish dish, is common in Eastern Europe.
Blintzes and knishes are familiar to all Germans, not just Jewish ones. Falafel
and hummus, increasingly thought of as Israeli-Jewish foods, can be found
in any Greek restaurant. But the combination of these varied foods into one
style of cooking, along with our own innovations, is uniquely Jewish.
On this page, I will identify and describe several of the better-known, popular
Jewish dishes. Most of these dishes are
Ashkenazic, because that's what I know.
Sephardic Jews have their own distinct cooking
traditions. I will provide recipes for those foods that I know how to cook,
and will provide links to other recipes that I have scattered throughout
this web site.
One ingredient you will see in many of these recipes is matzah meal. Matzah
meal is crumbs of matzah (unleavened bread). You can find this in the kosher
or ethnic section of your grocery store, if your grocery store has one (I
have found it in such remote, goyishe places as Athens, Georgia), but if
it is not available, you can usually substitute bread crumbs.
 Any traditional Jewish meal begins with the
breaking of bread. Challah is a special kind of bread used for
Shabbat and
holidays. It is a very sweet, golden, eggy
bread. The taste and texture is somewhat similar to egg twist rolls (those
little yellow rolls that look like knots). The loaf is usually braided, but
on certain holidays it may be made in other shapes. For example, on
Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to serve round
challah (the circle symbolizing the cycle of life, the cycle of the years).
A local deli makes French toast with challah. I highly recommend this. Challah
is also wonderful in sandwiches with roast beef or corned beef. Traditionally,
however, it is simply used as you might use rolls with a holiday dinner.
The word "challah" refers to the portion of dough set aside for the kohein
(See the List of Mitzvot, #394); that
is, a portion that is taken out of the dough before it is baked. You may
have seen the notation "Challah has been taken" on boxes of
Passover matzah, indicating that this rule
has been followed, that the challah portion was taken from the dough before
the matzah was made. I am not certain how the term for the removed portion
came to be used for the loaf of bread made after that portion has been removed.
Is there anybody who doesn't know what a bagel is? A bagel is a donut-shaped
piece of bread that is boiled before it is baked. They are often topped with
poppy seeds or sesame seeds, or flavored with other ingredients. The bagel
has been a part of Jewish cuisine for at least 400 years. According to Leo
Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, there are references to it as far back as Poland
in 1610. In America, bagels are traditionally served with cream cheese and
lox (smoked salmon) or other fish spreads (herring, whitefish, etc.). They
are also quite good with cream cheese and a thick slice of tomato.
Those chewy hockey pucks that you find in your grocer's freezer bear little
resemblance to a real bagel. A real bagel is soft, warm and spongy inside,
lightly crispy outside. A fresh bagel does not need to be toasted, and should
not be. Toasting is a sorry attempt to compensate for a sub-standard bagel.
Gefilte fish is a cake or ball of chopped up fish. My sister-in-law describes
it as Jewish Scrapple, although I suppose that is not very helpful to anybody
outside of the Philadelphia area. It is usually made with white-fleshed
freshwater fish, such as carp or pike. The fish is chopped into small pieces
(a food processor is good for this), mixed with onions and some other vegetables
(carrot, celery, parsley). The mixture is held together with eggs and matzah
meal. It is then boiled in broth for a while. It can be served warm or cold,
though it is usually served cold with red horseradish and garnished with
carrot shavings. Sorry I can't produce a better recipe than that; I don't
eat fish.
The word "gefilte" fish comes from German and means "stuffed." Some variations
on gefilte fish involve stuffing the fish skin with chopped up fish.
Also known as Jewish penicillin. Matzah balls are more traditionally known
as knaydelach (Yiddish for dumplings). Matzah
ball soup is generally a very thin chicken broth with two or three ping-pong-ball
sized matzah balls (or sometimes one very large matzah ball) in it. Sometimes,
a few large pieces of carrot or celery are added. Matzah balls can be very
soft and light or firm and heavy. A friend of mine describes the two types
as "floaters and sinkers." Matzah ball soup is commonly served at the
Passover seder, but is also eaten all year round.
Below is my recipe for matzah ball soup. The parsley in the matzah balls
is not traditional, but I like it that way.
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1/2 cup matzah meal
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2 eggs
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2 tbsp. oil or schmaltz (melted chicken fat)
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2 tbsp. water or chicken broth
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2 tbsp. fresh chopped parsley
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a little black pepper
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2 quarts thin chicken broth or consommé
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A handful of baby carrots or regular carrots cut into large chunks (optional)
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a few stalks of celery cut into large chunks (optional)
Beat the eggs, oil and water together thoroughly. Add the matzah meal, parsley
and black pepper and mix until you achieve an even consistency. Let this
sit for a few minutes, so the matzah meal absorbs the other ingredients,
and stir again.
Bring the broth to a vigorous boil, then reduce the heat until the broth
is just barely boiling. Add the vegetables to the broth (if used). Wet your
hands and make balls of about 1-2 tbsp. of the batter. Drop the balls gently
into the boiling water. They will be cooked enough to eat in about 15 minutes;
however, you may want to leave it simmering longer to absorb more of the
chicken broth flavor. They are done when they float on top of the broth and
look bloated.
For lighter matzah balls, use a little less oil, a little more water, and
cook at a lower temperature for a longer time. For heavier matzah balls,
do the reverse. If you are using this to treat a cold, put extra black pepper
into the broth (pepper clears the sinuses).
A knish (rhymes with "dish"; the k and the n are both pronounced) is a sort
of potato and flour dumpling stuffed with various things. It is baked until
browned and a little crisp on the outside. They are commonly filled with
mashed potato and onion, chopped liver, or cheese. They are good for a snack,
an appetizer or a side dish. You should be able to find them in any deli.
The word "knish" is Ukrainian for "dumpling."
Blintzes are basically Jewish crepes. A blintz is a thin, flat pancake rolled
around a filling. It looks a little like an egg roll. As a main dish or side
dish, blintzes can be filled with sweetened cottage cheese or mashed potatoes
and onion; as a dessert, they can be filled with fruit, such as apple, cherry
or blueberry. They are usually pan fried in oil. They are generally served
with sour cream and/or applesauce.
Cheese blintzes are the traditional meal for the festival of
Shavu'ot, when dairy meals are traditionally
eaten. Blintzes are also commonly eaten during
Chanukkah, because they are cooked in oil.
The word "blintz" comes from a Ukrainian word meaning "pancake."
Cholent (the "ch" is pronounced as in "chair" -- an exception to the usual
rules of pronunciation) is a very slowly cooked stew of beans, beef, barley
and sometimes potatoes. It is the traditional meal for the
Shabbat lunch or dinner, because it can be
started before Shabbat begins and left cooking throughout Shabbat. A
recipe for cholent is on
the Shabbat page.
Holishkes are cabbage leaves stuffed with meatballs in a tomato-based
sweet-and-sour sauce. They are known by many different names (galuptzi, praakes,
stuffed cabbage), and are made in many different ways, depending on where
your grandmother came from. It is traditionally served during the holiday
of Sukkot, although I am not sure why. Below
is my recipe.
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8-10 leaves of cabbage
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Filling:
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1 lb. ground beef
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1/2 cup matzah meal
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1 large grated onion
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2 grated carrots
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1/2 tsp. garlic powder
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a handful of minced parsley
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2 eggs
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Sauce:
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16 oz. can of tomato sauce
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1/4 cup of lemon juice
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1/2 cup of brown sugar
Gently remove the cabbage leaves from the head. You want them to be intact.
It may help to steam the head briefly before attempting this. Boil the leaves
for a minute or two to make them soft enough to roll.
Combine the sauce ingredients in a saucepan and simmer, stirring, until the
sugar dissolves (it will dissolve faster if you pour the lemon juice over
it). Pour about 1/4 of the sauce into the bottom of a casserole dish or lasagna
pan.
Combine all of the filling ingredients in a bowl. Make a ball out of a handful
of the filling and roll it up in a cabbage leaf, rolling from the soft end
to the spiny end. Put the resulting roll into the casserole dish with the
sauce. Do this until you use up all of the filling, making 8-10 cabbage rolls.
Then pour the remaining sauce over the top.
Bake approximately 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
If you don't like so much refined sugar in your diet, you can substitute
about a cup of raisins or prunes for the brown sugar.
Tzimmes is any kind of sweet stew. It usually is orange in color, and includes
carrots, sweet potatoes and/or prunes. A wide variety of dishes fall under
the heading "tzimmes." On Passover, I commonly
make a tzimmes of carrots and pineapple chunks boiled in pineapple juice.
On Thanksgiving, I serve a tzimmes of sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots,
and stewing beef.
Tzimmes is commonly eaten on Rosh Hashanah, because
it is sweet and symbolizes our hopes for a sweet new year.
The word "tzimmes" is often used in Yiddish
to mean making a big fuss about something.
This is the tzimmes recipe I use for Passover:
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1 can of pineapple tidbits in pineapple juice
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3 large carrots, peeled and cut into large slices
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Additional pineapple juice or water if needed
Put the carrot slices and the pineapple with its juice in a large saucepan
and bring it to a very low simmer. Let it simmer for half an hour or longer,
until the carrot slices have absorbed most of the pineapple juice and are
soft. If the juice level gets too low before this is done, add a bit more
pineapple juice or, if none is available, some water.
This is the tzimmes recipe I use for Thanksgiving:
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1 lb. stewing beef, cut into small chunks
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1/2 cup of sugar
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1 cup of water
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3 sweet potatoes
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3 white potatoes
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5 carrots
Brown the stewing beef lightly in a little oil in a 2 quart saucepan. Add
the water and sugar and bring to a boil, then reduce to a very low simmer.
Peel and dice the potatoes and carrots and add to the pot. Let it stew covered
at very low heat for at least an hour, adding water periodically if necessary.
There should be water, but it should not be soggy. Once the potatoes are
soft, take the cover off and let most of the water boil off. Mash the whole
mixture until the potato part is the consistency of mashed potatoes. Put
the mash into a casserole dish and bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
If you don't like so much refined sugar in your diet, you can substitute
about a cup of raisins or prunes for the sugar.
Kugel is another dish that encompasses several different things, and the
relationship between them is hard to define. The word "kugel" is generally
translated as "pudding," although it does not mean pudding in the Jell-O
brand dairy dessert sense; more in the sense of bread pudding. The word "kugel"
is pronounced "koo-gel" (with the "oo" in "book"; not to rhyme with "google")
or "ki-gel," depending on where your grandmother comes from.
Kugel can be either a side dish or a dessert. As a side dish, it is a casserole
of potatoes, eggs and onions. As a desert, it is usually made with noodles
and various fruits and nuts in an egg-based pudding. Kugel made with noodles
is called lokshen kugel. Below is my recipe for a noodle kugel.
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3 eggs
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1/4 cup melted margarine or butter
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1/4 cup sugar
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1/2 tsp. cinnamon
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1/2 lb. wide noodles
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1/4 cup raisins
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1/4 cup almonds
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1/2 cup chopped apples
Beat the eggs thoroughly in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter, sugar and
cinnamon beat until thoroughly blended. Cook the noodles and rinse them in
cold water. Do not drain them too thoroughly. Put the noodles into the egg
mixture and stir until the noodles are coated with the mixture. Let them
sit in the refrigerator for about 15-30 minutes, so the noodles absorb some
of the egg mixture. Stir again.
Put about half of the egg-noodle mixture into a casserole dish. Put the raisins,
almonds and apples on top. Put the remaining egg-noodle mixture on top of
that. Bake for about 30-45 minutes at 350 degrees, until the egg part is
firm and the noodles on top are crispy. Can be served warm or cold.
Jewish deserts generally do not have any dairy products in them, because
of the constraints of kashrut. Under the kosher
laws, dairy products cannot be eaten at the same meal as meat, thus Jewish
deserts are usually pareve (neither meat nor dairy), so they can be served
after a meat or dairy meal. An example of this kind of cooking is the Jewish
apple cake, which I see in many grocery stores. I do not know if this kind
of cake is actually a traditional Jewish dish; I cannot find any recipes
for it in any of my Jewish cookbooks. However, the style of it is very much
in accord with Jewish cooking styles. Jewish apple cake is a light, almost
spongy cake with chunks of apples in it. It has no dairy products; the liquid
portion that would usually be milk is replace with apple juice, making a
very sweet cake.
Elsewhere in this site, I have provided recipes for:
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Latkes, potato pancakes
traditionally served during Chanukkah.
-
Hamentaschen, filled
cookies traditionally served during Purim.
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Charoset, a mixture of
fruit, nuts and wine traditionally served during Passover.
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Matzah Brie, Passover treat.
Think of it as Passover French toast.
-
Beef Brisket, a simplistic
recipe that makes a surprisingly good brisket.
-
Matzah Lasagna, my guilty
pleasure for Passover.
 The ultimate traditional Jewish cookbook is Leah
W. Leonard's
Jewish
Cookery. It contains traditional
Ashkenazic recipes for holidays and all
year round. All of the recipes are kosher.
There is a special section for Passover recipes.
The book contains a brief discussion of holiday food customs and the laws
of kashrut.
Another cookbook that I've gotten a lot of good use out of is Josephine Levy
Bacon's
Jewish
Cooking from Around the World. Don't let that surprising last name fool
you! These are kosher recipes from both Ashkenazic and
Sephardic tradition, as well as Yemenite
and Indian dishes. Jews have lived in just about every country in the world,
and these recipes reflect the melding of Jewish traditions and dietary laws
with the prevailing cooking styles in the countries where we have lived.
© Copyright 5757-5766 (1997-2006), Tracey
R Rich
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